by Tunde Leye
They are forced to exit the country and work/slave to build countries who belong to the other half of the work. Once one removes the accents, the names and the locations, we see that the stories are strikingly similar. And one is forced to draw the conclusion. Corruption is a country.
I follow a handle on twitter, @AfricasACountry. It’s a satirical reference to the misconception many non-Africans have about how we are all from “Africa”. Not Nigeria, not Ghana, not Burkina Faso, not Kenya. Africa. The tweets from the handle highlight the many similarities between the good and the bad across Africa.
I was in Dubai for a week recently and spent a lot of time wondering how that fishing village was transformed into the modern marvel that is Dubai today. What is interesting to note is that most of this transformation happened within the last 40 years under visionary leadership. The Arab society that evolved into Dubai and the UAE at large had the same challenges that much of the Arab world has but they managed to overcome these challenges, unite and build a thriving society. What is particularly interesting about what they have done is that they haven’t lost their Arab/Islamic core to become “westernised” in the name of development.
I was in a training class with some South Korean gentlemen and we got talking about their country too. We were talking about the adoption of POS terminals in Korea and I was talking about the brands of terminals in the Nigerian market. All were western brands. The Koreans smiled and showed me the Korean made POS terminals they had built for their market, certified by all global bodies and in use all over Korea. That led us to discuss how Korea has evolved. They showed me videos of a very backward South Korea in the 70s. Then they showed me the plans the country’s leaders put together in the 70s and 40 years down the line, they are following that plan and have developed Korea into a first world country. Again, that is without losing their Korean core. Modernization was not equal to westernisation and a loss of a sense of history and identity.
I also got talking to most of the cab drivers and the barber that cut my hair in Dubai. Most of them workers in Dubai are foreigners and there is an almost strict delineation of the type of jobs that nationalities do. So I found many Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi cab drivers, doormen and construction workers. The lower level services industry was dominated by Chinese and North Koreans. The Africans were hustlers in downtown Deira and did menial jobs like bellboys and security guards. Of course, these are generalizations and not every Indian was a cab driver or every African a hustler. But I generalized to make an important point.
A Pakistani cab driver told me of how he ran his mechanic shop for 20 years, making a decent living until cost of generating power due to the erratic power supply drove his business to the ground. He became jobless and with mouths to feed, he was left with no choice but emigrating to Dubai to take up work as a cab driver to provide for his family which he was forced to leave behind in Punjab. He pays 55% of the proceeds from his work to the Emiratis, and makes about half what he used to make back in Pakistan, but it was work and he was able to earn a living. As I listened to more and more such stories from people who had to make difficult choices to leave home to come and hustle in a land where their civil liberties are limited and where they have to make money for the citizens first before themselves, I saw a pattern. From the Uzbeks to the North Koreans, the Kenyans to the Nigerians, the Indians to the Pakistanis, it became clear to me. Poor governance had led to economic collapse and hardship for its people. Many of these countries have population pressures, and coupled with the poor governance, the people bear the brunt of the effects of the hardship. They are forced to exit the country and work/slave to build countries who belong to the other half of the work. Once one removes the accents, the names and the locations, we see that the stories are strikingly similar. And one is forced to draw the conclusion. Corruption is a country.
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