Better Nigeria: We Are The System

BY IPHIE MANUELZ

My sources of inspiration for writing amazes me all the time. So here I am sitting down, minding my business like a good girl you know I am, doing my final research for a presentation that I have tomorrow. I am presenting on the Enron scandal and the role Enron's auditors, Arthur Andersen, played in one of the biggest bankruptcies America had ever seen, at least until the Worldcom scandal the following year. I remember watching the whole Enron scandal go down on CNN back in 2001/2, I was still in high school then so I didn't really understand the impact of what was happening. I totally forgot about it until I had to read up on it for my presentation tomorrow.

The first thought that came into my head as I started my research was, the corruption that went down at Enron was no different from what happened in Nigeria everyday. The greedy Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officers and other top Enron staff were busy enriching themselves at the expense of the shareholders and stakeholders. These guys came up with pretty intelligent schemes to hide the thievery that was going on at Enron. Enron was no 7 on the list of fortune 500 companies in America, Enron kept rising and rising in the six years before it finally filed for bankruptcy in 2002. Enron had the midas touch, every thing it ventured into turned into gold, it was just profit, profit , profit with no losses. But that wasn't really the case, Enron wasn't just about the profit, these ventures had losses too, they were just hiding them creatively. What Enron did was to create special purpose entities and that was where the hid their losses. These SPEs in a way belonged to the top officials at Enron and they enriched themselves through single party transactions. Arthur Andersen who were supposed to detect all these 'sharp practices' just stood by and watched while the top officials continued to destroy Enron because of the conflict of interest it had. Arthur Andersen was providing both auditing services and consultancy service to Enron, so they were obviously making a lot money off Enron, $57million in the year before the scandal, $25million for audit services and $27million for consultancy services.

I know I just used you guys to revise for my presentation tomorrow, hehehe. But I just had to give the gist of it because as I carried out my research, I couldn't help but relate it to Nigeria. Take Enron to be the corrupt leaders that Nigeria has been cursed with and take Nigerians to be Arthur Anderson. These leaders keep getting away with their corrupt ways because we have refused to hold them accountable. They come up with schemes to steal our money everyday and all we do is scream 'ha, God punish these thieves', God would not punish that thief oh if he repents before he dies. The necessary authorities that are meant to detect and punish these our corrupt leaders, turn a blind eye because the have a conflict of interest, they know some bribe would come their way from that money, or maybe they are married to the sisters of these thieves so they decide to turn a blind eye. Eventually Arthur Andersen had to go out of business, a firm that would have turned a hundred in 2013 had to be bought up by its rival because it let a company that was formed by a merger in 1985 lead it like a goat to its death. Both Enron and Arthur Anderson no longer exist and have become the main source of my lecture and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

I hope such a fate never befall us in Nigeria, but we just have to get up and say enough is enough. We have to be tired of these leaders leading us deeper and deeper into out doom. The difference between Nigeria and America is not that they don't have corruption, the difference is that they have a system that works. A system that holds these corrupt individuals accountable for their corrupt acts. Jeffery Skilling the corrupt CEO was sentenced to 24years and 4months in prison and fined to the tune of $45million,  Kenneth Lay, also a corrupt CEO of Enron would have been sentenced to at least 20-30years had he lived. The list goes on how the system punishes these corrupt individuals. But the system is not made up of a group of magicians that just wave their magic wand and bam, the corrupt individuals are punished. The system is made up of ordinary people like you and I that are aware of their rights, that know that people must be held accountable for their wrong doing. 

Until you and I are willing to hold our corrupt leaders accountable for their corrupt ways, the 'system' would continue to let them slip away.