OPINION: Of serial rapists, vampires and demons (3)
By Isaac Chii Nwaogwugwu
The revenue generation/collection/ mobilisation agencies have also become very notorious for employing ‘targets’ as a performance index.
The revenue agencies at federal, state and local levels now wear the toga of extortionists as they chase citizens from pillar to post pursuant of the crazy drive of increasing their Internally Generated Revenue without reference to the fiscal capacity of their victims.
These victims often times, are those within the middle and lower income categories. Interestingly, some of these revenue collectors are discrete agents of some powerful people in state organs.
A good chunk of revenue generated ends up in private pockets.
In other words, the state is used as a vehicle to defraud its own citizens.Ironically, some of the revenue bases for which the people are harassed are simply illegal collections as there are no enabling laws backing them.
They are creatures of circumstance primarily designed to serve some interests. So just like the Nigerian banking system, the telecommunication sector and other private sector organisations the governments and their agencies for revenue collection have distinguished themselves through obnoxious, unethical,immoral and exploitative practices at the expense of the citizens.
Some operate in uniforms while others are always in mufti without any reliable means of identification. Some claim to work for all manner of agencies or authorities; wards, local government areas, as well as states and federal governments.
They will waylay you at junctions while others will block you right in the middle of the road or even in a parking lot.
You will be accused of violating the traffic rule, wrong parking or lane changing or even obstruction of traffic even when there is no proof of such ‘rule-breaking’ accusations.
And they will then jump into your vehicle and ensure that they cause an annoying degree of injury to the purchasing power at your disposal.
They must force you to part the huge cash in your wallet and when there is none they will readily offer you a P.O S machine.
Yes, many ofthem now carry P.O.S machines around. You will be very unlucky to have neither good cash nor an ATM card for you and or your vehicle will most likely be detained in any of their ‘offices’.
That would mean extra cash that you must part with. They will violate your sanity and cause you to bleed in your heart.
They are respecter of no person(s). The ‘bigger’ you are or look, the better for them. The more frustrated you look, the more loquacious they become in arrogant display of ‘power’.
They destroy the workshops and kiosks of artisans and petty traders even when their locations are sanctioned by the requisite authorities just because of payment default or resistance to intimidation and extortion.
Don’t tell me that this is how governance is delivered in other climes. Don’t tell me that most people who run the governments and their agencies are human beings.
Are they monsters? Are they rapists? Are they vampires? Are they demons? Do they need the services of the exorcists?
Maybe they do for it is difficult to understand how a government can articulate dehumanising and demeaning tactics of revenue generation in the face of continuously dilapidating state of infrastructure amidst rising poverty without giving a hoot on the welfare of the citizenry.
Our governments are wicked. Our government agencies for revenue mobilisation are mean.
Their operations now constitute existential threat to all our lives. What about the electricity distribution companies with their crazy bills that exist in perpetual estimation?
They bill you on a plot of land where no building exists. And the moment you put up a shanty in that land they will descend on you with estimated arrears that will cause the hairs in your head to twerk in their roots in mesmerising frustration.
You live in a one-room apartment. All you use are four energy-saving bulbs, low budget television and music sets, and maybe a pressing iron.
No room heater, no boiler, no washing machine, no electric stove and air conditioner. Yet, at the end of the month they will serve you an estimated bill of twelve thousand naira.
Yes, N12,000.00 bill just for one month. Metres are deliberately not installed. Pricing is anchored on bizarre and mundane criteria that can only be justified by standing logic on its head.
The consumer protection agencies cannot come to your rescue.The state cannot protect you. You are just on your own.
You are at their mercy. They don’t give a damn. They don’t want to know. Don’t tell me that most people who run these electricity distribution companies are human beings. Maybe they are monsters. Rapists?Vampires? Demons?
Do they need the services of the exorcists? Maybe they do for it is difficult to understand how corporate bodies that operate in a modern state can be so abusive and trample on basic consumer right without a blink.
These organisations are mean. They are wicked. Are the security operatives and paramilitary forces exempt from this devilish practice? The answer is a big no.
The police. The immigration. The customs. And the others. They are all involved. They all use inhuman targets to drive performance.
The officer that won’t let you go until you have done the needful might just be chasing a target that is driving him mad. He is definitely not alone.
He has to give returns. Yes! I just said that he has to make returns. To his immediate Oga who will in turn make return to his own immediate Oga and sharing of the booty continues like that.
Yes, just like that until it possibly reaches the big ‘Oga at the top’.In some cases a certain percentage of the returns is used to ‘maintain’ the state machinery. I can go on and on. You know it all.
You know them all.Indeed, target setting is generally the byproduct of a payoff matrix that matches contemplated strategies to possible outcomes. It would be unreasonable for one to ignore the strategy that guarantees the best outcome.
But it is also criminal that those strategies should be pursued without regard to extant laws and ethical practices.
It is therefore within this context that the banks, telecommunication organisations, the governments and their agencies as well as the security operatives should re-examine their strategies and actions.
They do not exist in a vacuum. Their targets and pursuance of the same should not be translated into dehumanising tendencies unless they are truly monsters, rapists, vampires and demons.
In that case their victims may resort to the services of exorcists when pushed to the wall. We need protection. We need security.
We need to live longer. Vampires and demons should leave us alone. But I bet they will not unless the government begins to live up to its name.
It is shocking that the government and its regulatory agencies appear helpless onlookers as high doses of evil are being perpetrated against citizens with impunity. Is the Central Bank of Nigeria asleep?
Or is it pretending to be oblivious of the rot in the banking sector and how the banks under its supervision are driving their customers crazy?
Where is the Nigerian Communications Commission and Ministry of Communication, Education and Health?What about the National Electricity Regulatory Commission?
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Have the Consumer Protection agencies gone comatose? The Police Service Commission?
It is difficult to believe that all these organisations are living up to their respective mandates. Who can be convinced that they are not accomplices to the extortions and thievery?
We now live in a world of a failed state. Failed social system. Failed infrastructure. Failed educational and health systems. Failed regulations.
We now live in a country where the government that swore to protect the lives and properties of the citizenry have simply thrown them to the vultures that will gorge their infirm prey in excitement.
We have all been abandoned to our individual fates and we must live as if we were in the jungle. Nigeria has indeed become a jungle.
