01/03/2023
*ᴡʜᴇɴ ᴄᴏʀʀᴜᴘᴛɪᴏɴ ғᴀᴠᴏᴜʀs ʏᴏᴜ*
Corruption and injustice are identical twins. Someone is left in pain whenever they succeed; due process is compromised and justice subverted.
But what do you do when corruption and injustice favour you?
Sirens blarring, the convoy of jeeps conveying dignitaries and security personnel burst through the traffic at an intersection, causing pedestrians to scamper for safety, some jumping across gutters to avoid being run over; other drivers in the traffic could only wail with their horns and curse the insensitive government officials whose only concern was to have their way.
It didn't matter to these executive drivers and their '𝘰𝘨𝘢s' that they violated traffic rules or that people's lives were put at risk.
I was one of the other drivers in that traffic.
Fast forward a few days later, I was the dignitary, the special guest being conveyed from the airport to a government-house-venue of an event to which I'd been invited.
Music brings you before the high and mighty, or if you like, makes you the high and mighty.
Again on this day, this convoy of SUVs that picked me from the airport tore through the busy traffic, threw off pedestrians, violating traffic laws. This time, I was the high and mighty being conveyed.
I heard the horns, the shouting and cursing of frustrated commuters from the comfort of this protocol vehicle. By the way, the temperature and ambiance in these exotic vehicles are as removed from street reality as the heavens are from the earth.
You would be tempted to just enjoy the executive treatment while it lasted.
What do you do when corruption favours you?
What do you do when you're the beneficiary of injustice?
What do you do when the referee makes an unjust call against the opponent and your team benefits from the injustice?
What do you do when the government in power appoints mostly your kinsmen and your ethnic nationals at the expense of others?
When your ethnic nationals take up arms and extrajudicially attack and massacre people of neighboring communities?
What do you do when the corrupt official who has stolen public money "blesses" you with part of his or her loot?
You have needs to meet. Would you care where the money came from?
What do you do when that election candidate of yours wins fraudulently?
When corruption and injustice favour you, what do you do?
What you do is who you are !
Indeed, much more than what you say you are, you are what you do. There may be pressing reasons to accept or excuse corruption and injustice when they smile at us.
The convoy drivers could be racing to meet up with an important state event to which they may be late already.
You may have been praying and waiting for supernatural intervention before the stolen funds came.
You may have been long expecting the fruit of the womb before the stolen baby was offered you.
What would you do?
Not every open door is from God. Some are traps.
Not every opportunity must be seized.
Not every food is healthy for consumption.
A wrong plate of food eaten today can remove tomorrow's food from your table, even from your children's table.
By the way, the executive convoy drivers do not go home with those cars. They park them in 𝘰𝘨𝘢'𝘴 car lot and find their level in public transportation as they retire home; with the same people they had harassed off the roads.
The poor are also corrupt and unjust.
Corruption and injustice do not reside only in government houses. They reside in impoverished and loveless minds; men and women who see temporary opportunities as weapons of oppression and a means to selfish ends.
You know them by what they do when corruption favours them.
Selah!
