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INTRODUCTION
Corruption is the act of exploiting the society by taking undue advantage of political power to accumulate common wealth as personal property. Corruption comes in various forms: bribery, manipulation of political roles, rigging, financial misappropriation, stealing from public treasury, giving of nonexistent contracts, etc. One of the most endemic problems African nations have been faced with since the exit of colonialism is the problem of corruption. African leaders have been exhibiting all types of corrupt practices that have hampered the proper development of African states. There have been under developments in many aspects of African lives due to the cases of financial misappropriation.
African writers have been recording with much accuracy the changing tensions in their society. After the colonial experiences, there was a hope of new beginning. There was a hope of a greater tomorrow in the hands of the leaders. The effect of these corrupt practices resulted in borrowing from the World Bank/ IMF for all Third World countries seeking its loans to restructure its economy by engaging in market reforms, privatization, deregulation, liberalization, devaluation of its currency and a minimalist role of the state. The goal of the policy reforms was to diversify the economic base by allowing the private sector to drive the economy based on the principle that this process would generate economic growth that will reduce the observable cases of inequality, unemployment, poverty in the economy.
All the reform proposals were also aimed at enriching the educated Africans. In discussing the role of colonial education, Walter Rodney shows that the roots of neocolonialism lie in colonialism. This shows
that African literature have been recording that neocolonialism is the result of a historical process of class formation by colonialism. Absolutely central to neocolonialism, is the formation of classes or strata within a colony which are closely allied to and dependent on foreign capital, and which form the real basis of support for the regime which succeed the colonial administration.
General Overview
Since the exit of the Europeans from African shores, the educated Africans have been in control of political powers in their various countries. Many African writers believe that African literature exists in a historical continuum. For example, neocolonialism prevails today in Africa because of the continuation after "independence" of the economic, political and social practices established by colonialism. An analysis of the economic, political and social contradictions created by colonialism has revealed that the state of anomy in Africa is created by colonialism which has hampered Africa's development. African writers, according to Ngugi wa Thiong’o are “sensitive needles” that record the tensions and conflicts in their ever changing societies.
Corruption which comes in various forms has been the key factor hampering Africa’s development. Most African writers especially those that wrote after colonialism, have recorded the existence of these strange acts of corruption among the educated elite who are occupying the political posts. Many Africans thought that independence would bring a
change but it turned out to be a worse aspect of colonial administration. Some novels like Achebe’s No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters, Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautiful Ones are not Yet Born amongst other works have treated the issue of corruption with disdain by outlining in major plots of stories,how corruption has been the bane of Africa’sunderdevelopment. We shall study two of the novels mentioned here to show how this theme is treated.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1
Explain critically how European education facilitated corruption in Africa.
The Politics of Corruption in No Longer atEase
No Longer at Ease is a 1960 novel by Chinua Achebe. It is the story of Obi Okonkwo, who leaves his village for a British education and a job in the Nigerian colonial civil service, but who struggles to adapt to a Western lifestyle and ends up taking a bribe. The novel is the sequel to Achebe's Things Fall Apart, which concerned the struggle of Obi Okonkwo's grandfather Okonkwo against the changes brought by the English people.
The novel opens with the trial of Obi Okonkwo on a charge of accepting a bribe. It then jumps back in time to a point before his departure for England and works its way forward to describe how Obi ended up on trial. The members of the Umuofia Progressive Union (UPU), a group of Igbo men who have left their villages to live in major Nigerian cities, have taken up a collection to send Obi to England to study law, in the hope that he will return to help his people navigate English colonial society. But once there, Obi switches his major to English.
Obi returns to Nigeria after four years of studies and lives in Lagos with his friend Joseph. He takes a job with the Scholarship Board and is almost immediately offered a bribe by a man who is trying to obtain a scholarship for his little sister. When Obi indignantly rejects the offer, he is visited by the girl herself who implies that she will bribe him with sexual favours for the scholarship, another offer Obi rejects.
At the same time, Obi is developing a romantic relationship with Clara, a Nigerian girl who eventually reveals that she is an osu, an outcast by her descent, meaning that Obi can not marry her under the traditional ways of the Igbo in Nigeria. While he remains intent on marrying Clara, even his Christian father opposes it, and his mother begs him on her deathbed not to marry Clara until after her death, threatening to kill herself if Obi disobeys. When Obi informs Clara of these events, Clara breaks the engagement and intimates that she is pregnant. Obi arranges an abortion, which Clara reluctantly undergoes, but she suffers complications and refuses to see Obi afterwards.
All the while, Obi sinks deeper into financial trouble, in part due to poor planning on his end, in part due to the need to repay his loan to the UPU and to pay for his siblings' educations, and in part due to the cost of the illegal abortion.
After hearing of his mother's death, Obi sinks into a deep depression, and refuses to go home for the funeral. When he recovers, he begins to accept bribes in a reluctant acknowledgement that it is the way of his world.
The novel closes as Obi takes a bribe and tells himself that it is the last one he will take, only to discover that the bribe was part of a sting operation. He is arrested, bringing us up to the events that opened the story. Obi Okonkwo, grandson of the protagonist in Things Fall Apart, is the pride of his Nigerian village, Umuofia. The villagers pooled their money to send one native son off to England to be educated and Obi was chosen. Now he has returned to a prestigious job with the civil service in Lagos-he's the Administrative Assistant to the Inspector of Schools. He bears the burden of his people's expectations but his exposure to Western culture has distanced him from tribal life and though he is now earning a magnificent living by their standards, he has trouble making ends meet as he tries keeping up with the Joneses in the big city. Borrowing money, he ends up "digging a new pitto fill up an old one."
Further complicating matters is his love affair with the lovely Clara, an osu, one of the socio-religious outcasts who also figured prominently in Things Fall Apart. As financial and romantic pressures continue to mount and his beloved mother sickens and dies, Obi must also deal with temptation, offers of money and sex if he will use his position to assist scholarship applicants. For as long as he can, Obi juggles all of these problems,but gradually they come crashing down on him.
More directly than almost any author I'm aware of, Chinua Achebe faces head on the issues which confront the developing nations in a post- Colonial world. In No Longer at Ease, even as he pokes fun at the remaining English bureaucrats and their condescending ways, he honors their tradition of relatively honest civil service. Meanwhile, he questions whether at least this first generation of natives who are replacing the departing Europeans are truly prepared to meet the same standards or whether a slide into corruption is nearly inevitable.
Obi is a decent enough man and he has the best of intentions, but he gets in way over his head, bringing tragedy down upon himself and disgrace to his village. His situation, as portrayed by Achebe-caught between the traditions and expectations of his village on the one hand and the modern ways and legal constraints of the West on the other-puts him in an untenable position, one where something must give. Achebe offers a fully realized portrait of one of those returned who are "no longer at ease," aliens in their own country. It's a terrific book.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2
What factors are responsible for Obi Okonkwo bowing to the act of corruption?
The Politics of Corruption in The Beautiful Ones are not Yet Born
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah tells the story of a nameless man who struggles to reconcile himself with the reality of post-independence Ghana. He works at a railway station and is approached with a bribe; when he refuses, his wife is furious and he can't help feeling guilty despite his innocence. The novel expresses the frustration many citizens of the newly-independent states in Africa felt after attaining political independence. Many African states like Ghana followed similar paths in which corruption and the greed of African elite became rampant. Corruption in turn filtered down to the rest of society and the 'rot' that characterized post-independent Ghana in the last years of Nkrumah is a dominant theme in the book. The novel provides a description of the existential angst of the book's hero who struggles to remain clean when everyone else around him has succumbed to 'rot'. [Refer to Module 2 Unit 3 Section 3.3 for more details on The Beautiful Ones are not Yet Born].
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 3
The Man is a victim of corruption even as he denies being a part of it. Explain thoroughly.
The Politics of Corruption in Other Novels
Colonial education did more than corrupt the thinking and sensibilities of the African; it filled him/her with abnormal complexes which alienated him/her from the needs of his/her environment. Colonial education has thus dispossessed Africans from developing their societies. The narrator in Dambudzo Marechera's House of Hunger, for instance, is culturally alienated because of his Western education. In
Mission to Kala by Mongo Beti, Medza's role model is America. Medza cannot make decisions in relation to the needs of his society nor have a new vision relevant to African society. He sees everything Africa as odd. He prefers being corrupt and acting according to the dictates of western values that are detrimental to his African belief system. Medza's colonial education makes him a privileged political and economic functionary in a colonial system that militates against the interests of his own people. The neocolonial situation in Ngugi's Devil on the Cross is a legacy and a logical consequence of the situation depicted in Beti's Mission to Kala. Thus, Colonial education did more than corrupt the thinking and sensibilities of the African, it filled him/her with abnormal complexes which de-Africanized and alienated him/her from the needs of his/her environment.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 4
Briefly explain how corruption as theme has been applied in some African novels.
CONCLUSION
According to Walter Rodney, “The educated Africans were the most alienated Africans on the continent. At each further stage of education, they were battered and succumbed to the white capitalist system, and after being given salaries, they could then afford to sustain a style of life imported from outside . . . That further transformed their mentality." (96) This was the case with Obi Okonkwo in Achebe’s No Longer at Ease. He was a man from the great lineage of Okonkwo who would do anything positive to retain his image in his community. Okonkwo is a man who believes in self struggle rather than cheap accolades. He rose to the highest position in his society by hardwork and dedication. But obi Okonkwo seemed different from him. He was pushed to take bribe and even to marry an Osu (outcaste). In The Beautiful Ones are not yet Born, we see The Man struggling to come to terms with the rot in his society. He discovers that the colonialists have implanted corruption and other types of social vices on the African society. Before colonialism and with their indigenous learning mode, Africans had a system of justice and decency; truth and sincerity were the order of the society.
SUMMARY
Colonial education, therefore, creates black elite to succeed it and perpetuate its political and economic interests in the post-independence period. This links African literature of the two periods because neocolonialism is the result of a historical process of class formation by colonialism. Central to neocolonialism, is the formation of classes or strata within a colony which are closely allied to and dependent on foreign capital, and which form the real basis of support for the regime which succeed the colonial administration. It is clear that African elite are imitating the characteristic behaviours of their masters who have inculcated the act of corruption into them.
African writers have responded to this social malaise. They have recorded in several ways the different manifestations of corruption in their countries. They have created works of fiction out of their social and political experiences impinging on the very acts of corruption. The two novels treated here have represented the theme of corruption by revealing the various causes of such ills. It is clear that Obi Okonkwo and The Man are victims of foreign cultures in Africa. Obi is a product of western education which alienated him from his culture while The Man is a product of the same western education but refused to bow even as he sees himself unable to fight the cankerworm alone. At the end both of them compromised as they became a disgrace to their society and culture.
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