Corruption is dishonest or illegal behaviour, especially of people in authority;    the act or effect of making somebody change from moral to immoral standards   of behaviour.

Many leaders have either been elected or appointed into one position of authority in order to man the affairs of this country, Nigeria, which includes the executive, the legislature and the judiciary amongst others, at the federal, state and the local governments.

Most of these people in places of authority are addressed as your Excellencies or Honourable, meaning that they are excellent and honourables in conduct and character. However, this is very far from the truth as one wonders if they have honest and legal behaviour.

I know that many people trooped out en masse to cast their votes in the last general election which took place in the country in April, 2011. Contestants were almost going from house-to-house and person-to-person, knowing well that the election would not and was not business as usual as was obtained in the past.

Now that the election has come and gone, there is need for the elected to keep to the promises made during the electioneering campaigns as excellent and honourable men do. They should shun selfish interest and self aggrandizements in order to meet up with the aspirations and demands of the electorate.

Today, the elected members of the National Assembly earn N71.4 billion annually for constituency projects, N45million for a member of the Senate and N36million for a member of the House of Representatives for each quarter of the year, according to research carried out by the Premium Times.

The question that easily comes to mind is how many of the elected members impact their constituencies with the said amount? Rather, majority of them distance themselves from the electorate immediately after being “voted’’ into office, because they have the uncanny manipulative ability to falsify figures and rig their way through elections.

Also at the state level, the legislators are given tens of millions quarterly for constituency projects. At the local government level, the councillors are given millions also for ward projects. However, nothing , not even a standard borehole project can be identified to have been built by any of these honourable members.

It is a known fact that these honourable men do not consult the electorate and carry them along to know what is needed in their constituencies, most probably because their minds are already made up to misappropriate the constituency or ward project funds.

The big question here is, where is the integrity of these honourable members who, like the proverbial dog that eats the bone hung on its neck? It is, therefore, not surprising that the FOI Act was a nightmare to our honourable members.

One can argue that if tax payers’ money disbursed to honourable members for constituency and ward projects were judiciously utilised, Nigeria will not be crying of abysmal infrastructural development.

It is quite disheartening that most of the gigantic edifice, private schools and five star hotels seen around  are traceable to honourable members, courtesy of constituency and ward project allowances. Again, where is the legal and honourable behaviour of these honourables.

It is worthy of note that  honourable men are not associated with dishonourable behaviours as obtained in our hallowed chambers where negligence of duty has become a lifestyle of most members who hardly attend sittings yet collect sitting allowances and other benefits accruing thereof.

I suggest that disciplinary measures should be meted out on honourable members who display dishonourable conduct such as lateness and absence from sittings like Rt.Honourable Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State did to local government chairmen who came late for a meeting at the state Government House.

There is need for constitution of a monitoring team made up of seasoned journalists, lawyers, engineers, surveyors and other relevant professionals who will monitor these constituency projects and report same to Economic and Financial Crimes Comiission (EFCC) and its likes for appropriate disciplinary measures.

It is on record that our legislators are the highest paid in the whole world, in a country where 92 per cent of its citizenry live on less than $2 per day while N18,000 minimum wage is a mirage to its civil servants at both state and federal levels. Therefore, there is every need to make legislative work a part-time affair and less attractive through reduction of financial benefits, accountability and transparency in order to ensure checks and balances in the system.

The fat salaries of these honourables have done more harm than good to this country. As the position becomes more attractive, it becomes “a do or die affair’’ due to the self allocated allowances, widely considered illegal, and famously branded, JUMBO, hence the urgent need to scrap these self  allocated allowances.

Furthermore, like our elders will say, “there is no smoke without fire’’. Presently, the row between the House Committee on Capital Market which was led by Hon. Herman Hembe and the Director General, Securities and Exchange Commission, Ms Arunma Oteh should be a food for thought for both heads of departments and the legislators.

It is pertinent that there must have been nefarious dealings between both parties unknown to the general public. Therefore, let us fold our hands and watch the scene outplay itself, if the newly appointed committee on Capital Market would perform creditably because “he that will go to equity must go with clean hands.”

In a nutshell, if lawyers and judges agree to carry out their duties diligently and transparently, corruption would be a thing of the past because erring legislators will know that they cannot escape from the long arms of the law.

Indeed, corruption which has eaten deep into the fabrics and facets of this country has become endemic because of our misplaced value system. Because of the high level of poverty, Nigerians worship both genuine and ill-gotten wealth. For thus, making money has become a do or die affair. No wonder, there is either total misappropriation of fund meant for constituency/ward projects or highly substandard projects in every nook and cranny of our society, today.

This is not the way to go!

Oragwu wrote from Port Harcourt.

Lovenda Oragwu