By ODIMEGWU ONWUMERE

If you have gone to public offices for something, you will be shocked by the level of disturbing supposed corruption in this country.

Your international passport expires, you still renew it with the same cost of getting it for the first time. But the government tells you that the cost of new one isn't more than 10k, whereas you spend over 50k.

The same is applicable to Driver’s licence in the area of renewing and processing a new one.

You go to register your child for SSCE in a private or public school, you go through the process of paying multiple taxations. Even when a child studied but didn’t meet the school’s criteria for monetary gains, the child might not submit the papers, for lack of “submission fee.”

Reportedly, public sector smells of different fragrance of corruption. The police on the road always have a day with motorists. The ones at the station have words to rope you in. Bail now ranges from N10,000 and above. In their SPECIAL force units, you need not less than 100k to bail yourself.

Security agents are still forcefully taking youngsters' phones and searching them to see who is a “Yahoo” person or not. The Army has been accused in many complicity in different regions.

The environment here isn’t safe.

Nigerians saw what happened during the 2023 general elections and their outcomes. Many are still at the tribunal to question what they believe was abysmal rigging in the elections.

One can go on and on.

The public institutions here reek of petty fingering. It was not long the Pandora’s box of some Justices in the judiciary was opened.

The Executive hardly obey Court Order.

This is not how to run a country. No one is protected from these sheds of public pilfering. Individuals are going through a lot in the hands of Nigeria’s alleged corrupt institutions who feed on lucre pressed out from citizens they ought to serve.

•Odimegwu Onwumere, Director, Advocacy Network on Religious and Cultural Coexistence (ANORACC), writes from Obigbo, Rivers State.

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