Lagos — After the general emancipation of slaves, there was an exodus of the American Negroes from the Southern farm settlements to the slums mainly of the North Eastern cities. When these movements were described as "From Plantation to Ghetto", we thought that a sufficiently sordid picture of the life of the America Negro had been painted. But what we are seeing today, where people move from the giddy heights of Government House to the solitary level of the prison walls, is yet more pitiable.

We saw it coming. Many organs of government, such as the EFCC and ICPC, were originally set up to catch thieves. But they soon found that they were barred from their main catchments areas as the major occupants of such areas enjoyed limitless degrees of immunity while they were in office.

Of course, the natural thing to do was to shift the trap to the departure points. That explains how those Government functionaries had four years in the short run, or eight years in the long run, to swim in the people's money. And again, they had enough time to repair the books and possibly, set those that could not be repaired ablaze. The general idea here was to leave no trace for those traps to catch.

But no matter how fast a man wants to run, he can never run away from himself. He cannot run faster than his shadow. A situation where people go into Government and removed every kobo, every pin, intended to be used for the people cannot be too hidden. Neither do those smart guys have any explanation for a situation where they go into Government House for eight years and leave the people with absolutely nothing positive to show for that long stay. Such people remain cursed.

Real wealth cannot be hidden for too long. Apart from the general behavioural change and change in consumption patterns, somewhere along the line, there must be some observable change in your body's smoothness and even in your tongue, the way the new man in you now talks. This column is not even so much concerned with these little ones because no matter how you look at it, there is enough in any government office to refine even the crudest of all men.

We are talking of that situation where people who were paupers; people who could not feed well if they did not beg; now coming out of office richer than the State. Any wealth that runs into the millions, billions, and some times trillions as we now hear of cannot be consumed in one pot of soup, even where you decide to use gold meat all through. The only alternative left for even the most prodigal of these looters is to invest such loots.

Times are hard and the people know it because they are experiencing the hard bite. All of a sudden, solid and exotic buildings whose patterns are similar begin to spring up all over the city centre and other choice suburbs. The owner does not show up on site, except at about midnight. It is surprising that very soon, tongues would begin to wag as to the ownership of those buildings and in most cases, the people are damn right - those buildings belong to Governor 'X' or his cronies. As a matter of fact, they sometimes credit you with more - they assume that every new solid building belongs to you.

You may also decide to invest such loots in a ten-thousand-bed hospital in South Africa or in building refineries in any country of the world, as long as people live there, you will be surprised how fast the people know the true owners.

Even granting that the identity of such wealth could sometimes escape the people, of what value is wealth if the owner cannot be openly proud of it? When Bank owners publish fabulous annual profits and sometimes even go ahead to inflate such profits, does it not boost their ego and lure more investors to their fold? Such is wealth, as distinguished from those secret ones that are allowed to rot away in Swiss treasuries.

The value of any wealth is in the genuine struggle to acquire it. If the only legacy you are leaving for your generation say fifty years from now is that no matter how hard they may work, they will still appear in the eye of their peers as merely enjoying the illicit wealth left behind by their great-grandfather, you remain cursed even before those children you now think you are working for.

Fifty years from now, the value system of society may have changed completely. People's preference may have shifted away from those gigantic buildings that look more like cathedrals to simpler structures with additives from outer space. But then, your off-springs will be stuck with the concretes you be-quitted to them from your stolen liabilities. They will curse you.

We have often advocated that no matter how hard we try, it is not possible, and perhaps not even desirable, to catch every thief in society or else, we shall all be in prison. And when that happens, we will find ourselves spending every kobo of our budgetary allocation on prison administration. Again, that will be counter-productive. That means that we must of necessity, begin our war against corruption from somewhere. In doing so, we must not be seen as partial.

Contrary to the above expectation, we still see the enforcement of our anti-corruption measures as too selective. We still see the enforcers as being under some remote control, punishing only those the 'masters' want them to punish. Every trial we have seen so far has been trailed by floodgates of demonstrations from the supporters of those being tried. The message of these demonstrators is that virtually every Government House in this country is rotten. The blind sees it and the deaf hears it. Why then should you single out their own person for execution? That is the question.

Admittedly, the people who have been tried and found guilty should go to prison because that is where they truly belong. But when we look at many other Government Houses and the Local Government Headquarters; when we look at the NPA, the NNPC, NEPA and other Government establishments and see loots, which could easily reduce the convinced Governors' haulage to fritters, we wonder what the enforcers are doing. It is not as if the perpetrators of these heinous crimes have all escaped to some faraway continents; they are still walking our streets as freeman.

If the only way to lend some semblance of legitimacy to our anti-graft war is to spread the dragnet wide enough to accommodate most offenders, why not? To be able to handle the case loads, criminal courts in most major cities in the US and elsewhere run three shifts per day, seven days a week. If a modification of this will help our case, why not? In any event, we must be prepared to do more than we are doing at present - merely scratching the surface!

In the anti-graft war, there are no half measures. You either start it or you don't. Once started, it sweeps away every iniquity on its path, respecting no godfathers and recognizing no political differences. Neither is it meant for prosecuting the spoils system. The recent examples in Ghana by Jerry Rawlings are still very much alive. The lessons of history must begin to sink into all those who want to lead: if you can't stand the smoke, then, get out of the kitchen.