Abuja — Nigerians have watched as one after the other certain highly placed individuals who have served in high government positions have continued to be arraigned in courts for offences of financial misdemeanours while they were in office.

At the last count about a dozen former ministers and governors are on trial for self enrichment and other corrupt practices which arose from the period when they held office. Indeed many ministers who have no immunity from prosecution have lost their jobs and are on trial.

The notion is widespread that whatever it is that these people have been called up to account for had been going on with reckless abandon at every level of government business and through it several government employees have gotten rich by merely finding themselves in the position they occupy.

The fact remains that there is a failure in the manner in which ministerial positions are filled, it seemed little or no scrutiny is done of aspiring ministers' pasts. If this continues, soon ministerial posts and indeed other high positions will be populated by all manner of devious characters, including armed robbers and confessed cutthroats. May Allah help us then.

Nigerians should be concerned that those who have been lucky to find themselves in leadership and on whose hands have been trusted the fate of the state, are the same people acting to undermine the same state. Were the cases mentioned isolated ones no one would have bothered. But the way it is, as amply demonstrated by the series of probes and revelations by both the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission [ICPC],it is as if anyone who finds himself at any vantage governmental position simply appropriates public funds into his private use. Considering the amount involved these days, the acts cannot be called mere theft, for that would amount to an understatement. For

want of better term, looting of the land would be more appropriate, or how else would anyone describe a situation where a cadres of former ministers are arraigned before the court to explain how several billions cannot be accounted for. One of them arraigned for some 50billion naira even had the impudence to state that he bribed the EFCC with part of the money. It illustrates the odious level official graft has been taken to in this country.

Cynical minds, which indeed many have become may see all this as too belated, the sickening rot has so permeated the core of the state so much so that nobody bats an eyelid anymore on hearing some billions have been stolen.

We have all become inured to looting in high places, the same anti-social acts have turned Nigeria into a laughing stock in the eye of the world and the country is seen as one of the most corrupt countries on earth. But our cynical indifference would not drive this base and ignoble looting attitude away. What would do is to find a way to go back to those good old days when government officials cherished their names rather than the filthy lucre, and came out of service sparkling clean and unblemished by noxious allegations of aggrandizing what was not theirs.

The EFCC and the ICPC are on the right track as they investigate and charge to court those unable to explain themselves and are consequently sent to jail. But it is not enough for the courts to just hand down sentences that amount to a mere slap on the wrist. The courts should begin to hand down exceptional sentences for some of the offences. Embezzlement in the region of billions should attract sentences of 10 years and above or even death sentences, as obtains in other countries.