There We Go!

Our lead story yesterday said it all about an earlier editorial demanding a retrospective probe of the National Service Scheme (NSS). For want of a better expression, we can confidently state that we have been exonerated without a shred of doubt.

Given the facts contained in the story traceable to copies of telltale documents in our custody, there can be no gainsaying the fact that an overhaul probe of the NSS and retrospectively is the best option, unless a selective tackling of the issue is what government is seeking. We do not want to believe government is covering up, or seeking to do so, the financial iniquities of somebody whose political pedigree stands him apart of others in their estimation.

We have come a long way in our association with corruption in public institutions. Demanding thorough investigations of corruption-infected bodies such as the NSS's past and present will not be asking government to seek a needle in a hay sack.

More so when many hold the view that government cannot muster the courage to order a retrospective probe of an institution whose baggage has become so politicised and attracting unsavoury speculations. It would be in the interest of government not to decline such a suggestion, especially since there is more to the NSS story than we have read so far.

The pictures of the mansions credited to one of the gentlemen who held the fort at the NSS speak volumes about the ease with which the then Executive Director ran the establishment.

We are unable to pinpoint whoever the said Executive Director was, but we are told that he is now a presidential aide, closer to the helm than he was when he called the shots at the NSS.

We are also informed that the yet-to-be-identified top presidential staffer, even as he is officially not running the NSS, is remotely doing so – being constantly fed with details about developments at the place.

It is as if his transfer, whoever he is, was a ruse intended to pour cold water over the rising agitation for his ouster. This is one of the factors eroding public confidence in the government. It is sad that we are going this road of confidence erosion, something which has reduced the high office of the presidency to a laughing stock.

The NSS story is a tip of the iceberg of moral decadence in public office – a contagion which is spreading to other appendages of governance. Bad governance, it would seem, has come to stay, unless a major paradigm shift takes place now.