When entering the civil service, uniformed service jobs and others, you are told that you can’t engage in business and meant to sign that clause but today, that clause has been thrown into the trashcan.

Civil servants especially uniformed men and women are the ones even hustling more than the civilians. An annoymous Civil Servant revealed to our correspondent that corruption is at its highest peak now because people want to make ends meet. Also, recently Yours Sincerely saw a mobile police woman at the Seme-Krake border struggling passengers with commercial vehicle owners and threatened to lock them up in the cell if they don’t relinquish the passenger to her.

The commercial drivers confided in our correspondent that she hardly resumed in the office and even if she does, she quickly jumped out to hustle for passengers coming from Cotonou, going to Mile Two. Passengers prefer to engage her especially those with goods that Police, Customs and others might want to collect money for but with her as a police officer, she enjoys free passage.

Most of the hustlers at the border especially in Lagos metropolis are uniformed service men and women. The Federal Capital Territory, FCT is also not left out as those who own cars pick passengers when going to work and returning just to augment the fueling of their vehicles.

Before now, it was not so, they were well-paid and contented but today, their take home pay is nothing to write home about hence those in the office are indulging in corrupt practices while those on the road are extorting motorists without fear.

One of the officers who confided in our correspondent said his take-home salary cannot feed his family in a month let alone save anything for the rainy days. He disclosed that he is close to retirement and doesn’t even know what to fall back to when he leaves the job hence many of them are doing everything humanly possible to see what they can gather.

An Immigration personnel confronted Yours Sincerely while extorting money from a passenger and threatened to detain him for trying to intimidate him. He gave his name and told him to go ahead and do the story, only to be told by somebody that he was close to retirement hence his attitude.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, uniformed service men and women are well paid hence they don’t compromise no matter how much you offer them. Dubai Police Officers are well-kitted and their take-home salary is very huge, when you come across them, you would love to become a police officer. Back in Africa, neighbouring countries like Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire pay their uniformed men and women good salaries. This is the reason why they don’t compromise, they put the country first before their personal interests.

For instance, you can’t take drugs into the aforementioned countries even if it is your prescriptions from hospital especially Cote d’Ivoire let alone arms and ammunition, no matter how much you are offering. In fact, they will detain the person. Somebody once offered to export solar panels, inverters and batteries, but they rejected because if they allow, their regular power supply would be tampered with.

Of course, it is the opposite in our dear country because the so-called bad eggs are not well-paid hence they are exposed to compromise. They want to make ends meet by all means, they do things with impunity especially when they hear what politicians, who they perceive are not doing anything, are earning heavy money while they, that are inside the sun and rain, day and night are paid peanuts. Some police officers beg car owners for lift to get to work while some trek distances because they cannot afford the transport fare due to hike in fuel. Those who cannot are using the opportunity of being at checkpoints, turning them to avenues to extort motorists.

If the government does not do something fast, more prohibited goods would be allowed into the country because those guys are hell-bent on making money by all means since the government is not ready to pay them, even though we have some greedy ones amongst them who would still compromise even if they pay them N1 million naira as salary.

Investigation has revealed that many people who got government jobs pass through the backdoor, they are unqualified, some paid heavily while some did not join because of passion for the job but because there was nothing to do while another set joined because they see it as an avenue to enrich themselves. The way out is to correct subsequent recruitment while the unqualified and bad eggs should be flushed out like what is presently going on in Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, where many who came through the back doors are being shown the way out.