How much is your integrity worth? Integrity is the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards. The ability to say no to unprofessional practices and corruption depends on how much of integrity an individual possesses.
In a civil society like Nigeria, it is very easy to point accusing fingers on our leaders as corrupt and greedy with deficient integrity. The truth is that corruption is deeply rooted from the common man on the street to high placed VIPs.
The desire to accumulate more wealth and influence is an insatiable want. There is no wealth that can quench that thirst. As long as the struggle for the control of means of production of goods and services continuous, we will continue to have an unevenly divided society with different standard of living.
In spite of the prevailing moral decadence, some still strive to protect their integrity and sense of morality, but only a handful of people come clean from an acid test of integrity. One can never know how strong they are until their integrity is put to test.
In the banking industry where people build their career around safeguarding funds and other valuable items, the temptation to act rashly is always a recurrent decimal. The rule of thumb there is trust no one, not even yourself. It is in light of this that the bank periodically put employee’s integrity to test using every means conceivable. Once you fail that test your career is over.
Every man have a price. This means that no matter how morally upright a man is, there is always a breaking point. Just offer the appropriate price and you will see the wonders of corruption. But the question is how much can be offered to derail your integrity?
Human beings are dynamic in nature, we all change and adapt as at when necessary. In the light of the flexibility of the human nature, everyone responds differently when tested. Some people have zero integrity, without offering any price they are already falling. There are also some set of people who are conscious of their integrity.
A man who is clean today can become dirty tomorrow, and also someone who is corrupt today may have a change of heart. The fact that there are no warning signal puts us all in a position to be suspicious of one another. This is because change is constant in life.
Take for instant the biblical Job, he is a man born of a woman with all human weaknesses. In all the earth there was no man more upright than Job, according to God in response to Satan’s challenge. Satan was just amused on hearing that, because he knows there are weakness to be exploited that can break his integrity.
The first point of call was job’s wealth. But why? Because the devil being the ruler of this corrupt world built the system around wealth and money. He knows any man can break when faced with monetary challenge. Unfortunately it takes only a Job like man to withstand the pressure and come clean after all that was thrown at him.
At the end of the trial, it became obvious that there was no price that can equal Job’s integrity. Do we still have people like that today? Maybe.
The breaking point of any man can come in different forms, depending on what matters most to a man, or what hurts most, the right price will always break a man. Some will not fall willingly to the temptation, they will need to be coerced by proxy. If none of your close relative have never being kidnapped or held hostage, be very thankful because at that point a man can do anything to pay the ransom.
There are people that have been exposed to money and power, these set of people lied their way through to the top. During political campaigns, we heard them sell lies to us, we bought into the lies and voted them into power. What I don’t understand is why we should expect better than corruption, diversion of funds, looting of our treasury, bribery, and massive moral decay.
They came to us and offered money in exchange for our votes. Until the people rise and reject financial inducement during campaigns, our leaders will continue to loot our common wealth. We yearn for change, change as we know it starts from the grassroots.
The sure way to a better society is to imbibe high moral standard and integrity. The higher our price, the more corruption free our society become.
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This post was last modified on March 19, 2020 7:30 AM