We have spent a lifetime discussing corruption. We have agreed and disagreed on the subject without achieving consensus. We have allowed the topic to divide opinion in spaces seldom open for corruption. We have talked about corruption for years without listening to our conversations. We have talked the talk of corruption in sound and smooth lexicon but have only walked the walk of denouncing corruption in ugly and confusing steps. We have threatened to battle corruption without necessarily fighting corruption as a war. In short, there is more talk about fighting corruption when compared to action to combat it. We have witnessed the evolution of corruption from when it began as rough, but shallow waters to when it became still and deep waters. We have seen a whole nation drowning and struggling for breath in these seemingly calm but aptly unforgiving waters. We have seen proxies of corruption becoming proprietors of corruption. We have seen glass houses rising from bare soil with the blessings of public funds. We have seen bare soil burying the poor without the support of public funds in graveyards. We have seen healthcare services, food security, clean and safe water, affordable shelter, education for all regardless of social standing failing and falling to corruption. We speak the language of corruption as our second language to make ends. We have agreed with them that to live, we must let live without throwing stones at their glass houses. We share a relationship of convenience more than a relationship of moral integrity. We know we joined forces with evil. We know corruption is now skin deep. We cant call a spade a spade because we are birds of the same feathers. We are easily reminded that the teapot has no moral right to call a pot black, no matter the stakes. But we know the chickens will always come home to roost. The have-nots can testify. Money is sold. Money is expensive. Money is scarce. Our money is not money. Consumers are deprived of choice on commodities and services. We are forced to buy blind. Prices are painful and always souring. Earnings are pathetic. Jobs are almost extinct. Even with qualifications, there are no jobs on the market for thousands of graduates from our universities, polytechnics, colleges and schools. Education is expensive and near useless. There is educational inflation of gigantic proportions. Roads are dead. Hospitals are shells. Deserted companies have become places of worship. Infrastructure now stands as skeletons. We are a ghost nation — all because of corruption and lack of political will to shame it. We are one not because we are not two and apart. We know beating them takes one fight too many. We know we are weak in numbers and they are strong in small numbers, a paradox that has sustained our collective narrative for far too long. We aspire to be a middle-income economy by 2030. We are just inspired by the wrong desires, desires to keep power at any cost, desires to subvert the will of the people. Desires that keep subverting the will of good (corporate) governan