Before the inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration last May 29, the universal singsong was that corruption was the worst of all the problems confronting Nigeria. All sang it without exception. From the pinnacles of Ivory Towers to the pits of political pontiffs’ bases, everyone denounced the scourge as the bane of the country’s arrested development. The clergymen were sharpest in denouncing corruption from the pulpits for its corrosive influence on the society’s morals.
But with the beauty of hindsight, it appears that only those who lacked access to the corridors of power were strident in condemning it. The juicy opportunities the national shame offered its beneficiaries were too delicious to forgo.
For, no sooner have the pledges of support for the anti-corruption fight waged by the government begun to level up on an even keel than the exact opposite singsong began. Some say the war was too lopsided; others criticise it as targeted only at opposition party politicians. Others still argue that to avert a criticism of hypocrisy, Buhari must first clean up the corrupt politicians in his party and among his supporters before he beams the searchlight on others. No doubt corruption was everywhere.
At the height of organised labour street demonstrations in support of the war, a state governor blasted the civil servant demonstrators as doing nothing but having a jamboree. He told them they could not demonstrate in support of the anti-corruption war because no political officeholder or private businessman can steal from the treasury without the complicity of civil servants. For, civil servants prepare all the fake documents to cover up the corrupt transactions.
Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose, who denounced the hypocrisy of the civil servants, may be right. But some believe that the governor is only shielding his own constituency from accusations of extravagant, larger-than-life luxury living which breeds their top level corruption. Still, what Fayose did not add was trite knowledge. The civil servants would not prepare the fake documents but refuse to collect any corrupt kickback from the fraudulent transaction.
Consequently, a big question mark arises: Are the spoils of corruption so delicious that it has become the forbidden fruit everybody relishes? Those who still criticise it, are they those who still lack opportunity to be corrupted? Above all, is the fear of the rapidly-spreading anti-corruption dragnet the reason for the fight back against the anti-corruption war so that its frontiers do not expand to engulf the noisebags?
In fact, some of the leading intellectual giants of the nation met in Akure, Ondo State capital, last August. After their deliberations, the Elders Council of Southern Nigeria Peoples Assembly (SNPA) blasted the selective fight against corruption.
For instance, Edwin Clark, the Ijaw leader said he welcomed a decisive war against corruption to clean up Nigeria as a business-friendly nation. “However,” in Clark’s words, “the dialectics of corruption, as pervasive as it is diverse, require a holistic fight to tame its pervading scourge. Thus, it must not be selective and limited to some perceived political enemies to score cheap political points.
“For Nigeria to succeed, all those who contributed in one way or another to ruin the prospects of a great country and brought us to this despicable position should be made to account for their actions. It is only when the battle against corruption is genuinely and seriously fought without fear or favour that endearing legacies of a transformed country could be bequeathed to future generations.”
In corroboration, Rt. Rev. Emmanuel Gbonigi, former Bishop of Akure Anglican Diocese appealed to Buhari to be total and non-selective in the anti-corruption war. He must go after corrupt persons in all the political parties, unsparing even his closest political associates. Above all, justice and rule of law must reign supreme if the fight against corruption must be won.
Again, former vice president Alex Ekwueme, reiterated that the ongoing Buhari’s anti-graft war must be holistic and not selective.
Unfortunately, the youth bear the brunt of the pervasive corruption in the country. A rough estimate by a Lagos bank showed that of the total 70 million youth nationwide, 10m are gainfully employed, 10m are underemployed and the rest, 50m are unemployed.
So, hardly had the elders ended their deliberations than a coalition of 150 anti-corruption civil society groups countered the leading lights.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja, Civil Society Network Against Corruption (CSNAC) argued that no good governance can be guaranteed or sustained when all institutions of government have been morally destroyed by corruption.
As such, the anti-corruption fight is only selective because the People Democratic Party (PDP) canvassers who lost power to the incumbent fear being investigated and made them choose to oppose the campaign against the corruption crusade.
Chairman of CSNAC, Suraju Olarenwaju, said: “We agree that in any genuine fight against corruption, there should not be friend or foe, and no selectivity or privilege of association. But it is just natural that since PDP was in power for 16 years at the Federal and most state governments, the preponderance of suspected corrupt government officials being investigated and prosecuted will most likely come from PDP given the ruinous ways they ran the country when PDP was in power. The ‘my son is not the only thief’ defence by the party members is unhelpful to the corruption fight.
“It will be a disservice to Nigerians, as victims of corruption, to leave the battle as ‘Buhari’s One Man Riot Squad Against Corruption.’ No, the battle is not for Buhari alone; we must be vigilant and become whistle-blowers to help all the anti-corruption institutions and government to fight corruption at every level.”
Indeed, PDP with ex-presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Olusegun Obasanjo have been in power for the past 16 years. During this period, crude oil prices hit all-time high of $140/barrel and stayed consistently above $100/bbl. But by the time the price plummeted to $40/bbl last year, Nigeria had nothing to show for it. Indeed, they looted the treasury blind and ran down the economy. If the treasury thieves are not in PDP, which party would have the largest numbers of the corrupt political officeholders?
According to a mind-boggling list compiled by All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesman, Lai Mohammed, the looted funds by Jonathan totalled some N16.074 trillion and included: Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) withheld N3.8 trillion from crude oil export; $2.1bn from Excess Crude Account unaccounted for; Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR)’s unremitted N109.7 billion royalties; $6 billion looted by some ministers; 160 billion barrels of crude worth $13.9 billion lost; $15 million lost to botched arms deal; $13 billion in Nigerian Liquefied natural Gas (NLNG) dividends unaccounted for; N30 billion rice waiver and N183 billion unaccounted for at Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
Worse still, if the huge looted funds are not collected back from the thieves, where would the money come from to develop the country? Hence the argument of Buhari being obsessed with fighting corruption at the expense of good governance, to CSNAC, remains a blackmailer’s attempt to tie the warriors’ hands. Fortunately, the looted funds are so “humongous,” according to APC, that everyone paused to listen a second time.
Then in the Power sector, for instance, Ambassador Godknows Igali, Permanent Secretary at the power ministry told a Senate Committee hearing that N2.74 trillion was wasted to generate 4,500 megawatts (MW) of power by Obasanjo and Jonathan regimes, an average of N60 million/watt.
But that was only the tip of the iceberg. Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole, on Tuesday told newsmen that Jonathan government withdrew N3.5 trillion from the Pension Fund to finance recurrent expenditure.
Worse, former Central Bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had reminded the nation that under Jonathan’s watch in 2011, the fraudulent fuel subsidy paid by government to oil marketers cabal was inflated from N291 billion in 2009 to N2.7 trillion. There was no corresponding tenfold increase in Nigeria’s population, number of vehicles or volume of consumption of petroleum products.
Another humongous corruption figure came from former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Professor Charles Soludo, who said last January that “over N30 trillion is missing or stolen or unaccounted for, or simply mismanaged” under the watch of Jonathan’s ex-minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Needless to say, two APC leaders, a sympathiser and a stalwart, who became frequent visitors to Buhari in Aso Rock, were ex-president Obasanjo and party leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. Both are perceived as “corruption personified”. Their response to critics, of course, is always to produce evidence they were corrupt. Nobody has done so to date.
Ibrahim Shekarau, immediate-past minister of Education, on Tuesday flayed Buhari for romancing with treasury-looting politicians who destroyed Nigeria for 16 years instead of holding them in the anti-corruption combat to account for the mess they made of the country’s finances while in power.
Shekarau wondered why Buhari is romancing with former president Obasanjo as his chief adviser when the latter presided over the alleged squandermania of the nation’s resources for eight of the 16 years of PDP’s bad governance.
“What sense does it make that I said you are thieves for 16 years, I have come to correct the wrongs that you did. But now, I am calling you chief advisers in order to right the wrongs that you committed? Does it make sense? We are waiting to see how they will come out of this,” Shekarau added. “Until three years ago when Obasanjo and Jonathan fell out, Obasanjo was in charge.”
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo told Federal permanent secretaries and director-generals that the country’s precarious finances and huge poverty problems demand belt-tightening in expenditure. “We need to cut overheads. We can’t spend as we used to spend. We need to block leakages, increase accountability and transparency. This is an absolute necessity. The level of corruption is an outrage and we have to deal with it,” he noted, adding that the greatest challenge is to control the ballooning recurrent expenditure to free resources for growth-related capital expenditure.
Suddenly, the shrill denunciations of corruption as the worst problem of the country dimmed. Now that a new sheriff is in town who is ready to take on the fraudulent cabals who fuel corruption engines, too many hands appear too dirty by the filth and all the thieves are jittery. Attention-distraction and diversionary issues are being thrown up in the attempt to evade the shame of vomiting the looted funds they “chopped.”
Fiery preacher and former vice presidential candidate, Pastor Tunde Bakare shocked the nation recently with his revelation that Jonathan gave him $50,000 for transport from Abuja to Lagos. He refused to take the money and asked for a souvenir gift of a pen instead. Then he dropped the bombshell: He suspected that all the top clergymen who used to hang around Jonathan were doing so for money and not for preaching the gospel of salvation.
If the pulpit is also putrid with corruption, why has suddenly the universal outcry that corruption is the worst problem bedevilling the country silenced when the new sheriff in town picked up the gauntlet to clean up the mess? For in his campaign message, Buhari emphasised that corruption will kill Nigeria if Nigeria does not kill corruption.
And it is true. Abandoned projects litter anywhere one looked, with federal, state and local government projects halted at various stages of non-completion. Some of them were fully paid for, but the private contractors, political officeholders and the civil servants shared the loot and abandoned the projects.
Well known for his antipathy to corruption, the anti-graft agencies sprang into action the moment Buhari got into Aso Rock. No wonder too many dirty hands are too sullied to be quiet when the anti-corruption agencies appear to be steering in their direction with no hiding place for any former corrupt officeholder, his confederates and cronies.
But informed sources warn that unless the security agencies are purged of the corrupt characters, they will remain the informants of the rich treasury looters to either clean up their dirty deals or bolt to evade arrest. For instance, unconfirmed reports said some of the well-paid security agents prostitute their identity cards to extort a mandatory N10,000 per week from small business operators in Lagos – and end up ruining their businesses with their graft.