The new crusading spirit supposedly infused by president Buhari into the make-believe called the war against corruption
The revulsion against corruption that has involved trillions of naira worth of crude oil pirated from the country’s oil wells by government officials and their agents/associates, otherwise called buccaneering corruption, reached the highest pitch of outright thievery in the last years of the President Goodluck Jonathan Administration, and had given rise to widespread yearning for decisive action against it. We in the Igbo Leaders of Thought shared in the revulsion as well as in the yearning.
So deep is the revulsion and so clamorous the yearning that the new crusading spirit supposedly infused by President Muhammadu Buhari since his assumption of office on 29 May, 2015, into the make-belief called the “war” against corruption, has propelled him into instant public acclaim, hailed and idolised by the majority of Nigerians as a deliverer and national hero. Certainly, in the prevailing circumstances, the public acclaim is what should be expected; Nigerians needed a change from the muddle-headed make-belief to an unremittingly severe and concrete action against the hydra-headed monster that now threatens us with economic ruination, but not with death.
Bola Bolawole, a media practitioner and one-time Editor of The Punch, had described the change, and the compelling need for it, in words so insightful and telling. As he said in the Daily Independent issue of Friday October 2, 2015:
“Against a Jonathan government seen to be very lax in tackling run-away corruption and impunity, Buhari, with his military-era image of a no-nonsense leader coupled with his reputation for frugal or near-ascetic living, became hot cake. These were the deciding factors in the last election; perhaps, more than political parties, party manifestoes, and campaigns. Fear of what could become of Nigeria in another four years of the shenanigans under Jonathan drove many into Buhari’s arms. Confronted with Buhari’s inglorious past and the grim prospects of a likely capsizing of the ship of State if Jonathan’s tenure was renewed, the citizens considered the former the lesser of two evils and embraced it”.
But the question arising in this connection and which needs to be considered is this: is the public acclaim truly warranted by concrete actions and results so far accomplished in the war against corruption? Or, putting it differently, has the public acclaim of the President a justifiable basis in concrete actions and results accomplished so far in the war?
Whether the public acclaim of President Buhari is truly warranted by concrete actions or results so far accomplished
The initial impression indicated by the course of events is that the public acclaim of President Buhari rests less on concrete actions and results actually accomplished and more on propagandist talk, put out to the public, and purposely designed to charm the minds and hearts of people, already eagerly yearning for action, to induce them to see the President as their man to deliver them from the clutches of corruption, a deliverer with an ability, not possessed or displayed by Buhari’s predecessors, to identify and catch the looters of our oil wealth, to bring them to justice, and to recover the loot.
The public acclaim of President Buhari as deliverer may be said to have had its genesis or origin in statements made by him on his return from a state visit to the United States on 21 – 25 July, 2015, and by Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, the megaphone for the APC Federal Government, who accompanied the President on the U.S. state visit.
The President, as reported in TheNiche newspapers of July 26, 2015, had told the Nigerian nation that “one million barrels of crude oil were siphoned daily by the ministers and aides of former President Goodluck Jonathan”, although a presidency spokesman, Garba Shehu, later issued a clarification that President Buhari “meant 250,000 barrels, not one million barrels, which would have been almost half of total daily export”. According to the newspaper report, “the U.S. Government has handed to Buhari, a list which contained the specific names of the Nigerian oil thieves”.
Governor Oshiomhole, in his own statement to the press, supplementing the President, said that “just one minister in the Jonathan government stole a whopping $6 billion. Senior American officials revealed this fact, ……accusing the PDP government of destroying Nigeria, by allowing corruption to thrive ceaselessly under its watch.” The Minister in question was named by Oshiomhole as Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy. Both the President and Governor Oshiomhole’s statements had since been denied by the U.S. State Department.
Governor Oshiomhole went further to say:
“The PDP is a party that presided over the liquidation of our nation, destroyed all our institutions, converted the Armed Forces commanders to use them as if they were political thugs, converted NTA (Nigerian Television Authority) to a party megaphone, destroyed the DSS (Department of State Security), went after opposition as if we were rabbits to be pursued into our holes, compromised even student unions and destroyed everything that you can think of and elevated religion to a state affair.”
Oshiomhole’s latter statement clearly smacks of indecent politicking and mudslinging, which, together with his many other such utterances, have earned him in the hands of our ingenious and resourceful newspaper columnists the eminently suitable sobriquet – a “National Distraction.” Such utterances should be overlooked as having but a peripheral bearing on the issue under consideration. What is of concern is the effect of the statement by the President that one million barrels, later changed to 250,000 barrels, of crude oil were “siphoned daily by the ministers and aides of former President Goodluck Jonathan”, and that “the U.S. Government has handed to him a list which contained the specific names of the Nigerian oil thieves;” plus the supplementary statement by Governor Oshiomhole naming the Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, as having stolen the sum of $6 billion.
Surely, the effect which these statements were intended to have, and which they in fact did have, was to captivate the minds and hearts of people, and to endear the President to them as deliverer. Few people reading the statements could be independent-minded enough not to come under their seductive effect. Former President Goodluck Jonathan and his Ministers were in turn demonised. No doubt charmed, as expected, the public waited for action. They had to wait for two good months before the announcement on October 3, 2015, of the arrest in London of the former Petroleum Minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, her mother, step daughter, maid and personal assistant, by the National Crime Agency of the British Government for money laundering. Her arrest was not the catch Nigerians had been led to expect; it did not come as news to many, as the allegations against her had been under investigation since January 2013. The only thing new in her case is the loss of the protection which she previously enjoyed as former President Jonathan’s Petroleum Minister. No trial has as yet commenced, as the former minister has not been charged or arraigned before a court. Even the arrest has been denied. According to the former minister, she was only invited for interrogation by the British National Crime Agency.
The only other action against corruption taken under the Buhari regime that is known and visible to the public is the prosecution of Dr. Bukola Saraki, President of the Senate, for alleged false declaration of assets he submitted to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) in 2003 and 2007 as elected Governor of Kwara State. The case is already generating controversy across the country. The 11 years’ delay (2003 – 2015) in initiating the prosecution suggests that the motive for it is not the laudable desire to enforce the law on the matter and to see justice done, but rather the base promptings of a vendetta to settle political scores with him (Saraki) for getting himself elected by the Senate as its President, by adroit maneuvering, in place of the ruling party’s favoured candidate for the post, Senator Ahmad Lawan from the far North, and for setting up a Senate Committee to probe the power sector from 1999 in defiance of the President’s decision to limit his corruption probe to the immediate past administration of President Jonathan. In the circumstances of the 11-year delay in bringing the prosecution, the suggestion that the Chairman of the CCB should himself also be investigated for culpable dereliction of duty as a public servant, seems perhaps by no means impertinent or out of order.
I think it fair, in concluding this Section, to reiterate that the public acclaim of President Buhari as our deliverer from the evil of corruption has been adroitly stage-managed; it is the product, not of concrete actions or results actually accomplished, but largely of propagandist talk, cleverly designed to charm the minds and hearts of people and to endear the President to them, as well as whip public sentiments for him as deliverer, even as a Messiah. The plan succeeded admirably, from which it follows that the public acclaim of the President is undeserved. In an article in the Vanguard of October 6, 8 & 10, 2015 titled “Buhari’s war on corruption: real or fake”, Chinweizu is, characteristically, more blunt.
The illusion or self-deceit of thinking and believing that corruption is Nigeria’s number one enemy
The public acclaim of President Buhari as liberator and national hero is predicated on the misguided belief and thinking that corruption is Nigeria’s Number One Enemy, and that any leader who delivers us from it is a Messiah and a national hero. In the present connection, a hero may be defined as “a man of superhuman strength, or ability; an immortal being intermediate in nature between gods and men; a demigod.” This definition at once makes it questionable whether Buhari’s achievements so far not only warrant the public acclaim bestowed on him, but also rightly qualify him to be called a national hero. It seems an abuse of language to say that they do; for obviously, they do not, judged by our definition above. They do not, in part because corruption is not Nigeria’s Number One Enemy.
Corruption is not our Number One enemy because, as Bishop Matthew Kukah says, it “is only a symptom of something that is intrinsically wrong with our society, the loss of the moral centre of gravity of our society”. I venture to say, as I said in an interview with The Guardian on the occasion of Nigeria’s 55th Independence Anniversary, that our Number One Enemy is the North-South Divide which is deepened, as it unquestionably is, by the Divide separating the adherents of the Christian and Muslim religions. The term “divide” is here used as meaning not just a twofold division, a bifurcation or dualism, but a separation, by division, into two more or less exclusive segments, that is to say, a dichotomy. The North-South Divide dichotomises Nigeria by keeping its northern and southern segments apart by an imaginary, artificially created boundary line that disunites them in interest, attitude, outlook, vision and ideology.
The North-South Divide is, as stated above, deepened by the divide separating the adherents of the Christian and Muslim religions, and is further compounded by the multiple evils of illiteracy, ignorance, hunger, poverty, disease, insecurity, religious bigotry and nepotism. President Buhari must do more than deliver us from the evil of corruption in order to qualify to be regarded as liberator and national hero. He must also effectively tackle the problem of the North-South Divide and the aggravating problems implicit in, or arising from, it. In other words, he must effectively come to grips with what is commonly referred to as the National Question.
Not only is corruption not our Number One Enemy, we must not, by our actions and utterances, erect it into a huger monster than it actually is, or give it the character and appearance of the sole determinant of our future or create the impression that our future is hopeless unless corruption is fought relentlessly to a finish and exterminated. While fighting corruption relentlessly, we must not let it appear that our future is irretrievably or irredeemably tied to the extirpation of corruption. The road to its eradication may be a very long one, or what Bishop Kukah calls “a very long walk to freedom,” as borne out by the fact that, whilst the eradication of corruption was predicated by the makers of all six military coups in the country as the reason for their intervention and take-over of government, it still remains with us, with greatly increased incidence, after 28 years of military rule.
The lesson to be learned from our prolonged and endless encounter with corruption, as Bishop Matthew Kukah stresses, is that the battle against corruption is not “so much going to be won by how many investigations and probes we conduct. It will not be won by how many people go to jail.” Corruption has to be fought in the minds and hearts of people, with a view to bringing about a change in their attitudes towards it, “a change in the Nigerian psyche.”
The North-South Divide is a major part of it. It greatly aggravates, the National Question which provides the over-arching framework for corruption in the country.
The National Question subsumes the issue of corruption, and still looms over us waiting to be tackled
The National Question is an issue in most African countries over-arching that of corruption, although the latter impinges upon it so seriously as even to retard progress towards the realisation of the objective of evolving a nation. It is concerned with what needs to be done to evolve Nigeria, with the over 389 ethnic nations comprised in it, into a nation, or, in other words, how those constituent groups each constituting a nation by itself, may be coalesced into one social body or nation, held together by a feeling or attitude of a common destiny and ideology. The war against corruption cannot effectively be fought in isolation from the National Question.
Whilst the exact number of the ethnic nations in the country is uncertain and is the subject of much disputation, their nature and vital role in the building of a Nigerian nation must be recognised by government and by all stakeholders in the Nigerian state project. They must be recognised as:
The territorial and cultural foundation of the Nigerian state. Nigeria, as a state, has no territory other than, or different from, the traditional territories inhabited by its constituent ethnic nationalities from time immemorial – Yorubaland, Igboland, Hausaland, Tivland, Kanuriland, Edoland, Itsekiriland, Ijawland, Ibibioland, etc. with their various cultures. It is thus the ethnic nationalities and their traditional territories, not so much the autonomous individual Nigerians, that constitute the Nigerian state, and give it life and existence.
The original and primary stakeholders in the Nigerian state project.
It is the ethnic nationalities that ceded or granted the sovereignty or the sovereign powers of government over their territories to Britain, and on which British jurisdiction in Nigeria rested, which therefore makes them (i.e. the ethnic nationalities) the original and primary stakeholders in the Nigerian state.
The Nigerian state is, in reality, a union of these ethnic nationalities. This fact needs to be expressly affirmed in the Constitution. There is, happily, precedent in Africa for such an explicit constitutional affirmation. The Constitution of Ethiopia 1995, which is the product of bloody, armed ethnic conflicts, bestows in explicit terms such recognition and status as well as a distinctive role on the ethnic nations. It enshrines ethnicity as the basis for holding the country together as one, given the age-long violent conflicts between the constituent ethnic nations.
A sociological reality. Ethnic nations and tribes in African society are a sociological reality, even in the urban centres newly emerged as accompaniment of the new state system created by colonialism. The ethnic nation or tribe is integral to, it is an organic part of, what constitutes the traditional society in Africa. The basic unit of the society for social and, to some extent, economic life, is not the atomic family of a man, his wife (wives) and children, but the extended family embracing several related families which together make up a clan. Several related clans make up a tribe. The traditional African society consists of a collection of such tribes; it does not, and cannot, therefore, exist apart from its constituent tribes. Abolish the tribes, and the traditional African society also disappears from existence. Tribes in traditional Africa should not therefore be thought of as inimical to society; they are the heart and the soul of African society. It is possible that they may, as we march towards greater and greater urbanisation, cease to have significance in the non-urban areas too. But until that happens, it is as well to recognise the tribes as a sociological reality and as necessary pillars for building a nation.
As every African indigene is born into a family and becomes a member of the extended family structures which make up the clans, tribes and ethnic nations, the tribe is not external to us as individuals. We all, as such individuals, however educated and “detribalised”, belong to, and form part and parcel of, the tribes. So, when the ethnic nationalities negotiate or act, all of us are part of it, or are at least represented.
The ethnic nations can no more be wished away or banished than we can disregard our own individuality, notwithstanding their proneness or their susceptibility to be exploited to cause inter-tribal violent conflicts. “For most of us,” writes Professor Claude Ake, “these social formations and group identities are not externalities but the core of our being; it is by these identities that most of us define our individuality.” For most Africans, Alan Merriam also says, “the reality…..is not the centralised state, but rather a mixing of the political with the social structure in a formulation which rests upon villages, tribes and, at the most, regions”.
The problem of fostering mutual understanding, co-operation and solidarity between the ethnic nationalities as a way of progressively integrating or coalescing them into one social body or nation is a responsibility of government, and must be accepted as such.
Government should itself commission a study on the phenomenon of ethnic nationalities, their numbers and identity, the distinctive attributes that characterise them, the relations existing between them, the causes of ethnic conflicts, and how mutual understanding, co-operation and solidarity can be fostered between them to enable them serve as instruments for nation-building. The research by Prof. Otite and others on the matter must be supplemented by government commissioned study.
Furthermore, Government should assume responsibility for organising, mobilising support for, publicising and for the funding of the Ethnic Nationalities Conference. It is not something to be left to private initiative alone in a territorially extensive country where the ethnic nationalities are dispersed throughout its entire length and breadth. They must be effectively mobilised for future conferences to be held, say, every other year or so.
The National Question may therefore be described as Nigeria’s predominating and daunting problem which, having been left largely unattended to over the years, continues to loom over us. President Buhari does not qualify to be hailed and idolised as liberator and national hero on the score-board of his anti-corruption war alone, unless and until he effectively and successfully comes to grips with the National Question.
5. Is President Buhari the leader to bring about the change we desire?
The leader we need is one that will not only deliver us from the evil of corruption, but will also lead us to the future of our dreams, a future free of the problems arising from the bewildering diversity of the country as well as the eight evils listed earlier in this write-up.
He has therefore to be some kind of a liberator, not a redeemer or savior, the two latter terms being titles appropriate only to God Himself.
The leader we need for the roles described above has to be one able to mobilise the nation for a social and ethical revolution to regenerate the society and rid it of the moral decadence into which it has sunk, as manifested in the incidence of armed robbery, kidnapping, cultism among the youth, examination malpractices, certificate racketeering, general decay in our educational system, money laundering and insecurity.
Does President Buhari possess the qualities and credentials for such leadership? The factors that weigh against him include mainly his Islamisation/Northernisation agenda, as manifested, for example, in his mandatory directive that Islamic books be made available in all secondary schools; and his pledge, in a speech at Ahmadu Bello University Zairia on May 2, 2015 to an exclusively Moslem gathering, to continue Sir Almadu Bello’s programme of fostering the idea of “One Northern Nigeria, not One Nigeria”. They include also his antecedents as former army commander and head of the military government, which incline him to personal, authoritarian rule; the vengeful tendencies in his disposition; his inadequate educational qualification, which disables him from understanding fully, perhaps only superficially, the complex ideas and issues involved in governing Nigeria; and his dictatorial disregard of the democratic principle enshrined in our Constitution which requires him to treat all citizens equally and not to discriminate against those of them who did not vote for him in the March 2015 presidential election.
But he may “change”. In the hope of such change, he deserves our support to help him change.
• Nwabueze, Professor of Law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), wrote in from Lagos.