By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi To be sure, there was never a time in Nigeria’s history when corruption was not an issue...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
To be sure, there was never a time in Nigeria’s history when corruption was not an issue. In fact, corruption can be said to be one of Nigeria’s congenital birth defects. Nonetheless, in all the years that Nigeria has existed, I don’t recall a time when corruption has been as overpoweringly pernicious in its depth, breadth, rottenness, impunity, and frequency as it has been in the last five years.
There is no one in the Buhari regime who isn’t stealing astronomical
amounts of money and luxuriating in epicurean pleasures while the vast majority
of the people slide deeper into punishingly crushing poverty. The only "honest"
person in the regime is the uncaught one.
An emergent— and increasingly defining— feature of the
regime is that its honchos entertain the country with whirlingly blinding
accusations and counter accusations of eyewatering corruption against each
other. Abubakar Malami says Ibrahim Magu is an unconscionable “relooter” of recovered
loot, and Magu says Malami is a worse crook than he is, and that in addition to
his crookedness, he abuses his position to featherbed his corrupt friends.
From the Ministry of
Power to the Ministry of Works, from the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs to
the Ministry of Finance, from the NSITF to the NDDC, from the North-East
Development Commission (NEDC) (where N100 billion “vanished in one year”) to everything in between, corruption is prowling
menacingly unchallenged.
People who made pious noises about probity and morality, who
rode to popularity on the strength of their preaching against the comparatively
smaller corruption of past administrations, are now neck-deep in the nadir of
some of the worst forms of venality we have seen in the country.
Now people are desensitized to news of corruption. Everyone
has concluded that the Buhari regime will go down in the records as the most
malodorous manure for corruption in Nigeria. Most people think it’s ironic that
corruption is thriving profusely in the government of a man who likes to superfluously
draw attention to his putative intolerance of corruption, who claims to embody “integrity,”
and who promised to make Nigeria’s governmental soil infertile for graft.
Well, people who are astonished by the malodor of corruption
that’s wafting from every crevice of the regime haven’t been paying attention
to Buhari’s character. Since 2016 when it wasn’t popular to do so, I have called
Nigerians’ attention to a major character flaw in Buhari that conduces to the
luxuriation of corruption.
For instance, in a December 24, 2016 column titled, “Tragicomedy of a Corrupt ‘Anti-Corruption’ Government,” I wrote the following:
“In spite of the awful performance of the Buhari government
on the economic front so far, it was usual for people to say that the one thing
that was still going for the government was the president’s integrity and intolerance
of corruption. No more.
“The past few weeks have shown that the president isn’t the
anti-corruption crusader Nigerians thought he was. Both the optics and the
substance of his ‘anti-corruption’ fight would go down in the annals, at least
so far, as the most brazenly compromised and selective since the restoration of
democratic rule in 1999.
“As corrupt as the Jonathan administration was, it was once
railroaded by the force of public opinion to ‘accept the resignation’ of former
Aviation Minister Mrs. Stella Odua over her controversial purchase of BMW
armored cars worth $1.6 million. Even Obasanjo, not exactly an apotheosis of
integrity, fired a number of his ministers accused of corruption.
“But a man who rode to power on the strength of his
credentials as a dogged anti-corruption fighter is looking the other way when
his close aides are accused of corruption. The president, it’s now obvious, is
only interested in fighting corruption if his political opponents are the
accused. So we have graduated from ‘stealing
is not corruption’ under Jonathan to corruption is not corruption when the
people accused of it are the president's ‘anointed.’
“Firm, undeniable evidentiary proofs of Gen. Tukur Yusuf
Buratai's alleged corruption have been published. So have Lt. Gen. Abdulrahman
Dambazzau's, and now Babachir David Lawal's. Rotimi Amaechi has been accused of
bribing judges, and Abba Kyari has been accused of accepting a N500 million-naira
bribe from MTN, among others.
“The president’s first public reaction to allegations of
ethical impropriety against his associates was to defend them, a privilege he
doesn’t extend to others. ‘Terrible and unfounded comments about other people’s
integrity are not good,’ he said through his media adviser. ‘We are not going
to spare anybody who soils his hands, but people should please wait till such
individuals are indicted.’
“But he appears to be ‘sparing’ some sacred cows. SGF Babachir David Lawal of the multimillion
naira ‘grass-cutting’ infamy is the latest sacred cow enjoying privileged
presidential protection. The evidence against him is so demonstrably damning
that a serious anti-corruption government would fire him forthwith and
prosecute him later.
“People who are intimate with President Buhari told me
several months ago… that he was morally and temperamentally unsuited to fight
corruption. They said the undue premium the president places on ‘personal
loyalty’ causes him to ignore, excuse, and even defend the corruption of his
close associates.
“I was regaled with troubling tales of the mind-boggling
corruption against close, loyal aides that he swept under the carpet at the
PTF, The Buhari Organization (TBO), and at the defunct CPC. Babachir Lawal was
a dominant figure in CPC; he knows President Buhari well enough to know that
nothing will happen to him for all his villainous rape of vulnerable IDPs in
Borno and Yobe as long as he can impress the president that he is irrevocably ‘loyal’
to him.
“I had hoped that the president would learn lessons from his
past and change— at least for the sake of his personal legacy, given that he is
old and has the privilege of a second chance to rule Nigeria. Apparently, I was
naive. Now ‘anti-corruption fight’ has
become the sauciest joke in Buhari's Nigeria.”
You would think I wrote the above column a few days ago, not
almost four years ago. Even though Babachir David Lawal was grudgingly fired on October 30, 2017, he has not been indicted to this day and is still a denizen
of the Presidential Villa. He, in fact, headed Buhari’s reelection campaign in
his home state of Adamawa.
So everyone who works in the regime has got the memo: So long
as you can convince Buhari that you are “loyal” to him, you can pilfer the
national till to your heart’s delight without the slightest fear of
consequence. And, as I've said several times in the past, there's no greater
enabler of corruption than the knowledge that there's no consequence for it.
Since it doesn’t take much to demonstrate loyalty to an effete,
insecure, and incompetent dictator, every “loyal” regime honcho is stealing with
unrestrained gusto. They know they’re immunized against consequences. The only
people who get in trouble for stealing are people whose loyalty to Buhari is
suspect.
The dog-eat-dog world of Malami and Magu
The Nation of July 16 reported suspended acting EFCC
boss Magu to have said, “What I have gone through is a case of dog eats [sic]
dog." In July 8, I said of the Malami/Magu fight: "I have no dog in
the dog-eat-dog food fight between two dogged scammers."
I'm glad Magu agrees with me that he's a "dog"
that another "dog" is eating. In other words, he isn't innocent. He
is himself a dog that eats other dogs but whom a bigger dog is now eating. In a
dog-eat-dog world, dogs do whatever it takes to get the upper hand. Malami is
now the top dog. Magu is the underdog. But they're both bad dogs.
Dog-tired Nigerians are asking the same question that the Baha Men asked years ago: who let the dogs out?
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These are facts that most of us find difficult to digest and come to terms with. I love the eloquence that characterized Prof's write ups. More ink to your pen sir. Looking forward to your subsequent write up.
ReplyDeleteExecuthieves and legislooters
DeleteA major factor behind the entrenchment of corruption in Nigeria is the fact that majority of Nigerians do not oppose corruption as a matter of principle. What they are against is corruption by the "other." Nigerians are opposed to members of other ethnic, religious or political camps getting a chance to loot instead of members of their own camps.
ReplyDeleteI have never taken the words of any Muslim online serious due to their blind obsession for their religion which makes their opinion myopic, but you're a great exception. I commend you highly boss.
DeleteFrom day one of appointees in Buhari's second stint as head of government, I entertained fear of what will become of corruption.
ReplyDeleteWell captured facts sir. Keep speaking to our consciousness, one day soon we'll be awaken to act.
ReplyDeleteI know that Buhari is not the messiah Nigeria needs. History will not be kind to the man who did everything to disunite the country, entrench corruption and slept on top of the most exalted office in the land in the face of debilitating security and economic challenges.
ReplyDeleteMay Allah save Nigeria from the hands of "Dogs".
ReplyDeleteI mentioned it not long ago that atavistic greed and degenerative gluttony are the defining elements of our genetic signature. That the one who shouts "corruption is everywhere", " I will give corruption a bloody nose" bla bla bla, is shouting not because he/she wants to,intends to,and or desires to walk the talk. No!he/she is shouting/screaming about corruption because he/she is on the " other side" if you get my drift, and can't partake in the corruption bazaar.It is a tragic irony that we are casting a "considerate" eye at the " Otuoke community model primary school" kind of graft of the PDP era, having been confronted with the "AliBaba and the forty thieves,Red beards,and Barbary pirates" of this dispensation at "Harvard school post graduate level" and headed by the "vice chancellor" and poster boy of anti graft. This is con artistry at its devious best! Thanks Prof.for the usual and"brutal" frankness.
ReplyDeleteSir, you are a true political commentator.
ReplyDeleteThanks for doing it on our behalf
Prof you are always on point with your analysis of happenings in Nigeria. We have never had it this bad in the country. It is surprisingly amazing that the public don't show more outrage over Buhari's leadership style and his pretence to fighting corruption.
ReplyDeleteWith the present situation in the country, people who are waiting to steal from the country's treasure are more than those that are stealing now.
ReplyDeleteLike mentioned penultimate week that my Saturday isn't complete until your column is read and digested. There's usually now need to bowdlerize this article or a part of it because you went ethereal to capture the ills of this government and how humongous its frauds and malfeasances have gone exponential in convoluted proportion.
ReplyDeleteThere appears not to be any atom of fear among the honchos of this government. The only righteous man is the man whose sleaze hasn't been made public either by men or gods.
Another interesting fact about this missive is your statistics that is backed up with chronological evidence as to convince your new readers that they are not made up to snare the image of this government
Who else let the dogs out apart from Buhari...
ReplyDeleteA perfect description of what the nation looks like so far. Perhaps, it's an experience that every sensible Nigerian should witness. I'm highly enlightened and deeply felt like not being left alone in my understanding of what this regime truly look like.
ReplyDeleteI hope that we shall overcome....