A Kleptocracy Overruns A Democracy
People familiar with Nigeria’s modern history will remember Godwin Daboh. He was perhaps the first Nigerian to arrive on the front pages of the corruption conversation. That was in 1974, when the businessman accused Joseph Tarka, who was the Minister of Communications, of corruption. In doing so, Daboh, who would transit into politics, accomplished something […]
People familiar with Nigeria’s modern history will remember Godwin Daboh. He was perhaps the first Nigerian to arrive on the front pages of the corruption conversation.
That was in 1974, when the businessman accused Joseph Tarka, who was the Minister of Communications, of corruption.
In doing so, Daboh, who would transit into politics, accomplished something that is almost impossible in Nigeria today: he forced the resignation of Tarka from the federal cabinet.
In 1979, Daboh ended his anti-corruption “crusade,” saying he could not carry on by himself.
By that time, the military government of Murtala Muhammad and Olusegun Obasanjo, which had taken over from the Yakubu Gowon administration of Tarka, were gone and the Second Republic civilian government of Shehu Shagari was in power under the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).
Justifying his decision, Daboh told a newspaper: “There are some people who belong to the last two military administrations who have amassed wealth running into millions of Naira and have bought high rise apartments in places such as Jamaica and the United Kingdom.”
That was December 1979, and I had just stepped into the journalism trade. Note that Daboh, who said he had documents and could prove those transactions, alluded to “millions of Naira.”
Evidently, that was before the beast grew up. In fact, perhaps the first time that the word “billion” was used in the same sentence with corruption was in a story in The Punch in September 1979 by a remarkable reporter called Ochiama Ahia, in which he reported that N2.8 billion was missing from the accounts of the NNPC.
That report was first quickly dismissed by the corporation’s Managing Director, Festus Marinho. Just months later, testifying at the House of Representatives, he withdrew his denial.
There, then, some of the key elements of this monster that has humbled a nation, and before which government after government has become a part: officials, military and civilian; the NNPC; and the squandering of looted funds in other countries.
One of those who knew what was going on, and who appeared to have been watching closely, was one Muhammadu Buhari. Responding to the fierce advance of the beast during the NPN years, the military snatched power in a coup, and installed him as its new leader.
Everyone knows that Buhari was himself removed from power just two years later by another segment of the military led by his friend, Ibrahim Babangida. It took 30 years of seething with anger for him to regain power, via the ballot box, vowing to end the madness and bring to book those responsible for it.
Which leads to the question: Why is the current Buhari administration, which rode to power swearing to the mess of nearly 60 years, not prosecuting the thieves and filling the jails with them?
You may ask the same question in another way: Why is corruption winning soundly in Nigeria, with Nigeria’s corruption elite exchanging hugs and kisses, having lost all fear of Buhari?
Or yet another way: Why has the anti-corruption war become the laughing stock of the world?
The background for this comes from Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, who explained last week that in not prosecuting the looters of the national treasury, the administration is acting on “strategic advice.”
Nigeria’s #2 man was speaking at a 2017 International Anti-corruption Day event in Abuja. He disclosed that this piece of wisdom was obtained from independent sources, anti-corruption committees and special panels the government had set up for the recovery of looted assets.
Still, the Vice-President expressed the assurance that the war for the soul of Nigeria is raging on. “It is focused a lot on prevention, and this is one aspect that a lot of people do not talk about so much. Then enforcement, this is the key aspect of the fight against corruption, there has to be accountability for those who basically violate the law…”
I hate to confess this, but Professor Osinbajo, one of Nigeria’s brighter legal minds, did not sound as if he had thought the argument through. Or perhaps it was not his statement at all, as the admission was contained in a prepared statement read in his name.
Prevention and enforcement of what, and by whom?
The only sense in which the Vice-President’s disclosure may attract any traction or respect would be where the government were talking about the prevention of justice which has resulted from its action-or lack of it.
The one clear thing about corruption in Nigeria since independence is that while every government has fought it by means of words or policy, each has in practice protected the corrupt.
The “strategic advice” excuse of the Buhari administration is the latest umbrella for our army of kleptocrats to maintain their loot and dignity. Nigerians know the pain only too well, the pain of living alongside glorified thieves with a taste for expensive imports and real estate.
While these thieves have thrived, Nigeria has stagnated and become the laughing-stock of nations and peoples. In case we have forgotten where we were going, that dumpster of history is precisely where the Buhari government promised to rescue the country. We understood that Nigeria’s citizens of character and merit would enjoy the recognition that was promised at independence in 1960.
To receive this “strategic advice” confirmation of our collapse is to feel 419-ed. It suggests that the entire Buhari governance is a hoax, its iniquities magnifying our inequities.
To be clear: what this admission means is that the Buhari government does not know the spelling of justice. To perform on a “strategic advice” which denies the people is to betray them. To cite “strategic advice” which protects the villains is to accept responsibility for modern-day selling of Nigerians into poverty at home, slavery in Libya and death on Mediterranean boats.
To cite “strategic advice” in public is to accept responsibility for the army of Nigerian professionals again drifting out into other countries.
To cite “strategic advice” for the protection being granted Nigeria’s army of kleptocrats is to belong to them. It is to accept responsibility for Nigeria’s growing insecurity, poverty, infrastructure deficit and decaying education. It is to justify national institutions which work at cross-purposes, compromised officials who are retained in office, and the government’s armada of scandals.
It is to confirm that while we claim to run a democracy, we are a kleptocracy; and that while the Buhari outfit claims the outlook of a government, it is the administrative outpost of the kleptocracy.
It is the final admission that while a few, stranded officials continue to work patriotically hard within the government, the government as constituted cannot do it.
Yes, Daboh did say nobody could fight corruption alone. But he spoke as an individual citizen. We know that a government armed with the will can do it because history provides proof.
In contrast, what we have is a market of compromise, by the compromised, for the compromised, in which the party line is that the war to save the people continues.
A war? If this is one, it is of the police fighting for the robbers against the victims.
• Twitter: @SonalaOlumhense