Do our Commanders- in-Chief live above board?

Since Ministers as leaders are expected to serve as role models by shunning all acts of impropriety, the admonition appears rational. But was I or any other citizen for that matter supposed to have faith in the said caution?  Put differently, is it unlikely that David Mark himself, the author of the admonition may not […]

Since Ministers as leaders are expected to serve as role models by shunning all acts of impropriety, the admonition appears rational. But was I or any other citizen for that matter supposed to have faith in the said caution?  Put differently, is it unlikely that David Mark himself, the author of the admonition may not have believed in it?  Those who wish to see this viewpoint as cynical are free to do so but they cannot stop us from being skeptical about the possibility of any political office holder in Nigeria operating with any appreciable level of integrity. History does not seem to support a contrary view.
In any case, David Mark himself cannot blame us since it was him who also revealed earlier that a former unnamed head of state was involved in a case of bribery.  According to the media, Mark told the story while speaking during a debate on a motion over the demise of the late Emir of Kano Alhaji Ado Bayero. He recalled that the Emir turned down a bribe offered him by the former head of state adding that Bayero was a forthright man who lived for the common good of his people. We have no cause to doubt the story of Senator Mark because he has always been up there in Nigeria’s public affairs to be conversant with how our leaders operate. In addition, Mark is an outspoken and fearless individual.  At the same time, the revelation was not intended to castigate the former head of state but to properly situate the virtuous life of Emir Bayero
Therefore, instead of dissipating our energy to ascertain the veracity of his claim, we opted to believe Senator Mark and to join those who eulogized the late Emir for rejecting the bribe and standing firmly against a wrong he was being induced to condone. But how many of our traditional rulers, past and present, can anyone similarly vouch for?  A good case study is Osun State where frontline traditional rulers, in breach of their constitutional non-partisan role have been in the forefront of public campaigns for the incumbent in the forthcoming governorship election in the state. To make matters worse, their electioneering campaigns preceded the statutory date approved for that segment of our electoral process.  If the motivation of such rulers is hard to identify, what explains the interest of those who have been campaigning for President Jonathan’s reelection in the last two years in spite of the numerous pleas by the same President to the campaigners to stop distracting him?
What the revelation of the attempt by a former head of state to bribe Emir Bayero suggests is that although it takes a while to unravel the unwholesome acts of those at the helm of affairs in our nation, the stories have a way of being let out of the bag by publicly acknowledged credible sources.  One of such sources is Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State who reportedly told the nation that his scheme to claim his governorship title was with the connivance of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. Speaking at the launch of a book on the Yar‘Adua years, Oshiomhole narrated how the late President allegedly funded his battle to wrest power from the candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP which happens to be the President’s party. The revelation that the President financially assisted any person to frustrate the candidate of his own party must have unsettled many PDP members.
On his part, the affected PDP candidate, Professor Oserhiemen Osunbor believed the story which he claimed tallied with what he had always known.  In Osunbor’s own words: “I won the election but Oshiomhole stole my mandate; he has admitted by his own confessions that they influenced the Court of Appeal to deliver judgment in his favour. “I am not surprised at all, as I knew there was a high-level conspiracy to get me out of office”. That this statement was made by Osunbor, a learned Professor of Law is no doubt instructive. It must have irritated many admirers of the late President who had been firm believers in his ‘above the board’ posture. It must also have helped to lend credence to the allegation that the PDP itself did not win the Presidential election and that even at the top of the Judiciary many do not live above board. Indeed, there had been a rumour that Yar’Adua’s team coughed out a whopping $57 million to procure a favourable judgment for the 2007 polls. It was also further alleged that the judgment was actually written in the Presidency and handed to the jurists to read. Wikileaks’ version of the story may have sounded  like a fiction but to hear that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, was allegedly instructed to release $57 million to a minister who was in turn to disburse the funds among top judges and military chiefs also sounds like a national scandal
In the case of the Obasanjo administration, it was former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, that wondered aloud on who else could have instructed the Central Bank to dole out to each legislature, N50m to support the third term project.  However, the reference to head of state in the story of Emir Bayero by Senator Mark suggests that the episode he recalled must have happened during the military era when the title was in vogue. The story thus helps to illuminate the fraud of the June 12 election and why all the 5 political parties of the Abacha era struggled to make him their Presidential candidate. The revelation by the United States Department of Justice in March 2014 that it had frozen more than $458 million believed to have been illegally obtained by Abacha and other corrupt Nigerian officials confirms that our Commanders in Chief have not been living above board.  What then is the rationale for their anti-corruption drives?