Should ministers publicly declare their assets?

President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo opened new a chapter in moral leadership in our country when they submitted their assets and liabilities declaration forms to the Code of Conduct Bureau even before their first formal official day in office. The public greeted this decidedly small but honest gesture with almost uniform enthusiasm. We […]

President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo opened new a chapter in moral leadership in our country when they submitted their assets and liabilities declaration forms to the Code of Conduct Bureau even before their first formal official day in office. The public greeted this decidedly small but honest gesture with almost uniform enthusiasm.
We sniffed the wind of change. It raised our hope that the change promised by the president would be driven by leadership by example, not by precepts. Preacher men had held the sway in our public offices for too long.Time to padlock the gate againstthem.
Perhaps the president and the vice-president were somewhat surprised that Nigerians were not generally satisfied with their action, welcome though it was. They wanted Buhari and Osinbajo to do more by publicly declaring those assets. I felt the same way too.I thought it would be in keeping with their commitment to moral regeneration through open and transparency in governance in our country. In a piece I wrote for and published in this newspaper, entitled, Should Buhari Publicly Declare His Assets?I argued that Buhari and Osinbajo, indeed, would do more for their moral crusade by positively responding to public demands to put their assets and liabilities before the public. In any case, Buhari would be following the very good example of his fellow Katsina man, the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, the first man in the long line of our rulers to publicly declare his assets and liabilities when he assumed office in 2007.
To be clear about this, the law does not require them to publicly declare their assets.Still, Buhari and Osinbajo responded positively to the public demand. We now know what they are worth. I believe it was a small but significant step towards what I call “replacing the opaque culture in our governance with a new and transparent culture in governance. It would be a change we would see and a change we would believe in.”
I think Buhari underlined this in his 2007 manifesto where henoted, quite correctly,that “Nigeria today, more than ever is in need of a serious and sincere effort at nurturing a culture of transparent governance.” And that brings me to the next level in nurturing a culture of transparent governance by the Buhari administration. In my piece under reference, I wrote: “I would expect Buhari to go even further and compel all his ministers and other aides affected by the constitutional provisions…to publicly declare their assets and liabilities on assumption of office. Let us see the change; let us feel the change.”
The ministers have now reasonably settled down in their new in offices. It is possible that all or some of them have declared their assets and liabilities. If so, the public is blissfully unaware of this. The constitution gives them a three-month grace period to do so. But if it took Buhari and Osinbajo only one day on assuming office to declare their assets and liabilities, it makes a weak argument to suggest that the ministers could take their sweet time to do right by the constitution and public expectations.
I harp on this because none ofYar’Adua’s ministers followed his example to publicly their assets and liabilities.I think it was a bad mistake on the part of Yar’Adua to cut his own path of transparency and walkalone.I believe that just as tree cannot make a forest, one honest president cannot make a forest of honest men and women in his cabinet. Unless Buhari’s ministers emulate him and Osinbajo, their efforts at instituting a culture of transparent governance would be all motion, no movement.And we would have lost one more opportunity to make corruption blink.
Why do I seem obsessed with the declaration of assets and liabilities by our public officers? Firstly, the constitution makes it mandatory for them to do so under Section II (1) of Part II to the Fifth Schedule. Its primary objective is to help curb or moderate the acquisitive tendencies of our public officers. I am pained that ours being a nation of big men, this piece of legislation has been treated with absolute contempt by our public officers. No surprise there. They enjoy absolute impunity.
Secondly, the Code of Conduct Bureau, the agency responsible for arguably ascertaining the facts in the declaration of assets does not have the capacity to undertake this important duty. There are more lies told in the declaration of assets than perhaps anywhere else. If these declarations are made public and therefore open to the public, those who know some of these lying characters can challenge them with evidence at variance with their claims.I am hoping that the president recognises this weakness in the law and would take steps to strengthen and make agency relevant to our national aspirations.
Thirdly, the declaration of assets is a matter of moral and symbolic responsibility not necessarily of law. Perhaps that is why the constitution prescribes no punishment for those who breach section II (1) of part II to the Fifth Schedule. Perhaps, the framers of the constitution expect public officers to recognise the moral burden they bear by setting good examples. I think the contempt for this law now compels compulsion by Buhari, the man we believe has the moral weight to make real changes in the way we are governed.
Asa matter of record, no state governor has publicly declared his assets and liabilities since 1999. None of them followed Yar’Adua’s example in 2007 just as none has followed Buhari’s example. I was sorely disappointed when APC governors told the public they would not follow Buhari’s example and publicly declare their assets and liabilities. Do these people buy into the change promised by their party? Do they feel part of the president’s efforts to replace the culture of opaqueness with the culture of open and transparent governance?
Would Buhari’s ministers let him walk alone on the transparency path?