Taming the graft elephant in the room

They may have a point, but their effort is largely geared towards responding to criticisms that the government is not doing much to address the widening poverty gap into which rising number of citizens fall into each day, going by statistics provided by the United Nations Development Programme and the children’s fund, UNICEF, and many […]

They may have a point, but their effort is largely geared towards responding to criticisms that the government is not doing much to address the widening poverty gap into which rising number of citizens fall into each day, going by statistics provided by the United Nations Development Programme and the children’s fund, UNICEF, and many other nongovernmental organisations within and outside the country. One of the most enduring criticism of the administration, and on which most opinion converge that it is the principal cause of such deprivations, is the apparent inability-some say even unwillingness-to tackle corruption that many believe is threatening the very foundation of the state. Cases of corruption involving administration officials and politicians with connections to the corridors of power and their cronies are mostly not prosecuted; when they are, these drag in the legal processes until they are forgotten.
The celebrated cases of the United States oil services company Halliburton and the Dutch telecommunications giant Siemens, in which top Nigerian government officials were named as recipients of bribes to facilitate the award of Nigerian government contracts, are a reminder of the depth of the dissonance between the government’s claims of fighting graft and the reality that sticks out like a sore thumb for everyone to behold.
The irony in both these cases is that while nationals of the countries involved in offering the bribe were punished by the authorities there; in Nigeria, those actually named in the reports as taking the bribe went on to hold high public offices, including ministerial and ruling party positions.
Less than two weeks ago, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal, noted that the’ body language’ of President Jonathan was suggestive that he encouraged corruption, hence its sustenance in government circles in the country. In the latest letter to the president, made public last week, former President Olusegun Obasanjo made an issue of it, lambasting the administration’s lack of faith in its self-declared war on corruption.
At the weekend, visiting former US President George W Bush, referring to reports of corruption among Nigerian leaders, warned of the consequences of not holding those leaders to account. The body language that Tambuwal alluded to is manifested in many ways, including the Halliburton and Siemens examples..  Several reports into allegations that the Minister of Aviation, Ms Stella Oduah, abused her powers in the purchase of a pair of bulletproof cars, and of breaching budgetary provisions, are yet to see the light of day, even though the president admitted several weeks ago that one of the reports was in fact on his table. Two scions of senior ruling party officials, named in reports into the fuel subsidy scam, are virtually free and at large, the legal cases against them held, obviously deliberately, in abeyance. Earlier this year, US Secretary of State John Kerry in a report to Congress cited Nigeria in several corruption cases.
Although the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) often bristles at being called the government’s attack dog occasionally unleashed on opponents of the administration, its record of even-handedness is spotty.  The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) recently noted that the nation’s excess crude account was being depleted at a faster rate that is being built to serve its original purpose of saving for the rainy day.  The apex bank did not speculate on what the purpose of the depletion was, but given the documented profligacy of the current administration, it almost certainly would not be for value-added projects.   Last week, the numbers got even dizzier. The CBN revealed that the state oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) could not account for about 50 billion dollars of government revenue that it collected and had not paid into the appropriate account. Typically, it is the politics of it that has come to the fore, not the probability that the country may have lost that gargantuan amount to private individuals in government.
Clearly, the government has shown that it cannot fight graft in the administration and among its officials. Unless it does a 360-degree turn to join the battle, it has lost the war.