John Moyibi Amoda
7 October 2008
The Vanguard of Wednesday September 24, 2008 carried in bold headline on the front page "Corruption: Nigeria's rating improves - Now 121st on list".
Togo, Sao Tome and Principe tied with Nigeria in the 121st place. At the top of the list three countries tied for the first place, namely, Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand, with Singapore a very close second, ahead of Finland, and Switzerland.
Scores rigously decimalized were awarded by the evaluators. It is obvious that the agency, Transparency International, has defined for itself the function of governance integrity auditor in the financial and economic governance sector. It has done so by selling the definition of corruption as a scalar reality, a linear continuum that can be measured and like gravity observable by the scientific method any where on the globe.
But the concept of corruption that is measurable in terms of its incidence across societies, may not only be diagnostic but may also be so drastically different from corruption as it is appreciated by participant observers in the politics and economies of the society externally defined by the anti-corruption global auditor.
The question may be asked - is corruption like measles or chicken-pox? Is it not a moral reality? If it is more like the latter than the former, is what is seen by a participant observer as corruption the same as what is seen by an external observer?
Is corruption a problem or mode of conducting business? Is it functional or is it a hindrance to effective and efficient organization of business? Is there an ideal that ought to be actualized in the determination and allocation of life chances such that deviations from this ideal in practice can be measured? Are there to be no deviations from this ideal and if that is the case who has made this ideal a law of governance?
These are merely procedural questions brought up by the matter of corruption. More substantial questions are in order.
The business of Transparency International is legitimation. It grades conduct and scores conducts against perceptions index. But what is an index? Is not something used or serving to point out, that is to point at something? Is it not a sign? Is it not something that directs attention to some fact, or condition?
This is how the dictionary defines it. In this common usage, the thing or condition pointed out exists separately from the index that is the indicator of its existence. The more factual a condition is the easier to indicate it, to point it out.
The more suppositional the assertion that a matter is the case, the less effective is the index in exposing it as an existence. In such a construction of the meaning of index we can ask what is its usefulness? It is useful in the case of Transparency International in either pointing to corruption perceptions or as a corruption perceptions index. Corruption perceptions point to judgments about corruption.
These judgments are subjective and the authority assigned these judgments are attributional. The value assigned them is a function of the prestige that Transparency International enjoys as a judge or as an umpire.
Corruption Perceptions Index on the other hand is supposed to be less subjective for it can serve as a mechanism that societal players can apply to ascertain the incidence of perception of corruption in their modus operandi.
The problem with this technical characterization of the usefulness of the corruption perception index is that of its reliability as an index. Can corruption perception which we can rephrase as perceptions of corruption be indicated?
When so stated are we really talking about perception and not about the fact of corruption itself? Is this whole attempt at technical measurability not an assertion about the relative incidence of corruption in the affairs of national societies? Is there not an underlying claim concerning the ordering of societies along the scale of the most corruption-infested society to the least corruption infested?
Is that not why the notion of index has been developed to identify corruption-as-a-disease, a thing-in-itself, such that we can recognize the degree of infestation? If Corruption is an infestation will the ideal, not be a Denmark that is not as corrupt as the USA in position 18, which is not as corrupt as South Africa which is in position 54, which in turn smells as a rose when compared to Nigeria in position 121?
The ideal society will be that which is corruption-free not that which is less corruption infested than its neightbours, near and afar.
Thus phrased, we see that Transparency International is hawking an ideal of corruption-free society in terms of a corruption-reduction strategy - that is why they have not given Demark and Sweden 10 points.
Transparency International is not a global auditor of governance morality but an international organisation evangelizing the gospel of corruption-free society. It is in this sense that it is in the business of evangelizing a modernistic version of Plato's Republic.
For it the world will approach the corruption-free ideal when the rulers of this world are Danish and Swedes or when the world send their leaders for governance training in Sweden and Denmark.
It is in this sense that we can say until all governments are operated by Swedes and Danes or all governments are socialized into Scandinavian governance morality, the world would continue to be a Babel of corruption-infested polities, some which are more infested than others.
The scientific and ethical authority of Transparency International look-alikes can therefore be challenged on the ground of science itself.
They have been encouraged in their enterprise by the international community that has used conditionality agreements as means of domination. It is in this milieu that Transparency International has gained its currency.
It definitely helps their claim to authority and governance relevance if the World Bank, the European Union, UNDP and such bodies use their annual reports as legitimator of their conditionality clauses.
Their case is even much improved if they have Third World Moralists on their boards and as their consultant and moral investigators. They find their niche in the universal disapproval of corruption-in-high-places of policy making in the poor and developing societies of the global South.
Yet I do not want to make a case for corruption. Indeed my intention is to prevent the trivialization of the problem of corruption.
Transparency International is now fashionable - soon it will be less fashionable with a corruption scandal like the case of the Austrian father that kept his daughter in the basement prison, fathering children by her, while living a "normal" family life in the same house.
When a corruption scandal of the same odiousness surfaces, then the bubble of such easy auditing will burst and the powerful will turn their attention to the next and more sophisticated Transparency International by another name.
Corruption is a problem in Nigeria and so recognized. The government has created two bodies, EFCC, ICPC to manage the Corruption Plague.
In The Spectator, September 12 - 18 2008, Reverend Moses Iloh lived up to his billing as a blunt no non-sense auditor of the nation's moral health. Nigeria to him is not a society with faults which can be corrected.
Nigeria to him is a faulty system. It is a system to be replaced. He does locate his analysis of Nigeria outside the matrix of Transparency International.
"Look, if they (by which he means the Senate and the House of Representatives) want to inquire into Obasanjo's tenure, they should get a panel of retired notable judges and let them do a good job of it.
The way things are, Nigeria is not being governed. We're all at the mercy of God, if not I don't understand why till date, INEC (Independence National Electoral Commission) has not been dissolved. Knowing the way this government came into power, they have kept INEC to help them remain in office, especially given the fact that there are so many petitions at the tribunal. It is a ploy to remain and to hold on to governance.
If Nigerians don't dismantle PDP, the party will dismantle Nigeria. The Nigerian nation is not important to them at all.
We don't have a patriotic government. What we have is a government of cronies whose task is just to steal the country dry. "In Nigeria, we've found that the illness we suffer from most is corruption, but the fact remains that no one is taking care of it simply because no one has been punished for it.
The EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) under Ribadu was used as a tool to help the PDP fight its enemies and that is not what it should be. We're watching to see what Madam (Farida) Waziri will make of the job now. People want to see some action.
They want corrupt officials punished. We're all being deceived. The more people steal, the more they are honoured with different national awards. That's why I don't have any regard for the national award. Until someone (is) punished (for) corruption nothing will change. Tell me, what aspect of our national life is not corrupt? And, sadly it has crept into the churches.
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