Boco Edet
18 December 2008
analysis
Having spent prodigious amounts of funds in the anticorruption battle and conquered just a strip, Nigeria's anti-graft agencies have discovered that the farther they attempt to advance, the more they encounter hitherto unknown formidable enemy forces.
They now re-strategise to deploy the entire citizens as frontline troops.
This joke I am about to recount was told of the Nigerian people at an anti-corruption summit put together by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), and I will like to paraphrase it in the best way I know how. Forgive my humorous skills. They are on the low side. In any case, my intention is not to make you laugh to the point where you lose the gist of the message.
God, while creating the universe, made sure He did not make any Nation perfect so it will have cause to always remember Him as the source and seek His help. So, when He created India, talented minds, using their human resources for what they lacked in mineral and natural resources, He gave them floods to deal with.
At the time He created Iraq in the Middle East, He blessed them with a coveted mineral resource - oil, but so they do not get wealthy to the point where they have no recourse to consult Him, He put them at strife and war.
In the United States America, He blessed them with world leadership AND control of the media, but did not forget to give them their own pocket of troubles- moral decadence and antagonism from other countries. These are just a few examples.
But when He came to Nigeria, He created the topography as an artist's delight, spread across the country mineral resources, gave us weather conditions that we hardly have cause to complain about, no volcanoes, very sparse floods and fertile land.
The other countries rallied around Him in protest after they observed His masterpiece of art, asking why He was clearly partial. But God, in his infinite wisdom, offered them a glimpse of the future by saying, "Wait, until I put the people in there!"
Nigeria was awash with celebrations marking the anti-corruption day last week. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) launched a National Anti-corruption Revolution Campaign, while its sister agency, ICPC, decided to play it differently by organising a Governor's Forum and then an Anti-Corruption Summit.
Both anti-corruption commissions seemed to shift focus from the usual hullabaloo of catching top government functionaries and bringing them to face the LONG ARM of justice, emphasis is on long arm because it, indeed, is so long that EFCC and ICPC are having a hard time reaching the collar bone near the head so they can have the judges tie up their cases by delivering judgement. Let's leave that for now. I was saying that the average Nigerian was the focus during the anti-corruption celebrations. ICPC and EFCC seemed keen on mobilising the populace to lead this campaign. This was what informed EFCC's slogan, "See Something, Say Something."
One has to give it to the Chairman of the Commission, Mrs. Farida Waziri, for finally waking up to see that to fight corruption, you need the total support of Nigerians. They have to feel they are a part of the process. Otherwise, you end up going to war alone, and who doesn't know what happens to a goat in the midst of wolves? Nigerians will rather be critics than activists, but when they are forced to understand that it is up to them to make it work, they grudgingly get involved.
EFCC's annual budget of $26 million, which went up from $14 million in 2005, has a chunk of it committed to intelligence gathering, investigation and prosecution, not a lot for public enlightenment. One can hardly blame them, especially when the average Nigerian is only interested in finding out which 'big government fish' has been caught and how much was stolen. This is evident from the number of petitions that flood into the commission everyday, which averages 300.
So, the routine for the commission has always been to investigate some officials, establish threads of evidence here and there against them, arrest them, charge them to court and it ends there. Year in, year out, these cases never come to any conclusion because, somehow, the courts stall the process or the suspects devise antics to keep roaming the streets free, the most popular excuses being ill-health and international passport palaver.
Many Nigerians, who are wiser, are starting to get tired of these routines and want more. They are tired of the media celebrating these officials who are arrested and then let off the hook again. They have even developed a thick skin against the huge sums of money these people allegedly steal. How can one human being steal N24 billion? When you are tortured to hear the huge sums these officials allegedly steal everyday, and they still don't end up in jail, what is the point? Some even leave office and take up another position, and we know, and they know that we know, that they are allegedly corrupt. But our hands are tied as it were.
So this is the juice of the gist. If you arrest these people, charge them to court, and if you are lucky to recover a paltry sum of these looted funds, then at the end of the day you return it to the federal government purse where it is still looted by the same group of people, since they are still lurking in the corridors of power. How have you fought corruption?
You, instead, have wasted money to investigate these suspects, and human capacity to establish prima facie cases against them, only to encourage more looting. If this method of fighting corruption was working, then Mrs. Waziri would not be lamenting the colossal sums of money leaving Nigeria everyday to offshore accounts. She would not need to tighten her reins on the banks who are alleged parties to these large-scale frauds. She would not have to place on indefinite suspension a compromising Director of National Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) for keeping mute when this was happening under his nose.
Then there is the politics of EFCC and the media itself. When some officials are interrogated, the news spreads like wild fire: 'X official was arrested by EFCC for stealing X amount of money and the X amount of money was diverted to his personal account.' Front page story, courtesy EFCC.
Next day you call the same people who 'leaked' the information to get a follow up, all you get is: "we are still working on it". EFCC as an organisation hardly encourages the media to follow-up on stories, and the media, like a vulture with its huge taste for blood, gets bored with a particular spot and is ready to move on to another place with fresh blood. Where is the next bad news? That is what is on the mind of the editorial team. So, because we do not remain too long on the cases of these people, they know we soon lose interest in them. They go back to their evil ways.
It is easy to count at my finger tips many cases that were celebrated by the media for two, at most three, days and after that it just fizzled out like it never happened. Two outstanding cases that come to mind are investigations by ICPC and EFCC of the former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.
ICPC made the front page of newspapers across Nigeria months earlier when it said it was scrutinising a petition in the possession of the commission alleging corrupt practices by the former President. It also said it was compiling lists of ex-governors which it intended to investigate. Till this day, that list is yet to see the light of the day and we have no idea what happened to the petition against Obasanjo. The body came up with all sorts of excuses: "we are working on it," "this thing is a delicate matter, we don't want to rush into it" and "our chairman travelled as soon as he is back, the committee will submit its report". Story! Story!! Story!!!
On EFCC's part, Mrs. Waziri calmed our nerves after setting them on fire when she said the agency did not have any petition on Obasanjo. Swiftly, to save her neck, she collected a petition from one coalition group and said they were investigating the ex-president. Front page again! Since then when we inquire about the investigation, all we get is the familiar tune: "We are working on it." Don't we deserve to know what stage your investigations have reached? Then the familiar cover again: "We don't want to blow our lid on our investigations. We are being discrete." Then why in the first place did you announce to the world you were investigating?
So, these are some of the issues that make you wonder if this was how we moved from 146th position to 121st position on Transparency Interna-tional's (TI) Corruption Perce-ption Index. However, thankfully, EFCC has decided to adopt the style of ICPC, which has been more proactive in mass mobilisation, earning the organisation names like, "Dogs that can't even bark" because they don't arrest people who stole billions.
The commission has finally realised that to fight corruption in Nigeria, you must re-orientate the minds of Nigerians to see corruption as a plague that must be kicked out of society. Shift focus from the leaders and mobilise Nigerians to be whistle-blowers on them, which will save cost and leave them to deal with those at the top themselves.
We went crazy for President Obama while he was running for the Presidency, and though we threw our support for him and were, perhaps, more zealous than the Americans themselves, our opinions did not really count. While the foreign media went to some select African countries to select leaders that will say their bit on the American Revolution, no one came to Nigeria. Rather, we got an embarrassing letter from the Obama campaign team disassociating itself from Patriotic Ndi-Okereke Onyu-ike's Africa for Obama Group. America listened to us when it came to fraud!
Before, and if, ever, the immunity clause is going to be removed from the constitution that is going to be reviewed and, possibly, amended by the Senate, let the Nigerian citizens do their own bit. Let all of us be the watchdogs of society. Mrs Waziri put it this way at the launch of the National Anti-Corruption Revolution in Nigeria last week.
"The enemies of the nation may be able to sometimes escape the law. Sometimes they even use the law to their advantage. But certainly they cannot escape from the people. Those who create poverty, squalor and deprivation through corruption must not henceforth be allowed to enjoy comfortably amidst those conditions. The lot of what is Nigeria today is the direct consequence of corruption: dilapidated infrastructure, collapsed educational and health care system, non functional industries, extreme poverty etc," she noted.
Mrs. Farida admitted: "The fight against corruption is a very complex one," lamenting, "Those from whom critical support is needed to win the war are sometimes themselves obstacles. This is so with the greatest victims of corruption, the people, who are often ignorant and lack the under-standing of the devastating effects corruption portends. And so, rather than be the real frontline soldiers of the fight, they either stand aloof or become complacent. It is this contradiction that the ANCOR sets out to correct by educating, informing, training and mobilising people to take charge of a fight that is truly theirs."
Even President Yar'adua added his voice to Mrs. Waziri's when he took a plunge down memory lane. The President stressed that during the first republic, people in position of government or a wealthy business men who acquired their wealth through foul means were given derogatory names and were ashamed to show their faces in public places.
He said: "Nigerians cele-brate crime. Those who are corrupt shamelessly flaunt their wealth, disrespecting law and order, breaking rules and orders. We should stop glori-fying these people."
Since the focus is on the followership as opposed to the leadership, statistics will help. Who says corruption isn't at middle power management and even lower than that?
In a survey conducted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in conjunction with the National Bureau of Statistics in Lagos, Delta and seven other states in 2007, where the opinions of 2203 businesses were sampled, 75.6% felt strongly that crime and security was impeding the growth of business in Nigeria.
Second on the list of factors militating against business growth was corruption which ranked at 71%. A lower percentage agreed that tax regulations, unclear laws and inflation had very serious effect in the Nigerian business environment.
In this same survey the respondents said the public officials deeply involved in corrupt practices via bribery include Police Personnel ranking 62.6%, PHCN and Water Board ranking 39.8% and Tax/Revenue Officials ranking 27.6%.
At several times I have treated stories that left my mouth gaping at the level at which people you hold in high esteem stoop so low for peanuts. I remember Reverend Gbenga Awe who was arrested and charged to court by ICPC for using the National Anti-Corruption Volunteer Corps (NAVC), a programme designed to mobilise Nigerians to join as volunteers in the anti-graft crusade, for his personal benefits. ICPC entrusted this clergyman with leadership considering that he was honest to handle the position. As Chairman of NAVC in Ondo, Reverend Awe allegedly started to collect money from volunteers to register in the corps when he knew it was supposed to be free.
He did not stop there. He even opened an office where he started investigating cases. He recruited some people to pose as ICPC investigators and they went about wearing Identity cards and bullying and squeezing money out of people. His office was even receiving petitions from Ondo indigenes. This was the highest level of corruption, especially from someone whom ICPC thought it was using to preach the message of anti-corruption at the grassroots.
So, is every Nigerian not as guilty as the public official when it comes to cheating or outright stealing? How honest are we in our daily transactions? Mrs. Chichi Okoye, a motivational speaker, got a standing ovation when she delivered a moving speech on "Integrity as Panacea for Good Governance and Service Delivery" at the ICPC when it hosted Non-Governmental Organisations and Anti-Corruption Volunteers to mark the first ICPC anti-corruption day.
An excerpt from the speech reads: "The lack of integrity of government officials hurts and hurts badly, no doubt, but the truth is that the lack of integrity that pinches me directly on an individual level is the one I experience everyday on the street. The market woman who gives me one mudu of rice when I have paid for two, the carpenter who uses inferior wood to build my table when I paid for mahogany, the petrol attendant who gives 30 litres of fuel when I paid for 50. These are experiences that make Nigeria particularly hard and frustrating, and the worst part of it is that it is a vicious cycle. The petrol attendant feels justified because the market woman did the same thing to him and the market woman is justified because the police man at the check point took half his profits in bribes, and so on and so forth. Who gained in the end? No one. We are all cheated. We are all poorer. We are all miserable.
"There is only one way out of this madness. To have good governance, we all have to have integrity, not just government, not just people in authority, but you and I, because we can only insist on what we have. If Nigeria's personal integrity was high, they will not tolerate the government's lack of integrity."
Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, at the Govenor's Forum at ICPC, advocated more attention on the root causes of corruption rather than punishment.
Fashola said: "The seeming lack of proper understanding and focus on the critical contributing factors of corruption has given rise to a situation in Nigeria where attention is only paid to the manifestation of the symptoms of corruption and enforcement measurements to the exclusion of the root causes.
"This approach cannot take us to our desired destination in the crusade against corruption. It is tantamount to the use of wrong medicine for an ailment. The ailment will simply continue and may even get worse. The connection between corruption and economic conditions is inextricable; the relationship between corruption and national poverty of core social values is unassailable."
Chairman of ICPC, Justice Emmanuel Ayoola, who stood proud as the pioneer of mass mobilisation in the anti-corruption fight, has noted that it is now accepted by the anti-corruption community as the best way to fight corruption.
Justice Ayoola said, "It is heartening that our advocacy for mass mobilisation, development of preventive mechanisms and public enlightenment and education is now accepted by the anti-corruption community as the best way to fight corruption."
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