Nigeria: Corruption - Time for General Amnesty?

opinion

The fight against corruption - the abuse of public office by officials - predates Nigeria's independence and has always been embroiled in politics. Corruption was thought to be so pervasive in the First Republic that anger against the malaise partly triggered the first military coup of January 1966. Every subsequent regime in the country has made fighting the cankerworm a key policy.

The intertwining of the fight against corruption with political witch-hunting is rooted in the country's political history. For instance one of the earliest attempts to use charges of corruption to smear political opponents was in 1946 after the NCNC raised £13,000 from its well publicised tour of the provinces (April 1946 to December 1946) to send a delegation of seven people to London to protest against the Richard's Constitution, and its 'four obnoxious ordinances'. The delegation, which was led by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and included Mrs Funmilayo Ransome Kuti and Mallam Buka Dipcharima, left for London in June 1947 and returned two months later. Though it was welcomed by an enthusiastic crowd of over 100,000, the initial euphoria was quickly overshadowed by insinuations of corruption. The Governor-General of the time, Sir Arthur Richards, had never hidden his displeasure at Zik's brand of radical nationalism. In July 1945 for instance the colonial regime banned Zik's two Lagos dailies, West African Pilot and Daily Comet, for 'misrepresenting facts relating to the 1945 labour strike' - a move that eventually led to Zik writing his 'Last Testament' and claiming plots to assassinate him. But to what extent were insinuations of corruption and wasteful spending part of the government's efforts to tarnish Zik and the NCNC? It is instructive that the government-owned Daily Times, in its editorial of August 15, 1947, led the charge: "We would like to remind the delegation that what has been achieved could have been obtained in Nigeria by airmail at the very modest cost of one shilling, whereas the delegation has been ever so expensive. If therefore this is the sort of unthinking and wasteful leadership being thrust on us, we will have none of it". The rival Nigerian Youth Movement gladly made political capital out of this.

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