Ihenacho’s Home Truths


In fact, what the Obasanjo administration is doing by shielding some obviously corrupt ex-leaders of Nigeria from anti-corruption prosecution smells to the depth of hell.
Monday, June 21, 2004



David Asonye Ihenacho

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NIGERIA'S ANTI-CORRUPTION SHENANIGAN



s a result of what has over the years become our nation's endemic culture of corruption, deception and falsehoods, to encounter a Nigerian high official willing to speak candidly about the state of this depressing malaise of ours along the lines of official programs purportedly combating it is usually one of those rare moments of grace in our nation's social life. Nigerian officials are by nature experts in the act of double-speak about corruption in general. Following pressures from abroad and in line with their contrived efforts to market a clean image they believe could attract foreign investments to the country, they usually manufacture spectacular scenarios of anti-corruption successes to sell to the international community. However, peering through the façade of such campaigns one would be shocked to discover how much time and energy Nigerian leaders tend to invest in creating loopholes to undermine anti-corruption campaigns. As a matter of habit, Nigerian administrations, both past and present, usually show an amazing creativity with the culture of aiding and abetting corruption in the nation. The current administration in Nigeria under self-righteous President Olusegun Obasanjo has not deviated any bit from this shameful tradition. Rather it has continued to compound and even improve on its devious sophistication.

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However, every once in a long while, a Nigerian high official, perhaps burdened by the pains of his or her conscience, or desiring to separate oneself from the rotten system, and/or craving a personal niche of patriotism and honesty that is different and independent of the nation's corruption cesspool, breaks ranks with his or her colleagues and speaks frankly and dispassionately about the true nature of campaigns to eradicate institutional corruption in Nigeria. When such a grace-filled event happens as it does perhaps once in a blue moon, Nigerian socio-political commentators tend to stretch their celebration of the event to no end. It is of course this tradition that we intend to keep alive with this essay.

This past week, something in the neighborhoods of these rare occurrences appeared to have happened in our nation of Nigeria. Nigerians of all walks of life were treated to a feast of raw and simple truths about the anti-corruption campaign being prosecuted by the current administration in the nation. A highly placed official of the present administration chose to tell it all about the inner workings of the organization the Obasanjo administration charged with the task of eradicating institutional corruption in Nigeria. As usual, what was revealed in the process was a vapid portrait of disgraceful efforts of the current administration in Nigeria to sell a dummy of anti-corruption campaign to Nigerians and to the rest of the world even while concentrating efforts along the lines of undermining it.

To mark the fourth anniversary of the establishment of Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offenses Commission (ICPC), its chairman, retired Justice Mustapha Adesayo Akanbi gathered journalists on Wednesday, June 16, 2004, to reflect on the activities of his commission in the four years of its existence in Nigeria. Akanbi's press chat provided the Nigerian public a window into the world of the anti-corruption campaign shenanigan of the Obasanjo administration. Grading the performance of his commission, the Nigerian anti-corruption chief commissioner unabashedly admitted that his organization in the last four has not accomplished much along the lines of its principal mission of ridding our nation of institutional corruption and related offenses.

Matching the meager accomplishments of the commission against the high expectations of most Nigerians and the international community, Justice Akanbi lamented that the Obasanjo administration has shown "inadequate political will to help the commission achieve its mission." The retired appellate court judge saddled with the responsibility of fighting and winning battles against official corruption in Nigeria lamented both his personal and his organization's frustration over the way the Obasanjo administration has been treating the issue of anti-corruption campaign in the last four years. His judgment came down to this simple fact: despite impressions and insinuations to the contrary, the present administration in Nigeria lacked the "political will" and perhaps interest to rid the nation of corruption. As every one can see, this indeed is a very serious indictment.

According to Chairman Akanbi, the Obasanjo administration frustrates the activities of his commission in some specific ways. First, the administration has chosen to perennially under-fund the commission and its projects. The head anti-corruption commissioner revealed that the annual budgetary allocation to the commission to fight the lavishly funded monster of corruption in Nigeria is a paltry sum of N486 million. Further lamenting the situation the chief anti-corruption commissioner said, "The setting up of the ICPC by the current administration is a positive demonstration of the political will to fight corruption. What I cannot understand is the under-funding of the commission. For 20 years before the commission, no Nigerian was convicted in any court for corrupt practices. But with the emergence of the ICPC, we are prosecuting over 34 cases now" (Guardian, June 17, 2004).

Second, the Obasanjo administration saddled the commission with what its chairman described as a very limited jurisdictional power. That is to say, the Obasanjo administration established an anti-corruption outfit that has practically its hands tied together behind its back. The statute establishing the anti-corruption body so limited its scope of operation and so curtailed its powers that it seems only to be able to serve as a public relations outfit for the administration. As a result of this limitation the anti-corruption commission has no statutory power "to investigate public officers who served before June 2000 when the commission was established no matter the amount of evidence against them" (Vanguard, June 17, 2004). The anti-corruption commission chairman declared:

I am aware that the expectation of many Nigerians is to see many past heads of state, governors or military administrators' names on the list of those being investigated by this commission. Many are disappointed because such names have not appeared on the list of people we are investigating. But the truth of the matter is that even if the commission receives complaints about these people who had earlier held offices in the past, there is little or nothing the commission could do because it cannot investigate any corrupt practices that occurred before the commission was established…. The law does not permit me to investigate President Babangida and other military heads of state as being suggested by you or any suspected corrupt public officers who served before June 2000 in this country. Fortunately, however, the police have the powers to investigate both the past and the present heads of state and all other public officers (Vanguard, June 17).

However, the police force, which would otherwise be expected to pick up the slack resulting from the limited jurisdiction of the ICPC, was fingered in a recent international report as one of the two most corrupt organizations in Nigeria. The chairman of ICPC, Justice Akanbi, revealed that a recent report from the World Bank had revealed that the Nigeria Police Force and the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) were the two most corruption-riddled organizations in the Nigerian nation.

And in a tragicomic development typical of our nation, the Nigerian police immediately responded to the World Bank indictment by hiking the amount they take in as bribes on highways. According to a report in ThisDay late last week, as a reflection of the hard times that have befallen Nigerians in recent times, and factoring in inflationary trends, the Nigerian police decided to raise their roadside bribe amount from 20 Naira to 50 Naira. That is to say, whenever any driver was pulled over at a checkpoint for any reason whatsoever, he or she would be expected to shell out N50.00 as bribe - a hundred and fifty percent increase from the amount that was recently paid as bribes to the "Nigerian department of police roadblock." And this ritual is repeated at every ten or twenty miles when a commercial vehicle driver confronts a different squad of police roadblock. According to one Mufutau, a commercial bus driver quoted by ThisDay: "We don't waste time in giving them the money. When you don't bring out the money in time, they will tell you at gunpoint to park and then you might be required to pay more than the regular bribe. They won't collect anything less than N500" (ThisDay, June 19).

Third, another way the present administration in Nigeria criminally cripples the ICPC and prevents it from achieving its mission is by abandoning it as prey to Nigeria's snail-like, corrupt and opaque judicial system. Not content with the highly suspicious limited jurisdiction it had granted the anti-corruption body through legislation, the Obasanjo administration lays further siege on its road to success by burdening it with the corrupt Nigerian judicial process. That is to say, exploiting the contrived inadequacies of the statute establishing the commission, the administration makes it possible for any well-funded corruption outfit or individuals to bog down the activities of the commission with cobweb-like litigations that take generations to disentangle. Justice Akanbi declared to journalists last week:

You are aware of what happened after we received complaints of corrupt practices against some state governors. According to the law that establishes this commission, we forwarded request to the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) to convoke a committee to investigate them. But what happened? Bayelsa State governor, for instance, went to court to sue the CJN, the commission and myself. The suit was filed by the doyen of the Nigerian bar wherein the legality of the ICPC Act was even challenged. There was a general lull for almost two and half years because of the court case (Vanguard, June 17)

What all this implies in our view is that with the ICPC muzzled through the skewed statute establishing it and bogged down in the corrupt and chameleon-like Nigerian judiciary, and with the Nigerian police hopelessly corrupt, the anti-corruption campaign in Nigeria seems to be existing in name only. As Justice Akanbi lamented this past week, it is hard to discover any interest in the Obasanjo administration to rid the Nigerian nation of corrupt practices. Looking at the limited scope granted the ICPC and its sister organization, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC), giving the fact that the laws establishing them have been intentionally skewed to have very limited application so as to adequately protect some corrupt individuals, it is hard to find any interest and zeal in the current administration in Nigeria to carry the battle right down to the domain of corruption and criminals in the nation.

How can an anti-corruption campaign be successful when it has all these landmines buried along its way by an administration that says one thing to the international community and does exactly its opposite at home? It is clear that all anti-corruption programs of the present administration have an in-built system to procure their failure. There is hardly any sincerity in the efforts being hawked to the international community as anti-corruption campaign in Nigeria. If the members of the present administration in Nigeria were people of integrity they would be bold to tell the world that the campaign they are sponsoring is not anti-corruption but corruption promotion.

If the Obasanjo administration truly wanted to launch a credible anti-corruption campaign in the nation as it had promised at the beginning of its reign, there were certain conditions it could have taken as first steps to effectiveness in this regard. Unfortunately the administration was seduced by the forbidden fruit of Nigerian politics, namely, selfish and ethnic politics and crimes against the corporate survival of the nation. Having succumbed to this corrosive tragedy, the administration subsequently sucked up to the dangerous malaise that has been fostering and promoting corruption in the nation. But if the administration had approached the tragedy with sincerity and an open-mind, there were certain measures it could have taken or signed on to if only to demonstrate its goodwill and its hatred for the social tragedy that has hobbled and stalled human promotion in Nigeria for years.

First, there must be a realization that corruption is the bane of the present-day Nigeria. It is the greatest threat to Nigeria's security, peace and unity. Unless it is eradicated, Nigeria will not survive. Unless there is absolute transparency in the administration of the nation, corruption will continue to thrive unabated. Nigeria is hopelessly corrupt and needs urgent and radical treatment to heal. These facts must be recognized and accepted as self-evident truths. Justice Akanbi's continued rejection of Transparency International's rating of Nigeria as the second most corrupt nation on the planet is a classic case of self-deception. No sincere Nigerian needs an international organization to inform him or her about the truth of our nation. Any reader of newspapers across the world will recognize that there is hardly any other country in the world that ranks ahead of Nigeria in corrupt activities. Until situation changes, Nigeria, and not Bangladesh, is the reigning kingpin of corrupt activities throughout the world. So Nigeria's first step on route to redemption from corruption is for her citizens to recognize and accept what the evil of corruption has done and continues to the nation. Nigeria is a nation without any credibility in anti-corruption measures. For her to gain any credibility in fighting corruption, all efforts along this line must be above board. So far this has not been the case. Nigeria's anti-corruption programs are filled with blatant inconsistencies that naturally lend themselves to suspicion about what our nation might have up her sleeves.

However, having recognized and accepted these truths about the nation, Nigerian leaders and peoples must make a firm commitment to fight and to defeat all aspects of corruption in the nation. And unlike what Justice Akanbi and his commission are seeking as the way forward, Nigeria needs a radical approach to combat corruption in the nation. Akanbi's ICPC revealed last week the measures it is currently embarking upon to improve anti-corruption campaign in the nation. Besides seeking more funding along the lines of bigger budgetary allocations, ICPC is asking the government to amend its statute so as to broaden its scope of operation as well as remove all the present constraints and obstacles in its way of operation.

Justice Akanbi also revealed during his media chat last week that his commission is currently facilitating the creation and introduction of anti-corruption curriculum at all levels of the nation's school system. According to him, a technical team of experts is already busy at work crafting the new curriculum and drawing up its schemes. Despite the apparent good intentions behind these suggestions, it is obvious that they do not go far enough. It is hard to see how they will improve the fate of corruption eradication in Nigeria. At best they only represent baby-steps in the fight against corruption. But baby steps are not what Nigeria needs to destroy corruption in the nation. Nigeria needs giant and bold steps to win the war on corruption.

There seems no doubt that Justice Akanbi and his commission mean well for Nigeria's anti-corruption campaign. But it is clear that their new initiatives will not bring any major changes in their operation of anti-corruption in the nation. Over the past four years and after hundreds of millions of Naira, their accomplishments consist only in ongoing prosecution of over 34 cases of suspected corruption in law courts. This is an abysmal performance by any standards it could be judged. In the last four years this corruption-fighting commission has performed very horrendously indeed. Till today, the ICPC has not convicted anybody or institution for corruption in a nation that is seething with corruption. Notwithstanding the wildfire of corruption that is eating up the whole nation, an institution commissioned to serve as corruption firefighters has not succeeded in dousing even one little flicker of the flame of corruption in the nation. This is tragically disappointing.

Unfortunately, in the absence of any convictions, the commission has the temerity to claim that ongoing prosecution of over 34 cases is enough to justify its existence. But prosecution alone even of thousands of cases is not a measure of success. It is a horrible way to claim efficiency. In many cases, prosecution without conviction is a sign of a monumental corruption in the system. As American defense attorneys often say, a prosecutor can indict and even prosecute a ham sandwich. It seems unbelievably sad that ICPC chose to celebrate its fourth anniversary with 34 indictments without a single conviction after four years of expensive labor. If this is not the spelling of ineptitude, I do not know what else is. In fact all these tend to indicate that even the new steps being advocated by Chairman Akanbi and his commission will not improve the fortune of anti-corruption in Nigeria any bit. Rather they are tepid steps that will only continue the culture of anti-corruption window-dressing campaign that has become the hallmark of the present administration in the nation.

To effectively combat corruption in the nation, a new thinking that borders on the revolutionary is indispensable. Considering the endemic nature of corruption in the nation and the caliber and personalities sponsoring and fostering it, there is no way what the ICPC is doing at the moment, or is intending to do in the future, could help much. There is absolute need for a new thinking in the fight against institutional corruption in Nigeria. The Obasanjo administration must stop the current window-dressing it is doing with ICPC and EFCC. These two organizations will not solve the problem of corruption in Nigeria. Corruption is a national security threat and it must be treated as such.

We have advocated in some of our previous essays in this column that Nigeria must elevate anti-corruption campaign to a cabinet level position. There is absolute need for an anti-corruption seat in Federal Executive Council meetings. Anti-corruption program needs to have a constitutionally mandated budget vote. This is because corruption is the number one threat to national security in Nigeria today. If Nigeria could get a handle on corruption she will have more than enough money to tackle her myriads socio-economic problems like unemployment and provision of infrastructure. Therefore Nigeria must address the problem of corruption as a matter of national security. In fact, this is exactly what was done in the US recently. When terrorism became a major threat to the security of the United States, the Congress and the Bush administration, after reinforcing existing security organs, created a brand new cabinet position charged with defeating the threat to the US's national security. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was born recently for the sole purpose of defending the nation and interests of the US against any threats whatsoever. This is how a wise nation responds to threats against her very existence. It does not pretend or waffle and stumble, as is the case with the current administration in Nigeria.

A cabinet position on corruption similar to that of the Department of Homeland Security of the United States is urgently needed in Nigeria. A fearless and credible minister who could be dubbed an anti-corruption czar should head such a ministry. The ministry should have an almost unlimited mandate, endowed with its own investigative, prosecutorial and courts of first instance working in a tribunal form. Anybody accused of wrongdoing either in the present or in the past must be made to face the tribunal of the anti-corruption agency. Its judgment shall of course be subject to the jurisdictional review of the appellate and supreme courts. But no other courts of first instance should be allowed to entertain cases of corruption against anybody in the nation. It should be the sole responsibility of the anti-corruption tribunals to adjudicate all cases of corruption at the high court level. Also there must be a law forbidding higher appellate courts from delaying the review of the verdicts of anti-corruption tribunals in a situation of appeals against them. The Nigerian legislature must enact laws, which impel higher courts that entertain appeals of the verdicts of anti-corruption tribunals to carry out their reviews within six months of the appeal. Failure to do so, the appeal has to head straight to the Supreme Court which should have another six months to dispose of the appeal. Where six months elapse without resolution, there must be a new mandate for another six months of review of such appeals.

Most important, the anti-corruption ministry must have the power to go after anybody, institution or governments, whether dead or alive, whether defunct or operational, whether indigenous or foreign, etc., which is implicated in any act of corruption no matter how distant and old. Such a ministry should have the courage and muscle to go after former heads of states and governors when complaints are lodged against them. There cannot be any sacred cows. The ministry should have the statutory ability to open the books of all previous governments of the nation to see whether there are any skeletons left in their closets. A ministry of anti-corruption should have the power to examine anything and to make same available to the press. Nothing regarding the management of Nigeria's wealth should be classified for this ministry. Every document dealing with money and wealth of the nation shall be fair game to the ministry. A ministry of anti-corruption services in Nigeria must have a kind of open-ended budget to go after anybody or institution at anytime. Such wealthy heads of state like Babangida and Abubakar, or lavishly rich ex-military governors like Marwa and Adisa, whose wealth originated solely from the time they held public offices, must not be allowed to have more clout and financial muscle than the federal ministry of anti-corruption.

In fact, what the Obasanjo administration is doing by shielding some obviously corrupt ex-leaders of Nigeria from anti-corruption prosecution smells to the depth of hell. This is one area that must remain forever an indelible mark of disgrace on the second coming of Olusegun Obasanjo to our nation's political administration. This president will leave a horrendously stinking legacy of covering up for potential looters of the Nigerian treasury. Unless this president removes all obstacles along the way of investigating how Nigerian resources were looted in the last thirty-to-forty years of military rule in Nigeria, history will at least judge him as an accomplice in the crime of cover-up. But who knows? It might happen that in the future when all books about Nigeria will become open and available to the rest of the world, history might impose even more damning indictments on the current president of Nigeria. Then it might become clearer that he was not just an accomplice in covering up crimes in Nigeria but one who led the way in looting the treasures of Nigeria. If this man were wise he would save himself from the harsh condemnation of history by letting everything hang out and allow the chips to fall wherever they may.

In the short term, this president must spare himself the charge of hypocrisy by creating an enabling environment for the anti-corruption war to prosper in Nigeria. This he could do by making sure that the right anti-corruption laws are in place for the battle. Such laws must have expanded and almost indefinite scope in order to be credible and efficient. The current laws against corruption are largely inefficient and perhaps corrupt. And there is no way the operations of the current anti-corruption outfits in Nigeria - the ICPC and EFCC, could have any credibility in a situation in which those who should have been their prime targets are being shielded from prosecution by a corrupt statute. How can Nigeria prosecute an anti-corruption program credibly and effectively with a statute that is in itself a product of corruption? For Nigeria to truly embark on the exercise aimed at eradicating institutional corruption, the right laws must be in place. And they must be laws that treat everybody equally, and accord everyone the privileges he or she deserves as a citizen of Nigeria. Unfortunately, such laws are yet to be born in Nigeria. But the Nigerian president could start to rehabilitate his battered image in anti-corruption campaign by replacing or improving on such laws.

Finally, one of the most effective anti-corruption measures is absolute transparency, which impels the publication of all financial dealings of governments at every level. It should become a part of the law of the land that every income and allocation made by every government, ministry and department must be published so that the general public will know how its money is being utilized. The current administration in Nigeria loves to sermonize on transparency and the need for it in the administration of the nation. But it hardly practices what it preaches. Rather it recently introduced a new level of hypocrisy in the administration of Nigeria by threatening to publish the allocations given to states and local governments. But it forgot to publish its own allocation first. This is the hypocrisy typical of all past Nigerian administrators. They always want to first remove the speck in their neighbor's eye without first removing the plank in their own eye.

A truly transparent federal administration in Nigeria would always and instantly publish how much it receives as income in every month or quarter, and how it distributes and disburses such incomes to states, local governments and departmental ministries. It would give account of how much of this funds remains after each session of distribution and where it is preserved. If the Obasanjo administration had been a sincere one believing in the transparency it preaches, it would be leading by example. It would publish in every month or quarter a comprehensive income and assets of the federal government providing a subtotal of who has got what to date. And this would be seen as transparency in action. It is only after the federal government has published its own financial records and dealings that it could credibly require state governors, local government chairpersons and ministries, to do likewise.

However, to show that our nation is in fact the birthplace of hypocrisy, the president of Nigeria and his officials who might be hiding some shameful skeletons lodged in the inner chambers of their cabinets assume that every Nigerian should understand that they are the morally righteous ones while the state governors and local government councilors are the bad guys. But we know that Nigerians are wise enough to recognize the truth. They know that the president, the governors and the local government chairpersons as they subsist today in Nigeria are indeed all "bad guys." The potentially good guys of the fourth republic democracy of Nigeria are yet to raise their heads if indeed they exist. But until they do, Nigerians must assume that at the present moment there is no good guy left in Nigerian politics!