Nigeria and the widening gyre of official corruption

CHUKS OLUIGBO

One major campaign promise of Muhammadu Buhari as presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was that he would eliminate corruption in Nigeria if elected president.

“If we don’t kill corruption, this corruption will kill us,” Buhari told Nigerians during his campaign for the 2015 general elections.

He reiterated this in his inaugural speech on May 29, 2015, saying, “At home we face enormous challenges. Insecurity, pervasive corruption, the hitherto unending and seemingly impossible fuel and power shortages are the immediate concerns. We are going to tackle them head on. Nigerians will not regret that they have entrusted national responsibility to us. We must not succumb to hopelessness and defeatism. We can fix our problems.”

Buhari’s APC quickly made political capital out of that “kill corruption or it will kill us” mantra, especially as they saw in it an opportunity to further tar the then President Goodluck Jonathan’s already battered image, and many Nigerians also hailed Buhari for saying it the way it is.

The truth, however, is that Buhari was not saying anything new. Successive governments in the country since the First Republic have always vowed to eliminate corruption from the polity while every military coup since Nzeogwu was justified by accusing the ousted regime of massive corruption.

As it was in the beginning

On January 15, 1966, a group of five majors led by Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu truncated the First Republic in a bloody coup, accusing the civilian regime in the country of widespread corruption.

In his maiden broadcast on Radio Nigeria, Kaduna announcing the coup, Nzeogwu said, “The aim of the Revolutionary Council is to establish a strong united and prosperous nation, free from corruption and internal strife.”

Nzeogwu went on to warn that bribery or corruption, embezzlement, looting, among a long list of other offences, were all punishable by death sentence.

Though Nzeogwu and his fellow coup-makers never got to rule the country, that coup marked the beginning of military encroachment into Nigerian politics. The country would thereafter grope through 13 long and dark years of military dictatorship led by men who proved to be more corrupt than the civilian regime they ousted.

The military administrations of Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi and Murtala Muhammed were short-lived. But the long reign of Yakubu Gowon (1966-1975) and Olusegun Obasanjo’s three-year rule (1976-1979) recorded cases of massive corruption.

For instance, the celebrated case of cement import racket, in which officials of the Defence Ministry and the Central Bank of Nigeria were accused of falsifying ships manifestos and inflating the amount of cement to be purchased, happened under the ‘watchful’ eyes of Gowon, who was seen as too weak to fight the corrupt wolves surrounding his government. Similarly, under the Obasanjo regime, during which major projects like building of new refineries, laying of pipelines, expansion of the national shipping and airlines, hosting of the Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), among others, were carried out, most of these projects were seen as conduits for siphoning of public funds as well as enrichment of party loyalists. There were also the land grab issue under the Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) initiative using the instrumentality of the Land Use Decree, the ITT scandals which Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti sang about (remember International Thief-Thief), and, indeed, a certain $2.8 billion that allegedly grew wings and flew out of the Midland Bank, London account of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

The Shehu Shagari civilian administration which took over from the military in 1979 reeked of pervasive corruption. It was during this period that some federal buildings went into flames following investigations into the finances of the officials working in the buildings. The notorious rice import licence scandal also happened during this era.

Indeed, it was during this time that Chinua Achebe wrote The Trouble with Nigeria (1983), in which he stated that “corruption in Nigeria has passed the alarming and entered the fatal stage; and Nigeria will die if we keep pretending that she is only slightly indisposed”.

Referring to a story in the National Concord of May 16, 1983 with the headline “Fraud at P&T”, Achebe quoted the then Federal Minister of Communication, Audu Ogbe, as revealing that the Federal Government was losing N50 million every month as salaries to non-existent workers.

“In the course of one year then Nigeria loses N600 million in this particular racket…With N600 million Nigeria could build two more international airports like Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos; or if r are not keen on more airports the money could buy us three refineries; or build us a dual express motorway from Lagos to Kaduna; or pay the salary of 10,000 workers on grade level 01 for forty years,” Achebe wrote.

He also drew attention to an editorial in The Daily Times of the same day, titled “The Fake Importers”, which highlighted “a story of Nigerian importers who having applied for and obtained scarce foreign exchange from the Central bank ostensibly to pay for raw materials overseas, leave the money in their banks abroad and ship to Lagos containers of mud and sand”.

When Buhari wrested power from Shagari through a military coup on December 31, 1983, he said in his broadcast on January 1, 1984 that “corruption has become so pervasive and intractable that a whole ministry has been created to stem it”.

“While corruption and indiscipline have been associated with our state of under-development, these two evils in our body-politic have attained unprecedented height in the past few years. The corrupt, inept and insensitive leadership in the last four years has been the source of immorality and impropriety in our society,” he said.

Yet, when Ibrahim Babangida took over the reins of power in a military coup in August 1985, he told the nation that “events today indicate that most of the reasons which justified the military takeover of government from the civilians still persist”.

“When in December 1983, the former military leadership, headed by Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, assumed the reins of government, its accession was heralded in the history of this country. With the nation at the mercy of political misdirection and on the brink of economic collapse, a new sense of hope was created in the minds of every Nigerian,” Babangida said in his August 27, 1985 broadcast to the nation.

“Since January 1984, however, we have witnessed a systematic denigration of that hope. It was stated then that mismanagement of political leadership and a general deterioration in the standard of living, which had subjected the common man to intolerable suffering, were the reasons for the intervention. Nigerians have since then been under a regime that continued with those trends,” he said.

One scandal involving the Buhari military regime that has refused to go away is the controversial issue of 53 suitcases. The story goes that in 1984, the Buhari regime announced a change of Nigeria’s currency and ordered all luggage entering or leaving the country to be searched to ensure no currency was being smuggled. One writer sums it thus, "The 53 suitcases saga arose in 1984 during the currency change exercise ordered by the Buhari junta when it ordered that every case arriving the country should be inspected irrespective of the status of the person behind such. The 53 suitcases were, however, ferried through the Murtala Muhammed Airport without a customs check by soldiers allegedly at the behest of Major Mustapha Jokolo, the then aide-de-camp to Gen. Buhari. Atiku was at that time the Area Comptroller of Customs in charge of the Murtala Muhammed Airport."

But it was during the regime of Ibrahim Babangida (IBB) that corruption was legalized and upgraded to the unenviable status of a state policy. Drug dealing, money laundering, advance fee fraud (419) and other financial crimes as well as routine disbursement of vehicles and cash gifts to earn loyalty became the order of the day. The IBB era saw the emergence of a new crop of extremely wealthy Nigerians, including military officers, without a discernible source of income. Many of them were “IBB Boys”, a euphemistic term for those whom the Minna, Niger State-born general used as fronts for his dirty deals. But the biggest scandal of the era was the missing $12.4 billion Gulf War oil windfall which has remained unaccounted for till this day.

The Sani Abacha junta (1993-1998) was a defining moment for military dictatorship in Nigeria and the regime took official corruption to new heights. After Abacha’s sudden death in 1998, investigations uncovered loots amounting to several billions in foreign currencies scattered across banks in world capitals.

As recent as 2013, it was reported that the Federal Government recovered a total of €22.5 million from the confiscation on money laundered by Abacha, while a total of €175 million was also recovered from the Abacha family following a confiscation order by the Supreme Court of Liechtenstein. This was besides about $1 billion voluntarily returned to the Federal Government in 1999 by members of the Abacha family and some of their accomplices, another $1 billion (out of the $1.1 billion that had been identified, traced and frozen) the Abacha family agreed to return to the Obasanjo administration in 2002, the sum of $700 million in several Swiss banks which the Swiss government said had been returned as at December 2012, another $640 million that was frozen, among numerous others, both discovered and undiscovered.

Even though the Abdusalami Abubakar administration was short-lived (June 1998-May 1999), there are suspicions that the now white-bearded general took great advantage of the pandemonium in the country to enrich himself and members of his inner circle. His regime is also implicated in the major Halliburton scandal.

The PDP years, 1999-2015

The 16 years the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) occupied Nigeria’s presidency have been aptly described as “the years of locusts and caterpillars” due to the widespread corruption the country witnessed in those years. From Olusegun Obasanjo to Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to Goodluck Jonathan, the story was the same. Though the Obasanjo administration set up the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), which has a mission “to rid Nigeria of corruption through lawful enforcement and preventive measures”, as tools to fight against corruption in the country, the agencies turned out to be tools for witch-hunting political opponents.

The administration itself was mired in corruption’s messy mud. Cases of corruption under Obasanjo include the KBR and Siemens bribery scandals, Transcorp shares scandal, the huge billions that went down the drain in the power sector reforms and refurbishment of oil refineries, among several others.

From the year 2000 to 2014, Nigeria ranked in the league of most corrupt countries in the world based on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, only making slight improvements and relapsing to the bottom rung along the way.

The Yar’Adua administration, though quite brief, had its own baggage of corruption scandals, but it was the Jonathan administration that redefined official corruption in the country.

Under Jonathan, there were allegations of unremitted funds by the NNPC, the $250 million BMW purchase by the then aviation minister, the trillion-naira petrol subsidy scam, the Malibu Oil International scandal, among several others. But the most stunning thing about corruption under the Jonathan regime was the impunity and brazenness of it all and the president’s inability or unwillingness to rein in the greed of the hawks within his cabinet.

Indeed, in his letter to the then President Jonathan entitled “Before it is too late”, Obasanjo said: “As Head of Government, the buck of the performance and non-performance stops on your table and let nobody tell you anything to the contrary. Most of our friends and development partners are worried and they see what we pretend to cover up. They are worried about issue of security internally and on our coastal waters including heavy oil theft, alias bunkering and piracy. They are worried about corruption and what we are doing or not doing about it. Corruption has reached the level of impunity. It is also necessary to be mindful that corruption and injustice are fertile breeding ground for terrorism and political instability.

“And if you are not ready to name, shame, prosecute and stoutly fight against corruption, whatever you do will be hollow. It will be a laughing matter.”

Since the inauguration of the Buhari administration in May 2015, several new allegations of corruption have emerged against the Jonathan government, and some key officials of the Jonathan government as well as PDP members are currently being detained or investigated over allegations of corrupt practices and misappropriation of fund, the most prominent being the $2.1 billion arms deal involving the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki. Indeed, the Buhari administration, which actually claimed that the Jonathan government left behind an empty treasury, has used what it terms “massive looting of the treasury” under Jonathan to justify its own ineptitude.

Buhari’s anti-corruption fight

There has been so much noise about the Buhari administration’s fight against corruption. Though the jury is still out on the sincerity or otherwise of the anti-graft war, which is one of the three cardinal points on which the administration hinged its campaign, analysts have observed that the way the war is going, there are signs that the Buhari administration won’t achieve any milestone but may end up more corrupt than those before it.

The analysts say apart from the hullabaloo and media trials of those being alleged of corrupt practices, there is neither real investigation nor prosecution going on. They also allege that the Buhari presidency is shielding corrupt members of the ruling APC while witch-hunting members of the opposition PDP. Specifically, they point to the harsh treatment meted out to Sambo Dasuki, Olisa Metuh and other officials of the Jonathan government which contradicts the kid-glove handling of the allegations of misconduct involving the Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, and Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau.

The analysts also accuse the Buhari government of nepotism, a form of corruption, especially in his appointments of person to key government offices. His appointments have been skewed heavily in favour of his kinsmen, mainly Northern Muslims.

Why corruption thrives

Among numerous reasons why corruption thrives in Nigeria, analysts believe the most striking is the total absence of any form of deterrence. Though there are anti-graft/anti-corruption laws in the country, analysts believe that because these laws are not implemented to the letter or at all, the incentives to be corrupt outweigh the disincentives. As such, corruption continues to thrive in spite of existing anti-corruption laws because there is no fear of consequences. And this has been the situation since independence.

“Although Nigeria is without any shadow of doubt one of the most corrupt nations in the world, there has not been one high public officer in the twenty-three years of our independence who has been made to face the music for official corruption,” Achebe wrote in 1983.

“And so, from fairly timid manifestations in the 1960s, corruption has grown bold and ravenous, as with each succeeding regime, our public servants have become more reckless and blatant,” he wrote.

What Buhari should do

In a report, “Impact of Corruption on Nigeria's Economy”, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) estimates that “corruption in Nigeria could cost up to 37% of GDP by 2030 if it’s not dealt with immediately”.

“This cost is equated to around $1,000 per person in 2014 and nearly $2,000 per person by 2030. The boost in average income that we estimate, given the current per capita income, can significantly improve the lives of many in Nigeria,” it adds.

Indeed, not a few Nigerians believe in Buhari’s personal integrity and moral rectitude, though this is still a matter of conjecture as recent events have shown. However, assuming but not conceding that Buhari is personally incorruptible, what about those in his government and party, many of who, in any case, are former members of the PDP and served in different capacities in PDP governments at both the federal and state levels between 1999 and 2007?

Moreover, as Achebe pointed out, helpless integrity has always failed to solve the problem of rampant corruption.

“As we have sunk more and more deeply into the quagmire [of corruption], we have been ‘blessed’ with a succession of leaders who are said to possess impeccable personal integrity but unfortunately are surrounded by sharks and crooks,” Achebe wrote.

Assuming this is the situation Buhari currently finds himself, what must the president do now?

In The Trouble with Nigeria, Achebe admonished the then President Shagari thus: “But to initiate change the President of this country must take, and be seen to take, a decisive first step of ridding his administration of all persons on whom the slightest wind of corruption and scandal has blown. When he can summon up the courage to do that, he will find himself grown overnight to such stature and authority that he will become Nigeria's leader, not just its president. Only then can he take on and conquer corruption in the nation.”

This admonition, offered 33 years ago, may well be more relevant today than when it was first given. And indeed, this is the path President Buhari must urgently take if his anti-corruption crusade won’t amount to “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing” (apologies to Shakespeare). If he looks closely, there may even be massive corruption going on right now under his very nose.