Ekweremadu’s Recipe for Effective Anti-corruption Crusade
Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, at a lecture at the University of Ibadan, spoke on how to effectively tackle corruption in Nigeria. Ademola Babalola who covered the event reports
It was late Hon. Adegoke Adelabu Penkelemesi in his book ‘Africa in Ebullition’ who said ‘truth stands no chance of receiving an audience unless it is clothed in fashion, adumbrated in novelty, adorned in sensationalism and enthroned on the pedestal of originality.’ These words by Adelabu unassailably fits into the position canvassed by the Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu at the fourth national public service lecture of the University of Ibadan Alumni Association (UIAA) penultimate Friday. In the lecture entitled: “Federalism and the legal framework for combating corruption in Nigeria”, Ekweremadu, in his thoughtprovoking 69-page lecture, alluded to the fact that his no-holdsbarred position on the matter would raise issues and concerns that will provoke further debates about the best way to fight and win the war against corruption in Nigeria.
Sounding a note of warning, Ekweremadu, a serving Deputy Senate President of the most populous black nation in the world for a consecutive third time having been elected by colleagues for the post in 2007, 2011 and 2015 said “Ignoring the concerns raised in this paper is dangerous and a sure path to chaos. I pray that God will give us the wisdom and the courage to do the right thing.”
That corruption fight in Nigeria has always been on the front burner of Nigeria’s public discourse is a gospel truth. Ekweremadu recalled the January 15, 1966 coup address by Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu wherein he premised the military takeover on corruption. In it, Nzeogwu said: “Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 percent; those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or VIPs at least, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international circles, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds.”
Ekweremadu posited that it gives cause for worry that although the statement was made 51 years ago, it sounds as though it was made just last night. And this is despite the fact that successive regimes, military or civilian, had always premised the necessity for change in government on the need to exorcise corruption from our system.
Arising therefrom, Senator Ekweremadu asked rhetorically thus: Is corruption in the Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of every Nigerian? Is corruption inherent in our culture? Is it impossible to eradicate corruption in Nigeria?
Without expecting a response from any one in particular at a capacity filled Trenchard Hall of the Premier University of Ibadan where members of the National Assembly, academia, students, politicians, policy formulators and general public with quantum of scores of supporters from Ibadan and his Enugu home state, had gathered as audience, Ekweremadu retorted, “Of course, corruption is neither in our DNA nor inherent in our culture. The histories of our various tribes are those of a people who are hardworking and outlawed any form of stealing and corruption. In fact, anticorruption and anti-crime were intricately embedded in our religious practices that no one dared cover up or spare the corrupt and criminal, irrespective of how closely related.”
He continued, “doing so, our people believed, attracted the immediate wrath of the gods and goddesses of the land. In Igbo land, for instance, thieves were stripped naked, disgraced, and paraded around the community along with the items they stole. In some instances, such persons were banished or sold into slavery as never-do-wells to ensure they did not procreate their type.
“In fact, people whose ways were deemed not to be straight were usually put through oaths or even submit themselves to oaths before the deities to affirm their innocence and clear their names. Otherwise, they would find it difficult to take wives or get husbands from within the town or neighighbouring communities because peoples’ backgrounds, especially the integrity of their linage, counted so much in the choice of a husband or wife.”
Underscoring the bad place of corruptive tendencies in Nigeria, he said there were related practices among the various peoples of the country, which underscore the fact that our inherent value system is consistent with integrity and uprightness. These values also formed the basis for respect, recognition, and honours, such as chieftaincy titles. Even until recently, people avoided families whose source of wealth was suspect, while some mothers would not tie the wrapper sent to them by their sons or daughters in the townships until they had come home to explain the source of their money. People were also content with their modest achievements and obscene wealth was never celebrated because our cultures are predicated on the platitude that a good name is better than silver and gold.
On what triggers corruption in Nigeria, Ekweremadu maintained thus: “Loss of values and inefficient reorientation programme on morality and values; The culture of kickback; Weak Legal System; Social safety net built around the extended family system; Lack of social safety net for the aged; Absence of Fiscal federalism and Over-centralisation of the anti-corruption efforts.
Tracing successive leadership efforts at curtailing corruption in Nigeria, he said, “it will be unkind to assume that successive governments have been resting on their oars. On the contrary, so much effort has been invested in the war against corruption. I will just highlight a few of them, namely: Military coups; Long prison terms by military tribunals; Setting up of anti-graft agencies; Provisions in the Criminal Code and Penal Code; Reorientation; Media trial and anti-corruption campaigns.”
As a way forward, he canvassed for Decentralisation of federal anti-corruption agencies; Establishment of State anti-corruption agencies; Domestication of anti-graft laws; Fiscal federalism; Decentralised policing; State orientation agencies and State social intervention/ security.
Drawing from Biblical experience of the origin of corruption and how it is inherent in human nature, Ekweremadu said, “we recall in the book of Genesis, how Laban, Jacobs uncle and father-in-law cheated him after many years of agreed service by giving him the physically challenged Leah rather than Rachel. In the book of Matthew, Judas Iscariot collected bribe to betray his master, while in the book of Mark, Zacheaus is known to be a corrupt tax collector before he met Christ.
On why corruption is not an exclusive preserve of Nigeria, he drew audience attention to the alarming rate of corruption elsewhere. He said “From Britain to the United States of America, South Korea, and Brazil, presidents and other high government officials have been convicted of corruption. The difference is the level of corruption and the people’s attitude to the menace. In 2016, the Transparency International ranked Nigeria 136 out of 176 countries it rated on its Corruption Perception Index. In the same vein, the World Bank placed Nigeria in 169th position on its Ease of Doing Business ranking. It shows we have a long way to go and a lot of hard work to put in.
“While it is easy to point accusing fingers at the governing elites in public and private sectors, we must all embark on individual soul searching from the highest to the lowest rung of the social-economic stratum. From the clerks who would never be able to trace your file unless you grease their palms, to security men who would not let you in or claim that oga no dey if you are not the type that parts with kola each time you visit, the penchant for corrupt enrichment is definitely not the exclusive malaise of the rich and influential.
“Procurement managers in public and private establishments who have mastered the art of contract inflation and over-pricing; traditional rulers who confer chieftaincy titles on known criminals and corrupt persons; religious leaders and institutions that honour the corrupt are also as guilty as those highly influential persons who clear billions with a stroke of the pen or public office holders who cart away public resources under the cover of Security Vote.”
Quoting Section 15(5) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), he said the, “the State shall abolish all corrupt practices and abuse of power.” The deputy senate president however noted that,, “the arduous responsibility of abolishing all corrupt practices and abuse of power can never be possible without the right political will and cooperation by Nigerians. The political will to fight corruption must be blind to political affiliation, friendship, ethnicity, religion, and family. It must not only be immune to selectiveness, parochialism, nepotism, and double standards, but must be able to command the goodwill, support, and legitimacy required to win the battle.”
Speaking further he saide, “Strong, independent, decentralized, and impartial anti-corruption agencies operating within clearly established rules and tradition will give hope to all citizens, elicit public support and offer a challenge to public servants to adopt honesty and probity as their guiding principles.”
Ekweremdu maintained that Nigeria needs and rightly deserves anti-corruption model that will discharge conscientiously, efficiently and honestly the responsibility of attacking corruption.
“We need systemic changes that will remove the activities of anti-corruption agencies from the shifting sands and ever changing moods of powers that be and place them on the solid bedrock of the law where personal animosity, vengeance and recrimination, selective targeting of political opponents and vocal critics of government will find no sanctuary”, Ekweremadu submitted.