Looters’ List: My Corruption Smells Better than Yours
My immediate reaction to the looters’ list is that the All Progressives Congress (APC) led federal government has reengaged its worn out propaganda gear that shot it into power in 2015. By anchoring it on corruption, the government has cleared all remaining doubts about its rabidly politicized war against the hydra-headed monster ravaging the country. It has thrown away every shred of credibility and neutrality about its professed commitment to fight corruption and rescue the country from the crutches of wanton theft of public funds by past and serving public officials. President Muhammadu Buhari has shown that contrary to his May 29, 2015 quotable avowal that he belongs to nobody and belongs to everybody, his government actually runs on a discriminatory template in the fight against corruption.
This point was copiously made by Senator Shehu Sani, a senior member of the President’s party, when he said Buhari applies deodorant when it comes to corruption involving those that ‘belong’ to his tribe of favourites and deploys insecticide when it relates to those who fall in the category of the disfavoured. That metaphorical anecdote by the Kaduna Senator has continued to be reinforced by several acts of commission and omission by the government. The grass-cutting former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Babachir Lawal, who was indicted by the Senate in a multi-million contracts scam involving relief for millions of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the North-east part of the country destroyed by boko haram terrorism, was rewarded with a safe passage to go and enjoy his ‘loot’. After several months of a worrisome indecision by President Buhari in spite of a damning investigation led by the Vice President, Yemi Osibanjo, Mr. Lawal was only eased out of office and no charges have been brought against him contrary to widespread expectations. Mr. Ayo Oke, who was sacked as Director General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) following the Ikoyi-gate multi-billion naira scandal, and was indicted alongside the former SGF by the Osibanjo panel, is yet to be prosecuted. The last heard of that was a botched attempt to arrest Mr. Oke as a result of a shameful clash of security agents of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and personnel of the NIAwho provided state cover for their former boss. Curiously, neither Babachir Lawal nor Ayo Oke made Mr. Lai Mohammed’s list of looters. Maybe they will make subsequent batches.
Just like Abdulrasheed Maina, the notorious pension funds administrator-cum-investigator who was smuggled into the country and reinstated into public service with a promotion in spite of an arrest warrant issued by INTERPOL for a multi-billion fraud, should be expected to make subsequent lists. Until and unless the Mainas and Lawals of Buhari’s touch-not gang of favourites are made to face legal prosecution and subsequently named and shamed appropriately, whatever lists the government bandies about can at best be regarded as distraction from the real challenge of tackling corruption. The administration has chosen to politicize its weak and fumbling war against graft and render perpetually inchoate whatever half-baked measures it has been passing off as attempts to rein in this fundamental obstacle to national growth and development.
The government has deviated from the challenge of offering an appropriate, cogent and mobilizing response to recent revelations that corruption has increased under its watch. The latest Transparency International Rating on corruption which saw the country take a slide down from where it was in a previous rating ought to worry a government that ab initio made the war against corruption a cardinal focus. The rating released in February this year, placed Nigeria in the 28th position out of 100 countries in its Corruption Perception Index (CPI) while the country ranked 148 out of 180 nations surveyed. This was a good 12 places below where it was in 2016 when it ranked 136th and with a CPI of 27/100. Instead of ruing this regrettable slide in a respected global ranking which saw smaller African nations like Botswana, Rwanda, Namibia and even Kenya perform better, the administration not only unleashed its attack dogs to pooh-pooh the rating in the media but also proceeded officially to pick holes in the report and pretended that the verdict was of no consequence. Astatement by Garba Shehu, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, had said the Transparency International report was misleading and unfair in its assessment of the administration. “Anybody who knows where Nigeria was coming from would not believe that corruption is worse under the Buhari administration,” the statement had said, adding: “We wonder where they got their facts from. In the end, the whole episode may turn out to be just a political distraction, given the strong views some of the TI’s patrons have expressed against the Buhari administration.”
If it is disturbing that the government chose to ignore Transparency International, it was baffling that it has failed to holistically address the damning report of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which not only indicated that corruption was on the increase but identified specific agencies and departments that scored high in the ignominious rating. The NBS National Corruption Report made in conjunction with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) revealed that a whopping N400billion is paid out as bribes annually in Nigeria. The report which covered the period between June 2015 and May 2016 indicated that almost a third of Nigerian adults paid bribes to public officials for one administrative service or the other. The Judiciary and the Nigeria Police Force were named as frontline offenders. It is notable that this report reflected the peak period of Buhari’s acclaimed body language which administration officials claimed was impacting positively on the war against corruption.
This reminds one of the pungent jab against Goodluck Jonathan by Aminu Tambuwal, then Speaker of the House of Representatives and incumbent Governor of Sokoto State, who charged that the body language of the then President was encouraging corruption. The opposition (now in power) latched on that famous labeling and pilloried Jonathan to no end until they successfully hounded him out of power in 2015. But fast-forward to the present era: Can we safely say Buhari’s body language is discouraging corruption? What would Tambuwal say about the Buhari war on corruption today? How would defenders of the President describe the recall from suspension and immediate reinstatement of the Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf, by Buhari when the official was still under investigation for alleged N900billion corruption?
How the APC administration finds it conspiratorially convenient to ignore such empirical examples of increase in corrupt practices under its watch and instead prefers to engage in the shenanigans of which political party has (more) corrupt elements in its fold, is to say the least befuddling. In any case, the alleged looters’ list released in two batches by the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, is not only contemptuous of several judicial processes involving some of those listed but also makes a mockery of the constitutionally guaranteed right of being innocent until proven guilty. The government has chosen instead to declare individuals guilty until proven innocent! By subverting the rule of law and demeaning the judiciary through the contemptuous publication of its list of looters, the administration is betraying a desperation to score cheap political points even if at the expense of very important fabrics of democracy.