Lessons, as corruption fights back By Ropo Sekoni

The complaints about Buhari’s travels; his slowness to take action; his unusual reticence about issues that require proper verification; his attempts to take loans to fund the 2016 budget; etc., may be acting like the character of Achebe’s fiction who finds refuge in cynicism, when what is needed is forthrightness 


The people had become even more cynical than their leaders and were apathetic into the bargain….Let them eat, ‘was the people’s opinion…It may be your turn to eat tomorrow.—Chinua Achebe in A Man of the People
Serious-minded people would have to be foolhardy or over sanguine to expect corruption not to fight back with vigour in a country that has luxuriated in venality for decades. There was no time to learn lessons from General Buhari’s war against corruption thirty years ago: he was quickly removed from the scene before he could gather his weapons to prosecute the war.  Now as a civilian president, who has sworn to make the fight against corruption the core of his manifesto, he and official and unofficial members of his army against corruption should start learning lessons from the ongoing war to protect the country’s commonwealth.

One year is not too short for political officers, technocrats, and party leaders who believe that corruption is inimical to the progress of the society to know that President Buhari cannot fight this big war by himself. Some cynics are already saying that Buhari is a one-man army against corruption. It was understandable to attempt to fight corruption with one loyal assistant that Tunde Idiagbon was in 1984 under a military system. In a democratic system, the political and social environment allows for plural voices including the voice of those the regime of change has set out to discipline: venal men and women in political and bureaucratic power.
Clearly, the forces against the war on corruption are strong and well organised to deflect attention from the importance of such war or pooh-pooh the efforts that go into the various battles so far. Many people calling for speed on the economic front are forgetting why the economy is in its current parlous state: looting of the treasury by those charged to protect it in the past. Those who use social media to give President Buhari such appellations as Baba Go-Slow, Deaf and Dumb, Johnnie Walker, etc., are more interested in distracting him from the real problem that had caused all the economic problems they want Buhari to solve in a jiffy. Almost invariably, most of such critics of Buhari speak on behalf of: a few people that may have looted the nation’s purse for personal use or to create overseas savings for their children. It is reassuring that Mr. President has chosen to ignore those critics; otherwise, he would not be able to achieve anything about fighting corruption, an area that is certain to make many politicians and civil servants who have benefited from the governance style of the past uncomfortable.
Contrary to popular expectation in a government dominated by members of the party of change, there seem to be members of the ruling party who are ready to shout down those bent on expunging corruption from the country’s public service. Otherwise, the majority in both houses of the National Assembly should have created a better working condition for the president’s fight against enemies of the state who have pretended for long to be servants of the state.
Ironically, there are ordinary citizens, like the ones captured in Achebe’s A Man of the People. In a fictive counterpart of Nigeria mired in political and bureaucratic corruption in its infancy in the 1960s, Achebe’s narrator, cautioned those calling for morality in public service: “Let them eat…It may be your turn to eat tomorrow.” The complaints about Buhari’s travels; his slowness to take action; his unusual reticence about issues that require proper verification; his attempts to take loans to fund the 2016 budget; etc., may be acting like the character of Achebe’s fiction who finds refuge in cynicism, when what is needed is forthrightness. The subtext to many of the complaints being heard about Buhari, including those from the main opposition party reads more like finding ways to demonise the main man behind the war against corruption.
Despite efforts by opposition members and some misguided ruling party members to make the fight against corruption look like overkill, the president and agents of change in his ruling party should listen to public opinion on the imperative to wage the war against decades of bad governance that has brought the country to its knees to the point of having to look for loans to repair its economy. Citizens are getting the impression that the government is more interested in catching just agents of stupendous corruption. Without doubt, identifying, prosecuting, and punishing big men and women who, to borrow Achebe’s phrase in A Man of the People, “have stolen enough for the owner not to notice” will help to serve as deterrence to would-be corrupt men and women in our public service. But the war on corruption needs to be taken to areas where the amount looted may not be humongous enough to be given names with the suffix of gate, such as Dasukigate, Badehgate, Amosugate, Oronsayegate, etc.
For example, in what looks like a minor crime: the existence of ghost workers, citizens need to be reassured that the mania of having ghosts at every level of government is given the attention it deserves. Discovering existence of ghost workers is not new in the polity. Every government since the return to civil rule had found ghosts in our MDAs and had announced the removal of such ghosts from the payroll. No government has been able to give the names of those involved in hiring and paying ghosts. It is remarkable that the new minister of finance has not wasted time in dealing with this menace. But citizens need to be assured that those responsible for hiring ghost workers, paying them, and even giving them tenure-track appointments are identified by name and position. It may not be possible to identify the ghosts themselves (since ghosts have no identity), but it should not be hard for the current government to identify those who receive the salaries paid into the bank accounts of ghosts and those who assisted in opening checking or saving accounts for ghosts and paying money into such accounts. Once identified, such people should be made to return the money paid into such illegal accounts, before arraigning them in what may be an interminable court process.
Anti-corruption agents in all MDAs and federal institutions should pay attention to illegal use of public funds. I sent my assistant to buy me some roasted plantain a few days ago. The paper in which the Booli was wrapped contained information that should be of interest to those in the ruling party who are serious about stemming or ending corruption in public life. The wrapping paper contained important information about a federal college of education in the Southwest. It reads like minutes of the council of the college in question. The college had bought bags of rice at Christmas time many years ago for local chiefs, ranging from the Kabiyesi of the town to major and minor chiefs. Some of the funds given to a federal college of education to improve teaching and learning had been used to buy bags of rice for traditional chiefs to eat. If this culture exists (as it must) in other tertiary institutions owned by federal and state governments, resources that could have been used to expand the frontier of knowledge in the country must be used habitually to maintain the stomach infrastructure of parasites in different parts of the country.
Citizens should not leave the fight against corruption to President Buhari and his supporters. It is not just a Buhari/APC war; it is the war of men and women of conscience in our society. More than anything else, it is the stridency of public opinion that can assist the fight against corruption in the land. Like the war against Boko Haram’s terrorists, intelligence is of the essence in the war against thieves of state.