IN DEFENCE OF PRESIDENT BUHARI’S WAR AGAINST CORRUPTION
- Prof. Hassan Saliu
Different platforms have been seized by Nigerians and their foreign friends to run commentaries and series of interviews on the commendable war that President Buhari has been waging against the destroyer of our nation-corruption. While the avalanche of opinions seems to raise issues with the scope of the war and the manner of waging it, a few others have penned support for the war. Most of the commentators in their rush to pass a judgment on the efforts have forgotten that the President made the war against corruption one of his campaign promises when he was vying for the office. This intervention is therefore supportive of the efforts while noting that some of the limitations that are inherent in the strategy of fighting the war against graft so far adopted are overshadowing the consensus for the need for it.
I begin with the premise that if any cancerous worm must be tackled or uprooted from Nigeria at this point in time, it is the tendency by our public officials to elevate their own comfort at the expense of the generality of the citizens which they claim to be serving.
To be sure, corruption is pervasive to the extent that one will be correct to assert that it represents the main issue that has been retarding development in Nigeria and responsible for her present glooming picture that finds expression in non-payment of salaries to states’ workers, collapsed infrastructure, resort to monthly borrowing to pay the salaries of federal workers and the thorough-bred negative image that the nation has across the globe. A lot of our institutions and the personalities running them are drenched in corruption and only a few of them have accepted that it is morally wrong to short change the nation in various fields of human endavour. Most of our contemporary leaders do not give a damn on the high level of mismanagement and stealing that has taken place and consequently earned our nation some level of scorn in the international system . Robert Mugabe, a couple of years ago warned his country men and women not to descend to the unenviable level of Nigeria where corruption defines her existence. Although President Mugabe and his government are not easily a model in transparency, the point should be noted that corruption is one of the export commodities of Nigeria which impact is being felt in China, Angola, USA, Britain and other places including our neighbours in west Africa. Peace keeping operations and other forms of rendering support to other nations have been invaded by corrupt tendencies and proven cases of graft, among other socially unacceptable behaviours.
Only recently some hefty amounts of money meant for arms purchase have been pocketed by some privileged Nigerians, while many of our fellow citizens have been turned into refugees in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and other places with over two million others rendered homeless and turned into Internally Displaced Persons on an account of stealing by the nation’s leaders in all sectors of the political economy. As unfortunate as the situation is, some other Nigerians have found comfort in diverting resources from the needs of the Internally Displaced Persons to personal ends. Costs of contracts have been criminally increased even in the face of the new Procurement Policy. Projects are abandoned, if executed at all. Our politicians with their civil servant collaborators have become special people in terms of their itching fingers. The initial suspected padding of the 2016 budget by the House of Representatives which has now been confirmed and the congested table of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other anti-graft agencies on cases of corruption traceable to the nation’s elites should clear any doubts on the entrenched nature of corruption in our country.
It is therefore not surprising that the Buhari government, against all odds and pressures, is marching on in confronting the menace. Some observers have taken a swipe on the President as the only person who is talking about corruption at times to the displeasure of some other privileged Nigerians who think that as an entrenched culture, he needs not lose any sleep about it. One does not feel that this is necessarily a drawback. Any reform agenda on proper public conduct especially in our own circumstance must start with the leader based on the strong presence of the public sector in our lives.
The history of countries that have made breakthroughs in changing their conditions of existence positively tells us of patriotic leaders who charted the course of rectitude for others to follow. Our situation cannot be different from others. That some people who are serving in Buhari’s government are hand in glove with corruption is a reality but we are talking about a national crusade that definitely possesses the potential of being contagious. All the rough edges stand the chance of being smoothened out as long as we go along the path of rectitude. I think what is important is for the citizens to be prepared to be whistle blowers in exposing such people by providing credible evidences to support their claims.
The All Progressive Party (APC) may not be made up of saints but the most important thing is that the Captain of its ship is ready to lead the fight. Some mistakes may be made as customary of any crusade on a scale we are talking about but the most important thing is that the war is progressing and the necessary corrective measures will surely be taken along the line.
I see the revelations coming out of the National Assembly as a confirmation of the level of financial recklessness in the country and how close-knit the people involved in it are. The issue coming out now notwithstanding whether our law books capture padding or not as a crime indicates that the war against corruption is succeeding. Consciousness, caution and more importantly, the integrity of the President seems to begin to have some salutary effect in the country.
There is also the perspective of the absence of credible agenda that enjoys the support of everyone. My view on this is that it is utopia to expect all Nigerians to agree and be counted on the war that feeds the opaque obscene wealth of our privileged few, upon which some dark forces, according to Ibrahim Magu, are working hard to derail. On an occasion like this, people have to be whipped into the line using the extant laws and processes to tame the greed level of most Nigeria’s leaders. This is precisely what the President is doing to a large extent.
There have been arguments that the war is slow. Mr. President has an answer for this. Other arms of government are not on the same page with him on the issue even in the face of the reforms carried out on the Justice System that has no tolerance for untenable adjournments and delays by senior lawyers.
Quite unfortunately, we still experience sloppiness on the part of some judges, leading the President to publicly lament the clog that the judiciary is still constituting to the on-going war against corruption. Can we also blame the President for allowing the due process of the law to be followed? One can therefore observe that the network of corruption in our country is quite expansive and it therefore constitutes a drag on the anti-graft crusade as some institutions and individuals have been compromised and in the estimation of some people, beyond redemption.
Institutions are good and could be made effective under an ideal environment. Individuals however make institutions not the other way round. This explains why Magu is crushing obstacles to efficiency that is raising the profile of EFCC more than what was experienced under Lamorde as the head of the anti-grant agency. Ideas need to be developed and flourished and strong commitment by the highest political leadership needs to be shown before the heads of institutions can have the confidence to do their work.
Undoubtedly, the various institutions that are involved in the war against corruption will gain strength to perform better than they are currently doing if the political environment remains focused on the war. Judging from where we are coming from, there is no way the house can instantly be swept clean by mere existence of institutions without the concomitant level of political support to assure them especially the weak regime of law enforcement. Perhaps our analysts have not reconciled themselves with the possibility of compromise that makes Nigeria’s institutions to be highly susceptible and vulnerable to manipulation. With a lot of dirty money in circulation, effective supervision and firm political commitment are required.
On the issue of what have we gained from the war, my submission is that there are two crucial accomplishments. One, the recovery of over three trillion Naira from Nigerians who have plundered the treasury is crucial evidence that the war against corruption is alive and progressing. Two, the due care and consciousness that attend public matters these days are eloquent testimonies to the commendable efforts of Buhari’s government on arresting the killer of Nigeria, corruption. The critics of the government, no doubt, have their point when they argue that the war is not yet contagious enough as itching fingers even in government circles have not shown any fidelity to the avowed commitment of the president to combat corruption.
This author, however, believes that the fact that some officials of government are still deemed to be corrupt is not sufficient to berate the on -going efforts. Corruption is a deep business in the country. As such, finding one man that is still standing up to it is significant for our collective being. The demonstrated commitment of the president against public thievery will over time translate into no more hiding place for the yet unaffected Nigerians. The fact of his unwavering commitment to the crusade should not be lost on Nigerians. After all, it is not that our past leaders did not declare war against corruption, the missing link until recently was the demonstrated lack of political will to walk the talk.
There is another perspective one has identified with some commentators and analysts including some respected Nigerians who have argued that there is no need to look back in the war. What Nigerians wanted and still want is for Buhari to drop the idea of looking back into the corrupt cases of the past but rather to focus on the present and future. For this paper, this is untenable. Whatever the facts at the disposal of government should dictate its actions and it should not be sparing. What is the morality of arresting the infractors of the present while ignoring the parasites (to borrow Samora Machel’s word) of the past who prepared the ground for the new fortune diggers? A corrupt public official is a corrupt official irrespective of the time and space when he commits his crime. One agrees with President Buhari that we cannot build a nation where impurity of the past is not interrogated and swept under the carpet.
Is the war selective? I doubt the basis for this conclusion. If the concern is corruption and the thievery is at the federal level, it stands to reason to expect that the preponderance of people that would be investigated and charged to courts are going to be people who have access to public resources by virtue of them being members of the immediate past ruling party. That is not to suggest that if any member of the APC has violated the law, he should not be interrogated. One knows a few of them that are being tried despite being from the ruling party.
The war against graft anywhere is a difficult one as those who are involved in the act of corruption are always smart at covering their tracks and in resorting to primordial sentiments to confuse the general public especially now that there is economic hardship in the nation with the attendant high prices of food stuff and other essential goods and services that is not often appreciated by analysts who want quick fixes to resolving corruption cases.
Everything may be done by the prosecutor but the matter does not end there. The judicial arm also has a role to play. Therefore, failure to secure convictions should not be used to query the commitment of the government to tackle the incidence of corruption. There is however a sense in the argument on the need to beef up the level of preparations by the prosecution teams. From the reports, the prosecution processes require a major overall as government prosecutors are always overshadowed by the retinue of senior lawyers that have appeared for defendants in the on-going corruption cases.
Judging by the havocs that have been wrecked on our nation, the willingness with which the arrested and yet to be unarrested corrupt Nigerians are returning parts of their loot and the global perception of Nigeria as a fantastically corrupt nation, the Buhari government was right to have initiated the war against corruption. There abound to be mistakes based on the expansive environment for corrupt practices but with the active and robust civil society groups and citizenry, the government can be steered on the right part.
There is nothing wrong in the President being the arrowhead of the war. He is the most important factor if the anti-graft institutions must be effective and efficient in prosecuting the war against corruption. Without his own firm commitment to the war so far displayed, there would have been no chance of recovering the huge amount of the looted funds and the global acceptability even if token that the nation now enjoys in the international system. The President needs our encouragement in continuing with the war and on how to judiciously utilize the trillions of Naira that have been so far collected from Nigerians with looted funds. The alternative is to pressurize the president as some notable Nigerians have done to drop the idea of fighting corruption because it is hurting the privileged class. That direction will be quite dangerous for our nation in deep recession to contemplate.
Whatever is the level of overzealousness/weakness observed in waging the war against corruption through the legal process should be corrected while constitutionalism and the rule of law are seen to dominate the crusade. What I think is missing that tends to give substance to the arguments against the government in its war against corruption is the failure to develop a well- thought out public agenda or what both Professor Ibrahim Gambari and Mallam Adamu Ciroma have called priority areas that link the war against corruption to a wholesale economic blueprint on how to tackle the myriad of problems facing the nation.
Had it being in existence and appreciated by all, it would have connected the recovered funds to the critical felt needs of the people and that would have assured Nigerians that the efforts of government are being driven by the need to ameliorate their sufferings and wipe away their tears through the deployment of the recovered funds to attack essential issues of daily existence to force down the prices of goods and services. It is only by so doing that the government would begin to see more appreciation being developed for its deserving war against the killer of Nigeria, corruption.
As I was about to conclude this article, the disturbing issue of budget padding broke out essentially among co-travellers in the morally repressive resort of short changing Nigerians through the stealing of the commonwealth. A worrisome dimension has just been introduced into the imbroglio by the attitude of the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, a law maker who is giving the impression of being above the law and the controversial clean health of bill given to him by some aides of the president.
More than anything else, the war or battle (matter of semantics) against corruption has been somewhat tainted by the tendency to truncate the on-going investigations by the statement that the president did not sign the padded budget when the police and the EFFC are still investigating the case. The members who were involved in the act have spoken including the Speaker. His own quarrel is that Abdulmumini Jibrin is talking about an offence that is not among the list of crimes known to the country’s laws and as a legislator, no one can arrest or investigate him(one is aware of the modifications of his position on his trial and investigation). Surprisingly, the executive has constituted itself into a judge on the matter by clearing him of all misdemeanors. Are we then to believe Ghalli Na’abba’s thesis that budget padding is a collaborative undertaking between the legislature and the presidency?
My hunch is that there may be more to it than what we have come to know on the matter. There may be people out there who are using the name of the president to either erect a comfort zone or sustaining it for themselves, while hiding under his good name. The whole issue of budget padding is therefore a low point in the fight against corruption especially with the premature and disappointing interventions by the aides of the president to the effect that no evil has been done and the 2016 budget was not padded.
The expectation of Nigerians however is that a proper investigation of the allegations would be carried out and not the resort to cover up that is currently being suspected on the padding issue to shield the likely guilty ones. Notwithstanding, one still feels that given the level of damage that corruption has done to our nation that shows in the deepening financial crisis facing us, high prices of goods and services and the general perception of Nigeria by global actors as a corrupt nation, all pointing at poor development climate in the country, the war against corruption should go on, its tempo should be increased and the genuine concerns of the people addressed. It can only get better if we continue along the path.
It is unrealistic to expect a sudden jump from the prevalent corrupt environment we are in; where our foreign receipts are not enough for our imports, leading to growing the nation’s debt overhang to an environment where we can equal the standards set by certain countries on corruption that we have not succeeded in being their carbon copy in several other respects.

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