Buhari, APC And The Anti-Corruption Mantra (1I)

Nearly three months
after been sworn into office, President Muhammadu Buhari is yet to confront such small but far-reaching issues as having stadiums and barracks and highways named after Abacha, a man who has been certified by the world as an embodiment of corruption and whose loot continues to add to Nigeria’s GDP anytime some are repatriated. PMB is yet to apologize for his part in coupes in the past. He is yet to initiate a law to remove military dictators from the National Council of State and to withdraw their position and privileges as former Presidents or Heads of State. PMB’ s task is not made any easier by his past. He continues to carry the burden of his refusal to appear before the Oputa panel. He was above the law then. Surely there are some who will cite him as precedent to claim that Buhari as president cannot touch them.
In all of the above, PMB has not beingexposed for being corrupt by way of financial gratification. But stealing money is not the only measure of corruption. Indeed, as Graham Greene has noted in his classic, The Heart of the Matter, “They have been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart of a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered”.
Truth be told, if PMB were sincere in his fight against corruption in Nigeria, at least 90% of the nation’s elite will be in the net. Obasanjo’s presidential library will be renamed a corruption museum, IBB the godfather of corruption and chicanery will spend the rest of his days on earth at best under house arrest and will not be uttering a word of support about the current anti-corruption campaign. The most vociferous anti-corruption crusaders in the nation will forever be bowing their heads in shame. Pray, tell me, which senior advocate in Nigeria including Itsay Sagay would visit a State Governor and be given a luxury car with a small change of $20k for fuel will blink an eye? You can say the same for any other profession in Nigeria. As for the traditional institutions-chiefs, emirs, obas and ezes, collecting unmerited goodies from people in power is their forte.
In Nigeria’s military’s esprit de corps mandates that superior officers or officers with their hands on the till MUST “find their colleagues something” from time to time. The military will completely disintegrate if by some fiat you stopped this corrupt practice immediately. Like Nigeria, corruption is the foundation upon which our military is built. When the Police stand on the road and collect money from hapless bus drivers at gun point, we call it extortion instead of armed robbery. When Governor Amaechi boasted at his stakeholders meeting two days before the gubernatorial elections in April that the Police were now taking orders from him and that the election was done and dusted in APC’s favour, we could not detect a corrupt act. When he signed a law mandating the State to build and furnish for him a choice mansion in Abuja for his long-suffering for the Rivers people, we did not see corruption.
You may at this stage be wondering what the real import of this article is all about. Many would long have concluded that I am against the current anti-corruption drive of the PMB/APC administration. Far from it, I am of the firm belief that corruption in Nigeria is a monster that must be slain before we can join the road to progress as a nation. But that war can only be won when we first appreciate that corruption is grounded in Nigerian culture. Indeed this culture is warmly embraced by all the nationalities, tribes, tongues, religions and peoples of Nigeria. It is the one glue that has held this country together since independence. Until we accept this ugly part of us, everything we do in the name of fighting corruption will be a mirage.
In summary, one is constrained to advise PMB that sacking a thousand staff at NNPC will not eliminate corruption in that bastion of malfeasance. That is like shaving the hair. By the morning, more hair will grow. Tackle corruption from its roots, cut off or eliminate the symbols of corruption and you are on your way to winning the war and saving Nigeria from the embarrassment of this scourge. Finally permit me to end by once again quoting liberally from Graham Greene (op cited)- “In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers, if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love”. This is human nature. Overcoming it is what distinguishes a leader from a ruler.
Ejekwu, a lawyer, writes from Port Harcourt.

Bisi Ejekwu