Corruption beneficiaries, major clog in the wheel of anti-graft war – CACOL leader
Continuation…
Do you think these agencies have lived up to expectations as foolproof mechanisms of preventing corruption as they can be manipulated and distorted?
Well, I also alluded to that in my analysis earlier on. The first thing to do is to put all the safeguards into operation. It is like riding a bicycle; if somebody has perfected the act of riding the bicycle, you would think that he has got the skills required and that there is no need for caution, until you ride it the first time, knowing that the way to keep going and balance is continuous motion.
The reason why we cannot say they have achieved their aims and objectives is that they have just been truly and conscientiously put into operation. Hitherto, it has been lackadaisical. If you examine from the little corner of your room how corruption is perpetrated, it is no longer with impunity as it used to be; people could no longer flaunt ill-gotten wealth , they could no longer buy expensive cars in fleet the way they used to do before. In fact, these days, they disown their own property. If EFCC says this property belongs to you, they deny it and such property is confiscated. A lot of raw cash stolen have been abandoned and orphaned; people can no longer say that money recovered from Ikoyi Towers belongs to them. The money that was abandoned at Kaduna Airport has not had owners up till now. If it were in the olden days, people would argue that they deserve to have that money and get away with it.
What is most difficult to effect is change, when you want to change from bad to good; people enjoy illegal acts when they perpetrate them and they find it difficult to change to legal acts. For instance, it is more convenient to dispense with free money from illegal sources than spending hard earned income. If you have access to free funds that nobody raises questions about, you would live far, far larger than you deserve. But if somebody now comes and says that you go back to your normal level, the person would want to use everything in his arsenal to sabotage the person trying to revert him to the normal level. So, those that are seen enjoying proceeds of corruption don’t want the law that will curb corruption or that will bring them to book to be effective. Even if the state is desirous of ensuring that such laws are operational, some enemies within and without will pu…
All the professional groups are registered with SCUML, except lawyers that are still arguing about this. And this is because lawyers are used to launder money. For instance, in Ekiti recently, a lawyer claimed that the money in his account was his professional fees, but it was found out that the money was far above professional fees. That is the way they launder money; they will say charge me N1bn and take 10%; 10% can make a person rich forever. These are some of the things that are going on. But because things have accumulated for so long, to clean it will not be in one fell swoop. So, these instruments will be effective if the seriousness attached to it by the EFCC especially is made global with all the agencies, anti-corruption and regulatory agencies like NAFDAC, NDLEA, CBN, NERC, NBC, BON, they are all anti-corruption agencies because of the definition of anti-corruption as acts of dishonesty. So, people will know that if anybody wants to live by honest means, what we say is not enough will be more than what we require like people will say that Nigeria has more than enough for the needs of its citizenry; what it doesn’t have is enough for the greed of the corrupt ones.
It is generally believed that it is the same system that is fighting corruption that has encouraged corruption in the first place.
I believe government is a continuum. What you talk about the tale of the egg and the chicken, which one came first? If there is no chicken, there can’t be egg, and if there is no egg, there won’t be chicken. If all of this can be extrapolated, you will come to terms to the fact that something came first. In the beginning, Africans were their brothers’ keepers. This was where we were until late 70s, a lot of people were satisfied, but when petrodollar came which they never expected. What we call modernity is not developmental; it’s actually destructive. Importation of foreign goods overwhelm us and everybody now scramble to have the best of imported goods and services. That is where our problem started; our colonizers brought slave trade, they corrupted our traditional rulers with gifts and palatial buildings, and that was how our kings became dictatorial. Gradually, everybody wanted to copy those that are politically and economically cushioned by our colonial masters. When we began to form government for larger societies, they took after what the colonial masters brought to us; that was when we started having state houses that are impregnable, governors and local government chairmen that cannot be approached by the locals. Because people want to live like these people, they start to source for illegal means; these illicit resources became a fad.
How would you assess the present administration’s anti-corruption fight?
It has been so far, so good within the circumstances the administration found itself. Like I said, the most difficult thing is for people to adjust to change. The administration has operationalized legal instruments that will curb corruption. They engage in massive education through SFU, EFCC and the rest of them to let know how corruption does not pay. They have been courageous enough to apprehend culprits, arrest them, try them and jail them, including members of the ruling party. It takes a lot of courage for the judiciary to give maximum sentence to a publicly exposed person like former governors; it takes extra dose of courage to prosecute a sitting Senate President who is the number three citizen of the federation. He was prosecuted and is still being investigated. We cannot compare the achievements with what would have happened if they have started 16, 20 or 30 years ago.
Corruption became institutionalised during the reign of Ibrahim Babangida who closed higher institutions for almost a year; formed parties and wrote their manifestoes and all that. Governments are not supposed to form parties, it is the parties that form governments. But it was the other way round; and that is the worst form of corruption that any political leader could perpetrate against his own people.
Basically, the present administration has made the practice of corruption difficult for those who engage in it and those that have perpetrated it are eternally afraid of their own shadow. So, the administration has done its best, the only thing they require is the support of the populace to make the thing sustainable, and people should be ready to give evidence; whistle blowing. The whistle blowing policy, in spite of the fact that it has not been passed into law by the parliament, it has paid off in several instances. That is where the people come in.
The administration is enjoying the popular goodwill of the people, especially the section that wants to fight corruption.
Do you see corruption shaping the next general election?
Yes, it has even started.. The present electioneering is, no doubt, monetised. The electoral laws are not being implemented conscientiously by the agency in charge, the Independent National Electoral Commission; electoral spendings are not being monitored. If you ask how much is being spent by a gubernatorial candidate, they can’t tell you, not to talk of chairmanship candidates and others. So, if you can’t monitor electioneering spending, a lot of money will exchange hands.
We were told that dollars exchanged hands in most of the primaries conducted by the political parties. What have the authorities done about that?
Corruption at this stage is not a one fell swoop kind of thing; it is something that has to be gradual. The administration has started right. Not that they have reached there, but if they sustain the drive, we will soon hit the right target that would make corruption impossible in Nigeria.
