On the night of Tuesday, March 22, 2005, former President Obasanjo commandeered all radio and television stations in the country to make a prime-time broadcast in which, without restraints, he accused the then Senate president, Adolphus Wabara, and six other lawmakers of demanding and collecting a bribe of N55 million from the minister of education in order to increase the ministry’s 2005 budget. He also accused his education minister, Fabian Osuji, the permanent secretary and five other directors in the ministry of collusion to bribe members of the National Assembly. He promptly fired Osuji, suspended the civil servants and referred all of them to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission for onward prosecution.
The publicity and praise for the ‘anti-corruption war’ of the former president were unprecedented. Nigerians and foreigners alike praised Obasanjo to high heavens and condemned the corrupt officials. The Nigerian media, for weeks, analysed the matter with most passing the ‘guilty’ verdict on the accused. Very few, if any, bothered to question the motive of the president and why he had to be the prosecutor and judge on the same case.
Besides, perhaps only few perceptive Nigerians saw the incident as an embarrassment and negative publicity Nigeria did not need at the time. If the president had concrete evidence(s) of corruption against the officials, he should have passed it/them over to the police or, better still, the anti-corruption agencies to do their work and not embarrass the nation before the world with such an uncouth broadcast that portrayed Nigeria as a haven of corruption.
Interestingly, the allegations have not been proved till this day. When the civil servants were investigated by the Federal Civil Service Commission prior to their being disciplined and sent for trial, they were found innocent. None of them was charged to court for the alleged offence and they all returned to their duty posts. For the six lawmakers charged to court, none of them was convicted. The cases were all thrown out of court for lack of evidence.
One thing most Nigerians missed at the time, however, was that the broadcast coincided with Obasanjo’s meeting with officials of the World Bank and IMF over the debt relief Nigeria was seeking at the time. What better way to convince them that he was the no nonsense anti-corruption czar they yearned to see in Nigeria? Besides, later events were to prove that the whole drama was part of Obasanjo’s grand scheme for self-perpetuation in office. He was building a solid case for wanting to stay in office beyond 2007, and what better way to do that than to show the world that Nigeria was a very corrupt country and only he could successfully fight the scourge?
Similarly, in May 2010, after it appeared that the then national chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was not in support of President Jonathan running for the presidency and wanted the party to honour its zoning arrangement that zoned the presidency to the North in 2011, the PDP chairman was promptly arraigned at an Abuja High Court on a 17-count criminal charge of N107 million fraud he was alleged to have committed in 2001 as a minister. Of course, he promptly resigned (which was the real intent anyway). In 2014, he was discharged and acquitted. His co-accused, Emeka Ebilah, was, however, unlucky as he was found guilty and given a five-year jail sentence.
Fast forward to 2015 and we now have the agent of change himself leading the anti-corruption war, this time, with more determination and singleness of purpose. His “if we do not kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria” battle cry resonated powerfully with Nigerians and raised their hopes. However, it appears Buhari isn’t doing anything different from his predecessors in terms of how they fought corruption. Two examples will suffice.
Recently, there was a media blitz against the former national security adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, to the effect that he purchased fake military hardware for the army and could not account for a large cache of funds meant for the purchase of military equipment. This led to a commando-like storming of his house in Abuja and his father’s house in Sokoto by the DSS. For students of Nigerian government and politics, this was not a surprise considering the history between Dasuki and Buhari. However, the president’s handlers laboured to convince us the president was not pursuing a personal vendetta against Dasuki.
But alas, when Dasuki was finally charged to court, he was only charged with offences relating to possession of firearms without licence and not the corruption/mismanagement the administration had earlier touted. However, at the resumption of his trial last week, the state introduced new charges of “retention” and “concealment” of “funds that form part of the proceeds of an unlawful act” and applied for a secret trial. This, at best, is suspicious.
A similar media blitz was launched against Diezani Alison-Madueke when news of her arrest and arraignment in the United Kingdom over allegations of corruption and money laundering broke. The Nigerian government got excited and even raided her houses in Abuja in search of more evidences. It even issued a statement confirming her ordeal at the hands of the UK authorities and its active collaboration in her investigation.
Surprisingly, however, Alison-Madueke was not arrested but only invited over a suspected money laundering case of £27,000 alone. But right now, her name is synonymous with ‘corruption’ and ‘theft. She has been thoroughly vilified and labelled a criminal who stole a whopping $13 billion of Nigeria’s money. When I challenged a friend on social media for labelling her a thief even before she is convicted in a court of law, his response was quite revealing. For him, the mere fact that she is even linked to such an amount is mind-boggling and confirms her guilt.
Just like Uganda, which under pressure from aid agencies enacted what had come to be regarded as the best anti-corruption legislation in the world, but whose corruption indicators have continued to worsen on all fronts, Nigeria may also be engaged in what Harvard’s Ricardo Hausmann terms ‘isomorphic mimicry’ – the creation of institutions that act in ways to make themselves “look like institutions in other places that are perceived as legitimate” but which in reality are not. Nigeria’s anti-corruption war thus far is to use the media to demonise, persecute and destroy people’s integrity knowing that, like my friend on social media, most Nigerians believe that every accused person is guilty.
Christopher Akor
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