Since the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari as the ‘integrity’ candidate in contrast to Goodluck Jonathan’s perceived malfeasance in 2014, the word “corruption” has become one of the most abused and misused words in Nigeria’s political vocabulary. Instead of being used as a descriptor of specific actions and behaviours, “corruption” now basically means whatever a politician wants it to mean in the battle for winning electoral office. Where did this obsession with the word “corruption” come from, and why is it so effective? Is it dangerous, and how so?
The basic misconception behind “corruption” obsession
The bulk of Nigeria’s political elite were in the prime of their lives during the post-independence period stretching from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, characterized by an oil revenue boom. General Yakubu Gowon famously remarked during this period that Nigeria’s problem was not money, but how to spend it. Unsurprisingly, most people from that generation subscribe to the fundamentally mistaken belief that Nigeria is “rich.”
This assumption that Nigeria is a “rich” country logically leads to a belief that the country’s economy suffers from distorted allocation of resources, because surely in a “rich” country, there can only be this much poverty if some people are taking what belongs to others. The numbers however, tell a very different story about Nigeria, which now hosts the world’s largest population of people living in extreme poverty.
Approximately 95 percent of the country’s export earnings come from crude oil sales, which also make up the bulk of government revenue. The government is burdened with a plethora of subsidies, civil service expenses, subventions and interventions that it increasingly struggles to fund as Nigeria’s population continues its alarming growth. In the period between the oil boom and now, Nigeria’s population has at least doubled, placing further stress on government budgets in our state-dominated economy.
Despite the numbers, many still believe that Nigeria should run a petroleum-financed sugar daddy government like Saudi Arabia, unaware that the Saudis themselves understand that they run an unsustainable system, which they need to modernize before oil loses its value. Every major oil economy outside Africa in fact, is trying to use oil revenues to fund modernization – they do not intend to run their countries indefinitely on oil revenue.
In Nigeria however, a significant number of us believe that the country does not have an economic problem, but a greed problem. According to this worldview, what Nigeria needs is not necessarily economic growth to lift people out of poverty, but a firm and ruthless hand that will manage resources fairly and“eliminate corruption.” The national crude oil cake after all, is already big enough for everyone. How true is this belief?
Weaponising the c-word
One of the terrible things poverty does is that it removes nuance and turns important economic conversations into simplistic, reductionist narratives. Thinking rationally, Nigeria’s $20 billion federal budget is outrageously inadequate for the purpose of servicing 150 million+ people, because it averages out at about $133 (N48,000) per head per annum, or about N133 ($.037) per head per day. Clearly N48,000 worth of law enforcement, public infrastructure, legal protection, healthcare, education and municipal services for an entire year is woefully insufficient to provide any of these things at an acceptable standard.
To a poor person however, $20 billion is simply $20 billion – a literal pile of banknotes that is stashed under someone’s mattress. Instead of thinking about Nigeria’s federal budget as the shameful embarrassment that it is for a country of this size, they instead think of it as a pot of dollars being ‘shared’ by an undefined group of “treasury looters” somewhere. Poverty robs people of the ability to think at scale and reason beyond hunger and petty envy, which is probably why the people who get sucked into this narrative are often the most economically disadvantaged.
Political figures in Nigeria are all too aware of this, and they cynically exploit this widespread lack of nous to push irrational narratives and conspiracy theories for political ends. Shortly before the 2015 elections for example, former CBN governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi issued the fantastical claim that $20 billion (that figure again) was missing from the NNPC. To preserve his credibility, Sanusi did not claim that this sum was actually stolen, just that it was missing, knowing full well that the majority of Nigerians would conflate the two terms.
Fishing with the c-word to catch Nigerian voters
Large scale graft within the NNPC is very much a fact, but what is also a fact is that moving a literal sum of $20 billion without detection across any kind of recognised financial system is fundamentally impossible. For one thing, any large bank transaction denominated in U.S. dollars comes under the legal jurisdiction of the U.S. government, whichhas to give its approval before the transfer can happen. In any case, a subsequent audit carried out by KPMG revealed that the claim was a hoax.
Regardless, the damage was done and to this day, many still believe that former president Goodluck Jonathan has $20 billion “looted from NNPC” buried under his house in Otuoke. An even more egregious example was the crackpot claim that former petroleum minister Diezani Allison-Madueke “looted $90 billion.” Again, the idea that a sum equal to one-fifth of Nigeria’s GDP was lying around somewhere, and could be transferred into the custody of a single person is possibly grounds for admission to a mental health institution, but that did not stop this conspiracy theory from making the rounds, complete with a photoshopped news headline purporting to confirm the brazen lie.
What these examples show is that Nigeria has developed a new type of destructive and dangerous politics where politicians use allegations of corruption as juicy baited hooks to catch impoverished Nigerian voters who do not know any better. Instead of making promises to the electorate and being elected based on their belief in one’s capacity to deliver, Nigerian politicians now use words like “corrupt,” “looter,” and “thief,” to smear their opponents and get into office by default.
In other words, these politicians are getting elected for not being perceived as “the corrupt treasury looter,” which means they do not have to perform in office. When the economy and insecurity bite the electorate, they can simply go fishing again with the C-word, reminding voters that “at least they’re not that corrupt thief.” The only thing that is expected of them is to maintain their projected sainthood.
If not, how come at a time when the outcry about economic and security failures is perhaps at the highest, the Vice-President’s reaction is to tell us that the president is “probably poorer than he was in 2015.” The president’s reaction to criticism over his inaction is to tell us “I may be slow, but I didn’t loot.” The conversation is constantly shifted from an objective examination of the politicians’ capacity to do their job, to meaningless and irrelevant sound bites about their subjective personal morals.
Nigeria’s ‘integrity’ social theory
When the educated ones among us point out that the conversation should be about lack of government vision, state capture of the economy and economic mismanagement with its attendant results, our Benz-driving populists in Abuja insist that the problem is this undefinable thing called “corruption.” Going against the body of evidence gathered across all of recorded human history, they insist that a large group of hungry and desperate people will exist peacefully and honestly within their misery, as long as a suitably stern headmaster with ‘integrity’ stands guard in Aso Rock, poised to punish violators with strokes of the DSS and EFCC cane.
To anyone with secondary school-level grasp of history and economics, this is transparent nonsense that flies in the face of every known economic and social theory. The strategy for pacifying Germany after World War 2 for example, was to invest in the country and turn it into an industrial powerhouse, which got its people invested in the idea of a peaceful and prosperous Germany. Placing a boot on the necks of impoverished people has never done anything more than create further resentment, but Nigeria’s leaders apparently know better.
Those in power would genuinely have us believe that Nigeria’s basic problem is moral and not economic. According to their narrative, Nigeria can be fixed by looking 100 million desperately poor people in the eye and telling them, “I have no solution for your condition, but at least I’m not a thief.”Those who cannot feed themselves, take care of their families or enjoy the most basic minutiae of dignified life will apparently be saved by casting their gaze on the alleged ‘integrity’ radiating out of Abuja, like the biblical Israelites who were healed by looking at Moses’ bronze snake.
Against this backdrop, we are faced with one of two unavoidable possibilities. The first is that Nigeria’s government genuinely knows something we don’t know – maybe it has access to Aristotle-level thinkers and social theorists who understand economics and social engineering better than any human civilization that has ever existed. The second is that our leadership is simply a motley crew of semi-literate conmen, snake oil salesmen and political hucksterswho will use any tactic to hold on to power, despite having no capacity whatsoever.
Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
David Hundeyin is a writer, travel addict and journalist majoring in politics, tech and finance. He tweets @DavidHundeyin.
