The subject of corruption occupies a prominent space in the attention of the Nigerian public.
The ingredients of a perpetually doomed national project are there daily for everyone to see. In a nation with its values in tatters, corruption has been so “normalised” that it is part of everyday life. A prototype cartoon may show a clergyman casually reaching into the folds of his robe for money to respond to the veiled threat in the greeting by policemen at a checkpoint – “Your boys are hungry sir…”.
On the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) Nigeria ranks 146 out of 180 countries. In 2019 almost half of all people who used public services admitted to having paid bribes somewhere in the course of accessing those services.
The country’s corruption has become such a matter of international intellectual curiosity that books have been written and PhDs could soon be awarded on the subject in Ivy League Universities.
In 2018, a scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Matthew Page wrote a paper titled “A New Taxonomy for Corruption in Nigeria”. In the paper, he attempts to customise the descriptive categorization of Nigerian corruption, going beyond the generic descriptions in the World Bank’s “Helping Countries Combat Corruption”.
Page’s classification of Nigerian corruption breaks it down into two dimensions – Where It Happens, and How It Happens.
In the ‘Where’, the instrument takes Nigeria sector by sector, detailing the types of corrupt practices that are familiar on a day to day basis. In the ‘How’, there are tactics, techniques and behaviour by which corruption thrives in Nigeria.
No sector is spared. There are political and institutional sectors – the press, where 78 percent of journalists in one year admitted to collecting “brown envelopes”, the judiciary, the power sector, the security sector, Education and Health. Even the organs of ‘Humanitarian’ services are not exempted.
In the “How”, Page’s taxonomy identifies Bribery, Extortion, Auto-corruption – which includes Salaries and Pensions fraud, along with a subject much talked about lately – Re-looting.
Contracting Fraud – a malfeasance involving government contracts, is identified as the most common and most lucrative form of corruption in the country. It includes staples such as Unnecessary Procurement, Unqualified or Untrustworthy Contractors, Single Source Procurement, Bid Manipulation, Conflict of interest, weak oversight and contractor underperformance.
The solution, if one indeed could be found, must lie in building structures. The best minds in the nation could be put to work to devise, implement and monitor a hands-on “due process” at every level of public life, in addition to a strictly disciplined, no-exemption enforcement of TSA
And so – there it is, at last. Contract Fraud is the big elephant in the Nigerian room.
Is it being tamed?
The uniform answer of the knowledgeable observers is “No”.
What is the problem with the “War on Corruption”?
The prevailing tactic, so far as it can be discerned, is to put “strongmen” in crucial positions with a mandate to beat the organisation into shape. Occasionally, there are “forensic audits” ordered in troubled agencies.
The problem, according to Page’s taxonomy, is that all agencies in all sectors, across the board, are “troubled”.
A recent spate of summaries of Auditor-General’s queries circulated by SERAP reveals the true situation of things. An agency which is so rich it could have transformed the Niger Delta to Dubai if it’s work were farmed out to an international management company, awards and “mobilises” thousands of contracts, only for the contractors to disappear into thin air, though, in reality, they live in the neighbourhood. Another agency paid N28 million for production of three hundred copies of a Procurement Manual that was available free on the internet. It goes on and on.
It would seem that the solution is not unsmiling strong men wielding the big stick, or even “forensic audit” ordered with fanfare, mentioning humongous sums of money.
In truth the Procurement Act 2007 is of international standard in its prescriptions. But till today, friends of an incoming governor can become billionaires within a few weeks of “His Excellency’s” ascendancy. Unnecessary Procurement. Unqualified or untrustworthy contractor. Single source procurement. Conflict of interest. Weak oversight. Contractor Non-Performance. Virtually every instance of looting of large amounts of public funds falls under one or more of those umbrellas.
The rules are all there in the Act. Nobody is following them, and nobody is suffering real-time visible consequences for disobeying them. Instead the public is treated to periodic showcase accusations, petitions, denials, and long-winding erratic legal procedures. Auditing three years after the act does little except provide fodder for such sensational stories, and every incoming administration has an abundance of stories to tell about the misdeeds of its predecessors. Relying on petitions authored with dubious motives to drive the investigation of corruption renders it whimsical and a possible weapon for political vendetta.
The solution, if one indeed could be found, must lie in building structures. The best minds in the nation could be put to work to devise, implement and monitor a hands-on “due process” at every level of public life, in addition to a strictly disciplined, no-exemption enforcement of TSA. Such a process is routinely practised in all internal procurements by the oil majors and some international organisations. It is not a pipe dream, or rocket science. In those organisations, “The System” cannot be breached for or by anyone, from Chairman to CEO to Director of Finance. It raises a red flag at the first sign of infraction and shuts down instantly. Consequences follow swiftly.
In a country where even legislative oversight is a major source of problem in its own right, punishment for every red flag must be swift and severe, for the Minister as for Messenger.
It is a gargantuan assignment for any government to set itself. But anything short of such a deliberate, strategic approach would make any “War on Corruption” mere hot air for party propaganda, or a cynical charade for the delectation of the uninformed.
The bigger fight to mobilise all persuasive and coercive resources in the land, including Education and Religion, for the arduous journey of revamping the values and morality of the general society may then begin, drawing energy from the credible efforts of government to sanitise itself.
