The rhetoric is unmistakable: President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is, we are told, fighting corruption. Yet, the perception of endemic corruption remains pervasive. To the utter frustration and anger of the Buhari government, Transparency International repeatedly says that the perception of corruption has not improved since the administration assumed office in2015. In fact, Nigeria’s ratings are on a downward spiral!
Earlier, in January this year, Transparency International (TI) released its 2021 Corruption Perception Index. According to the Index, Nigeria scored 24 out of 100 points and ranked 154 out of 180 countries surveyed, thereby dropping five places from its 149th ranking in 2020. This also makes Nigeria the second most corrupt country in West Africa.
The Federal Government pushed back, saying that TI had not recognised the “great strides by the country in its fight against corruption.” These “great strides”, according to Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, include reforms to improve the ease of doing business and various initiatives by the anti-corruption agencies. He concluded by challenging the “robustness” of TI’s methodology and the “validity” of their data.
The phrase the Buhari government frequently uses, in apparent defeatism, is “corruption is fighting back”, as if corruption is not perpetrated by individuals, and as if those individuals are more powerful than the State
But the government missed the point. First, it failed to address the seven weaknesses that TI identified in Nigeria’s anti-graft campaign. These included security sector corruption, failure to investigate high profile corrupt cases, illicit financial flows, absence of asset recovery, lack of effective protection of whistle-blowers, lack of key anti-corruption legal framework, and judicial challenges. Any honest assessment will, indeed, show that Nigeria faces acute and chronic weaknesses in these areas.
Any government can set up anti-corruption agencies, any government can introduce anti-graft policies, but the question is: Are they working? Are they effective in actually tackling corruption? In policymaking terms, every policy or initiative must be outcome-focused: It’s all about outcomes. And truth is, nothing the Buhari government has done has significantly reduced corruption in Nigeria; indeed, all forms of corruption have increased over the years.
In their 2007 paper entitled “Exploring Corruption in Public Financial Management”, William Dorintinsky and Shilpa Pradhan identified three types of corruption, namely: “grand corruption,” which is “the large-scale transfer of public resources for private interests”;“political corruption”, which is, “influence peddling on resource allocation and projects that benefit the decision maker, friends, acquaintances, directing resources to special projects and abuse of privileged information”; and “administrative corruption,” that is, “misappropriation and misuse of public funds, fraud, waste and abuse”.
In her book, “Fighting Corruption Is Dangerous”, published in 2018, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s two-time Finance Minister, laid out in granular detail how each of the three types of corruption was prevalent in Nigeria. A few years ago, Nuru Ribadu, former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), said that “everything that is wrong about Nigeria has to do with dirty money”, adding: “When I look around, I see a lot of investment done with dirty money”.
The sad truth is that hardly anything has changed under the Buhari administration. All the three forms of corruption – grand, political and administrative – are still present today. Illicit money is still flowing freely in Nigeria. Those who amassed stupendous wealth through diversion of public resources are parading the political arena. Some have built mind-blowing war chests, from unjust enrichment, to fight the 2023 general elections.
Unfortunately, the government seems utterly helpless in stemming the tide of corruption in Nigeria. Indeed, the phrase the Buhari government frequently uses, in apparent defeatism, is “corruption is fighting back”, as if corruption is not perpetrated by individuals, and as if those individuals are more powerful than the State.
The government also masks its failure by shifting the blame. The executive blames the judiciary for the delay in dealing with high-profile corruption cases. In turn, the judiciary blames the executive, particularly the anti-graft agencies, for poor investigative and prosecutorial abilities, which frequently lead to high-profile cases collapsing in court.
Yet, fighting corruption is not rocket science. Singapore moved from being one of the most corrupt countries in the world to becoming one of the least corrupt. China, under President Xi Jinping, has confronted corruption head-on.
Indeed, China’s war on corruption has ensnared about 2m officials, including high-ranking military officers and national leaders, since President Xi came to power in 2012. A writer in the Financial Times says: “The anti-corruption crackdown in China has worked; corrupt practices are now universally frowned upon”. Which is not surprising given China’s deeply feared corruption watchdog and the enduring ferocity of President Xi’s corruption crackdown.
Of course, corruption can’t be fought in a democracy as it would in an authoritarian regime like China. Yet, there’s a lot wrong with Nigeria’s anti-graft war, starting with the absolute lack of political will to tackle corruption head-on. The first weakness is the partisan nature of the Buhari government’s anti-corruption war. When President Xi’s government started the war against corruption in China, the campaign mostly targeted members of his party.
By contrast, President Buhari treats corrupt people in his own party with kid gloves. Furthermore, he frequently gives red-carpet welcome to opposition politicians accused of corruption by the EFCC once they decamp to his party.
Truth is, Buhari’s Janus-faced approach harms the credibility of his anti-graft war, and suggests that, while the president may not be personally corrupt, he is knowingly surrounded by very corrupt politicians.
Let’s face it, there are too many politicians with unexplained wealth in Nigeria. Of course, despite their unexplained stupendous wealth, they all claim to be innocent since no court or tribunal has convicted them of corruption.
Yet, we know that the absence of conviction does not mean innocence. Take the case of James Ibori, a former governor of Delta State. He was discharged and acquitted in Nigeria of a 170-count charge of money laundering. But when he was arraigned before an English court, he admitted to 10 counts of fraud.
Why did he get away in the Nigerian court, but not in the English court? How many people who walk freely with unexplained wealth in Nigeria today would survive trial in an English court? Hardly any!
So, corruption persists in Nigeria because of a lack of political will to tackle it frontally, and the politicisation and trivialisation of corruption cases by the executive, the anti-graft agencies, and the judiciary. It is hard to explain, for instance, why, as the TI points out, there’s utter unwillingness or failure to investigate and try high profile corruption cases.
Read also: Wike counters Buhari on Electoral Act amendment
Another factor, of course, is the lack of a robust anti-corruption legal framework. The Buhari government is, seemingly, fighting corruption with policies and initiatives. But that’s not enough: you also need strong legal and enforcement regimes. Alberto Ades and Rafael Tella talked about the “the lawyer’s approach” to tackling corruption. This refers to tough laws and tough enforcement of laws.
Yet, Nigeria lacks the framework for a robust “lawyer’s approach”. Recently, President Buhari urged the National Assembly to expedite action on three anti-corruption bills: the Proceeds of Crime Bill, the Whistle-blower Bill and the Witness Protection Bill.
But the president’s party controls the National Assembly. Given that anti-corruption was one of APC’s key election manifestos in 2015 and one of the president’s priorities for his second term, why has the National Assembly, controlled by the president’s party, failed to pass stringent anti-corruption laws?
What’s more, as I wrote recently, it’s absolutely impossible to fight corruption effectively without Unexplained Wealth Orders, UWOs. Yet, Nigeria doesn’t have an UWO legal regime. As a result, politicians with unexplained colossal wealth bestride the political landscape; they use their apparently stolen wealth to intimidate the media, buy votes and distort politics and democracy.
For me, the distortion of democracy, the bastardisation of politics and public life, is the greatest danger of paying lip-service to fighting corruption in Nigeria, of Buhari’s merely rhetorical anti-graft war!
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
