His
adherents and tub-thumpers have very high expectations that he will
perform and deliver. Friendly nations around the world also hope that he
will be the answer to Nigeria’s many malaises ills. Betwixt and between
these, when Muhammadu Buhari takes charge of the affairs of the nation
on May 29, plenteous will be the battles he must not only have to fight,
but win handily.
The Mother-of-all-the-battles that Buhari
will fight from Day One as President will be the battle against
CORRUPTION. This battle will be dirty and daring; it will be valiant and
valorous, and it will hit him like a ferocious, surging head-wind
because he will not be fighting it in an Army General’s uniform and
authority, but as a civilian who must be civil and sensitive to people’s
fundamental human rights. The unfurling gutsy and gusty battle will
make casualties of friends and foes, and of family members and
unfamiliar spirits. This war and its scope will not be a respecter of
persons; some of the fatalities may be those who have helped the General
become President.
Throughout the campaign for
change, I battled it out in my head trying to figure out how Buhari will
pull the plug on this monstrous Godzilla of corruption that has become a
well-grounded landlord with many annexes in our nation. Nothing can
work in any nation where corruption thrives; security will forever be
lax; rejuvenating the power sector will be a pipe dream as long as
corruption is oxygenated. A nation’s many difficulties will continue as
long as corruption is breathing. Ending corruption in Nigeria may be
like ending a swirling, raging cyclone by human tactics; only the
Creator can put a cyclone to sleep.
Where will the General begin
from? Does he kick-start from among his men and women, his backers and
praise singers, his moneybags during the campaign or his teeming
millions who are ready to die for him? Does he begin from his foes who
wanted him to die of prostate cancer, his enemies who stealthily
withdrew his credentials from the Nigerian Army’s records, or his
sworn-haters who took out advertorials on the pages of some national
newspapers that he must die in two years? Where does Buhari begin from?
From the federal or state civil servants who many believe have become
the most uncivil gathering of geeks and killers of Nigeria’s economy
that President Goodluck Jonathan once described as “having more wealth
and houses than Dangote”? Maybe, Buhari will start from the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation, the heart-and-soul of Nigeria’s
existence that is still struggling to account for billions of dollars in
its care as it bleeds money hourly through many egregious egresses of
pilferage?
Buhari will probably begin from the governors’
mansions by removing immunity from the current occupants and unleashing
red-hot against those who served in the past and who are now flaunting
selves around in flowing regalia of stolen funds. That’s a good place to
start. But, what about the church? Since my Bible says that judgment
will begin from the House of God, Buhari should probably begin from the
Church of the Living God, especially from the “God-of-Men” saluted as
Men-of-God who got Jonathan in trouble; those men and women who seized
my President’s crown in a slew of prayer-vigils and inadvertently gave
it to Buhari on the back of prophetic lies and Pentecostal deceptions.
Hah! There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in that constituency.
Even the holiest places and saints’ sanctuaries are now wholly immersed
in the baptistery of crippling corruption. I cannot think of any
government ministry, department, agency, parastatal, or any arm of
government that Nigerians are cocksure will not be hit after the Buhari
cleaning-crew is inaugurated.
The world laughs at Nigeria every
day as a result of the unrelenting vice of corruption. The Washington
Post Foreign Service Correspondent, Keith Richburg, said this about
Nigerians in 1992: “Welcome to Nigeria, world capital of the business
scam. Shake hands, but be sure to count your fingers”. The US General
Colin Powell (retd.) had once publicly referred to all Nigerians as
“crooks”.
The late King of Oil, Swiss March Rich, a man adjudged
a symbol of corruption himself called Nigeria, “… the global capital of
corruption”. T.V Queen, Oprah Winfrey, had once said: “All Nigerians —
regardless of their level of education – are corrupt”. Dianne Abbot, a
British MP wrote an opinion in the Jamaica Sunday Observer, April 9,
2006, entitled, “Think Jamaica is bad, try Nigeria”: “When it comes to
corruption, Nigerians make Jamaicans, and every other nationality in the
world, look like mere amateurs. Billions of pounds have been looted by
politicians. 70 per cent of private wealth has been taken out Nigeria.”
Nigeria
is the 136th most corrupt out of 175 nations according to Transparency
International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2014. From 1960 to 2005, an
estimated $1tn had disappeared through the conduits of unfettered
profligacy according to a new estimate by the Business Council for
Africa. The World Bank had aforetime concluded that $400bn had been
stolen between 1960 and 1999. Those who suggested that Buhari should
begin the house-cleaning from his party got it wrong; he should begin
from everybody. Government actors and actresses who are now pleading for
cover by switching political parties should be asked to give account of
their stewardships. Many of these switch-freaks have heavy slings of
corruption cases dangling across their shoulders. They believe that
party membership card is an official sufferance to steal and live to
steal some more. They must be shocked! Those who have been fingered in
dirty deals across the board must be dragged before the gavel of
judgment to answer questions. Buhari must begin from everybody, at the
same time, with the same zeal, under the same applications of law, and
let the chips fall where they may.
If Buhari wants to be taken
seriously about fighting corruption, if he wants us to believe that
getting down dirty with those who are killing Nigeria is not by mouth or
by mime alone, things must be done differently.
The enabling
Act of 2002 which established the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission gives the appointment of the Chairman of the agency directly
to a sitting president. One man, who may get dirty down the road or have
filthy apparatchiks as lieutenants, shouldn’t be in oversight of such
an arm of government.
Nigeria is the only nation that wraps so
much secrecy around the remuneration of its public officials. If
Nigerians are truly, not just rhetorically the employers of the
President, governors, senators, and public office holders, why are we
not privy to their remunerations? What are these guys hiding? Let
Buhari’s transparency drive begin from here.
A governor once
described the state security vote as a smokescreen for governors to
divert funds. Nigerians knew that before he said so. Between 1999 and
now, billions of dollars have filtered into private wallets from the
public treasury in the name of security votes. In Nigeria, supervisors
of billions of dollars are not accountable to anyone or any law about
how they disburse funds in their safekeeping. Why then wouldn’t men kill
men to be governor? The lock and key around security votes must be
thrown away.
In conclusion I ask; will this battle against
corruption make some people sacred and others sacrileges? When you
tamper with a man’s pocket-book, the resistance is always hellacious and
blistering. Buhari is in for a big brawl. The only thing he has going
for him is that ordinary Nigerians are standing right behind him and
with him. Nothing gets started if it is not begun. Buhari does not have
to end corruption; he was elected to start the fight against it. Others
who will come after him will continue what he begins. Someday, in my
lifetime, Nigeria will win.
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