A President's Promise
by
THE United States, one of President Olusegun Obasanjo's best friends and hopes, is putting some distance between it and his government. As you must have heard, the US has rejected Nigeria's "crusade against corruption," saying that top government officials are not serious about it. During 2000, the United States says in its annual Country Report on Human Rights Practices, Nigeria's economy was static, its growth hampered by inadequate infrastructure, endemic corruption and economic mismanagement. As it seems there is only one "top official" of our government talking about corruption, it is safe to assume that the person in reference is President Obasanjo himself.
The British Government, in a separate intervention, announces that it cannot assist the Obasanjo government in its loot recovery bid because of the insincerity and ineptitude of some Nigerian government officials. Again, it would seem that those fingers are pointed at President Obasanjo. His is the tongue that claims to be "fighting" corruption; and he is the one who, so far, seems to see official looting only in terms of where an Abacha has been.
Ever watchful, Transparency International (TI) has also sounded its annual alarm, pointing out that despite Obasanjo, corruption continues to thrive more within our shores than anywhere else on earth.
Meanwhile, Obasanjo and members of his inner circle returned from a retreat in Kuru two weeks ago, wielding a curious document labeled an anti-corruption declaration. The document confirms one or both of two fears. The first: that the constitution may not be the favourite document of those supposedly sworn by, and to it; and the other, that the President strikes such deep fear in his own team that no one dares tell him the truth. That truth is that our country is governed by a constitution that does identify corruption by name and grants the President the steam to do something about it. Strangely, President Obasanjo, two years on, seems unable to identify himself in his own war.
If anything, he seems to confirm that there is really no "war" going on. Consider some of the clichŽs from Kuru: participants, said local news reports, "resolved" to fight corruption; they noted the "need to imbibe the anti-corruption culture...". The participants took the fight to Transparency International (TI) too, rejecting its rating of Nigeria as the world's most corrupt nation. They would not accept its "use of only corruption-perception index to the exclusion of corruption-encouraging index." In other words, since there are countries that supposedly make corruption officially tax deductible and Nigeria does not, she cannot be the most corrupt!
If you do not know, Olusegun Obasanjo was, until recently, the Chairman of the Advisory Board of TI, a position he gave up when he became President of Nigeria. In his resignation letter, I testify, our President marvelled at "the magnitude and vastness" of the spread of the work of TI. "The bushfire-like spread is an attestation to the timeliness, relevance and quality of TI," President Obasanjo wrote, noting: "I will be counting on TI's support in seeking to leave an enduring legacy of zero tolerance to corruption. I do realize that the load is heavy and the task difficult, if not intimidating, but with TI's support it is clearly surmountable."
We may also recall that in April 1996, TI threw its support behind a "Free Obasanjo" campaign aimed at getting half a million letters from people around the world sent to the President of the United Nations Security Council towards stepping up pressure on the Abacha regime to release him. It is this same TI's judgment ñ now that it is time for action and for painful choices ñ that is being contradicted and questioned by no other than a government headed by the former chairman of TI's Advisory Council. But TI's values and objectives have not changed, nor have its methods.
In the past year, domestic critics of the Obasanjo administration have made these same observations about the corruption question in Nigeria as are now being made around the world, only to be chased out of court by the President and his praise-singers. It is inconceivable that the quality of corruption in Nigeria has not been met with appropriate determination and fight. Here is our score sheet: first, Obasanjo made his speeches, then proposed a law which was eventually passed by the legislature. He then set up an anti-corruption panel. In the Kuru "declaration", he asked members of his cabinet to recognize the subject of corruption. Why is the dog chasing his own tail?
Here is what we are really doing to arrest corruption: nothing. Police and civil service corruption continues to run wild. Some ministers, sublimely supported by their aides, are still reported to be playing the same mind games they always did. Nigerians who want to get things done often pay heavily in other to "resolve" those mind games. The more honourable of the President's Cabinet and staff must be reporting to him familiar corruption tales and experiences from all over the country. If they are not, the war is already lost. I must presume that as an executive president, Obasanjo is receiving private and official dispatches about life on the street. And yet, corruption thrives just the same way Ibrahim Babangida knew it would; corruption thrives just as it did under Sani Abacha. Only the rhetoric is different.
Maybe the problem is that we went to war without fully understanding the enemy. Maybe we went to war without developing a workable strategy. The enemy: louder voices than mine have stated that you cannot fight corruption in Nigeria with mere words, with the same double-speak that has characterized much of our public policy in the past 40 years. That is exactly how we got into this mess in the first place. What is going on is far too big, too brazen, too dirty and too ugly to respond to preaching. "Fight", in this case, is no metaphor; it is a fair description of the hands-on combat that is called for on the corruption front.
I had thought that the President, recognizing the power of personal example, would begin by declaring his own assets, and ensuring the public declaration of assets by all those invited to his team. I had thought that those members of his team would take the message to their own immediate theatres and spheres, and work to make it impossible for the most brazen and the most entrenched operatives in the system to continue as they have been doing. I cannot, and no one who is serious about this can believe that in two years, no such people are being named and shamed by this government. I cannot believe that there is anything shackling the hands of the President and his team from at least taking to court people casually making off with public property. Nobody in public life in Nigeria has been fired in two years over corruption, and President Obasanjo expects to be taken seriously?
We are hearing more and more stories about just how bad things are in Nigeria. In my book, there is nothing new about this analysis. What we have is a question of perception. As a soldier, Obasanjo ruled our nation with a slate of commands. He shouted at people, and it became policy. He threw tantrums, and they were gospel. He uttered "with immediate effect" and throngs in khaki said "yes sir!" Today, that approach is obviously invalid, and gone too, is the wholesale power to cover things up. As a result, mediocrity ñ measured in swathes of daylight between rhetoric and reality, between promises and performance, between principle and pulchritude ñ has become a lot more difficult to disguise in the roomy confines of an agbada.
The President has said that he would never lie to the people. Indeed, but he obviously has no compunction feeding them excuses. As a result, two years into his presidency, Nigeria is no less corrupt than when Abacha tried to loot it to death. There is no one outside Obasanjo's inner circle not confounded by what is supposed to be a serious war having been turned into another Nigerian circus.
It has fallen to the rest of the world now, including Obasanjo's former colleagues at TI, to tell him that corruption is alive and thriving, and that his war is a sham, since the initiative and its terms are his. In Minna, you can almost hear Babangida laughing his head off. After all, he never recognized corruption and never offered to fight it. Now, Babangida knows that Obasanjo's best years on this issue may be behind him, leaving the door ajar for anyone else interested in the presidency.
But as I said in this column nearly two years ago, I do believe that Obasanjo was serious when he said he wanted to fight corruption. He should go back to that point in time, and re-engineer his determination. It wouldn't be a bad idea to dust up his Africa Leadership Forum files either. There are friends and ideas to help out, but he must lead the way.