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ALUKO AND OBASANJO: CREDIBILITY AND THE BURDEN OF PROOF By
The national newsreel has recently been agog by the seismic reverberations from the titanic duel involving Prof. Samuel Aluko and President Olusegun Obasanjo. The one, a renowned economist, and the other, a retired general and a serving president, both are giants in their own respective fields. Although it is the contention about the proper management of the national economy that has provided the much needed camouflage for the two embattled combatants to cross swords, there is however no illusion among discerning spectators to this verbal gladiatoring, that there is probably a lot more for the parties engaged in it which are neatly buried in the din of the obviously uncouth and ruthless altercations emanating from the two camps. In the ensuing battle, there have been mundane and embarrassing name-callings, undignifying mudslinging, demeaning accusations and counter-accusations. Even as the combatants reach deeper into their respective arsenals for deadlier missiles for maximum damage to one another, it is already clear to many that truth has since become the hapless casualty in the escalating war of words.
To illustrate vividly the extent of our frustration over this endless tug of war, it may be necessary for us to point out that well before president Obasanjo became a subject of national significance, Prof. Sam Aluko had already become a household name in the field of economics and public budgeting in Nigeria. As a pioneer indigenous economist, it was not difficult for him to acquire immediate national fame and public adulation. His reputation was however more firmly anchored on his famed brilliant contribution to the very successful economic policies of the old Action Group’s government of Obafemi Awolowo. The tremendous achievements of that administration in the critical area of developmental economic policies were generally attributed to the austere disposition of the economist Professor. I cannot exactly recall how he earned the popular sobriquet of "professor one kobo" among the students of the University of Ife where I first encountered the economic guru, but it fitted him quite well, anyway, as he almost made it seem that to be an economist is to also be economic. He was a very well liked individual mainly for his forthright approach to national issues.
Even though economics was not my field of study, but because of my deep admiration for the amiable and exciting professor, I enthusiastically "pirated" (a university of Ife slang for unofficial course auditing) some of his classes and whenever it was convenient, pursued the man to church services then holding at the open "Agric Foyer" on the university campus where he occasionally speak as a lay preacher. I should admit that I did not go there to hear him for any spiritual reason but for the unmistakable Aluko trademark honest and biting secular criticism of the social process even in the house of God. And as a young student, nothing excited me more than hearing from people that spoke out against the ills of society and Aluko was prominent among them. In short, he was a hero to me. The reader must therefore appreciate the depth of my frustration whenever Aluko’s personal integrity is being questioned as has been done lately.
And with that orientation, some of us developed an attitude of principled intolerance for any system of government that is undemocratic and economically irresponsible. And by the professor’s doctrine, no crude and undisciplined military government was ever going to meet the high criteria for good governance and, accordingly, no genuine democrat should ever touch or deal with the military as an active participant in their administrations, no matter what. With that in mind, some of us actually refused several tempting invitations to serve in various military administrations. What would the old professor think if he hears that we have "joined them"? It was therefore a big shock when it became public knowledge that the professor who had preached public accountability, economic discipline and democracy over the years has himself been enlisted to serve a military regime, especially the roguish Abacha administration that was an internationally certified pariah. To put it mildly, I was shaken to the marrow. It was like seeing one’s personal hero drowns so cheaply. Could it have been poverty? Or could it be old age, frustration, cynicism or what? The question that came to most people’s mind was that if Professor Aluko knew that he was going to "eat" from the military, why did he not do so fully when the defense of youth would have readily availed him? If it was a mistake for the late Tai Solarin to have joined the rotten board of the People’s Bank in the IBB regime, it was clearly an unmitigated disaster for the respected economist to have sided with Abacha, many people thought. I personally pondered over the sudden abandonment of age-long ideals and entrenched principles by a man that we have come to love and even tried to emulate. Clearly, many felt betrayed. If one must serve his nation, it should be in an edifying way, some lamented, because serving Abacha in the context of the dubious circumstances in which the regime emerged was the last thing we expected from a man of Aluko’s intellectual and well, moral, standing. Perhaps, we were wrong to have taken the man too seriously. After all, the same Bible from where he lectured us on virtue of discipline and morality also warns that we should not put our trust in man.
As if that was not enough, the nation was further taken aback when, in the face of mounting evidence that the late General Sani Abacha stole so much money from the national treasury, it was only Professor Aluko, the Chief Economic Intelligence Officer of the Abacha kleptocracy that was prepared to swear to an affidavit of good character on behalf of the late General. Granted that people with vested interest and personal biases were actually lying and exaggerating about the Abacha loots, what then would the learned professor make of the other concrete evidence of the theft that were flowing in from all over the world in a flood? How does the chief economic intelligence officer explain the huge quantity of hard currencies retrieved from the domestic estate of General Abacha? Even if he was in doubt at the beginning, with the series of glaring disclosures emanating from Switzerland, the UK and other places, is he still in doubt? Prof. Aluko, more than anyone else, has the best resources available to authoritatively confirm some of these revelations. Rather than apologize to the nation for his negligence and, perhaps collusion with the rogue regime of Abacha, the old man came out shouting that Abacha was the best financial manager he has ever met. It remains the main plank of his advocacy till date, that Abacha could ‘not have stolen a kobo’ of public money, forgetting that the issue with Abacha’s case is not whether he did steal that much but what on earth he needed so much public money for. The fact that Aluko could not see, and did not know, when the money he was conducting an official reconnaissance over had disappeared does not in any way derogate from the fact that so much has left Nigeria for which we are all now poorer as a people. His dismissive response was, to say the least, quite damaging to the reputation of the great economist. It is possible, as we have noted, that the Obasanjo regime exaggerated the misbehavior of Abacha but for Aluko to be denying that no looting took place during that period is no good evidence of the power of dispassionate appreciation of the reputed scholar.
Another striking evidence of the ‘new Aluko’ was when, against the notoriety of the corruption of our federal legislators, he prematurely came out to defend his senator son who was indicted in the abominable transaction in that legislative chamber during the well publicized Senate probe in the famous "my son is not a thief" rebuttal. Put against his earlier staunch defense of Abacha, it became obvious that Aluko has got another meaning for the phenomenon of stealing and that his idea of the good government is the one in which he and his sibling are active participants. Judging by the reality of Nigerian politics, the respected economist should have known that his son could never have gained entrance to the Senate of the federal republic of Nigeria if he had kept to his legitimate earnings and without access to easy money to lubricates the system of patronage. For a "small boy" who did not win a lottery jackpot to be able to buy his way into the upper echelon of the nation’s chambers of corruption, which is what the Senate has become, is by itself enough reason for a fatherly alarm, because using the same moral principles he has thought generations of Nigerian students, it should have been obvious to him that his son’s moral credentials must have been tainted so badly. There is no evidence that Aluko’s beloveth "small boy" rejected the immoral furniture allowances, the other scandalous allowances, criminally odious and immoral estacodes, much less those sinful contracts. Instead, he was neck deep, like the children of the less educated Nigerians, in the stench of legislative maladministration in which the senate was mired.
As the drama unfolded, the nation was stunned by the spectacle of a father defending the son as blindly as was possible forgetting that it is not enough to make a denial, there still remains the evidential imperative for effective rebuttal of all direct and circumstantial evidence incriminating the accused. Otherwise the jury might be tempted to impose an aggravated penalty on ground of intransigence. As a matter of fact, it is more dignifying to admit obvious and proven charges than denying them fruitlessly. As a veteran of campus and public affairs, the old man ought to have considered the wisdom of the forest mother monkey who admitted that she could only vouch for the baby still in her womb because the one on her back could easily snatch an apple behind her back! Well, the report of the Senate panel, which investigated the case of the light-fingered senators, has already spoken and has given its verdict. I can not remember that the "small boy" was exonerated or acquitted for lack of criminal capacity.
So it became the huge moral question as to whether the professor was pretending all along: a practitioner of the "do what I say and not what I do" theology. To have closed his eyes to the horrendous abuses of the national economy, aside of the horrendous abuses of human rights, by the Abacha administration was too much for most Nigerians to take from him. This was a national tragedy, to say the least. First it portrayed the intellectual class, in which he is a doyen, as devoid of principles, ready and willing to serve even the devil for a morsel of bread or the mere comfort of the office. Some generous observers have tried to rationalize his situation with his long-standing view that the discipline economics should never be mixed up with politics, a position that was speculated to have credited him with the admission that he admired the economically efficient way Adolf Hitler managed the German economy during the bloody Weimar dictatorship whose brutality almost ruined the free world. But since the economy is, at the end of the day, established for the welfare of the citizens, it remains an illusion to hope that a mindless dictatorship would produce a winning economic formula. How this materialistic/positivist view of state management influenced his eternal love for the demised Abacha dictatorial administration remains a subject for further biographic inquiry.
It is therefore correct to surmise that the greatest setback to the nation in the Aluko phenomenon is the diminution of credibly in national discourse, especially now that open and active debate has become a condition sine qua non for a healthy democracy. Nigerians are bound to wonder how come a man who did not see anything wrong with mindless dictatorship yesterday nor the current mind-boggling abuses in the national legislator for the simple reason that his son is among the culprits now wants to be taken seriously whenever he criticizes the present administration. It is debatable, in the peculiar situation of Nigeria, what quantum of credibility that would still remains in a man who is reputed to have held up Abacha as his economic hero and political saint. That is where the real tragedy comes in. For some time now the economic guru has been pointing Nigerians to the fact that the Obasanjo regime is running the economy aground by its wasteful approach to public management. To be fair to Professor Aluko, there is no point that he has made in this respect that is not factually valid but the only snag that continues to vitiate them is: Why now? Is there any special quarrel between him and Obasanjo, some are wont to ask? The truth is that such has always been the Aluko we all grew up to know but for the Abacha moral U-turn and the ethical equivocation in the face of his child’s delinquency. Another possible reason is that, it is because he is not actively involved in the administration. The dilemma in the Aluko situation is the painful realization that even though his claims against the Obasanjo regime are factually unassailable, but because his personal credibility has diminished considerably in the wake of his continuous pro-Abacha campaign, not much weight would be attached to them. Any lawyer knows how difficult it could be to handle a case in which the decisive facts relevant to the success of a case are in the sole custody of a thoroughly tainted (unbelievable) witness.
Speaking at a book launch on the 15th of November, 2001, he declared quite characteristically that "the Obasanjo Administration has achieved virtually nothing in these three years because when you have a government that has no program you ...move from error to error." http://www.vanguardngr.com/news/articles/2001/November/ According to him, President Obasanjo "does not have the technical know-how to execute his program. He has a party without a government and has a government without a party". He also criticized the number of ministers in the federal cabinet boldly suggesting that instead of the present 49 ministers, 22 could have been ideal. Consequently, in his assessment, "the cost of governance is too high, by the time they use money to service these ministers, we have little money to service the electorates who voted them into power."
Perhaps the case that finally rattled the President and which probably got him to reach for his large container of abusive languages was when Professor Aluko tersely castigated him in a speech which the media excitedly captioned: "Abacha is better than Obasanjo". In a language more of a mockery than an analytical presentation, the economist drew the comparison that "under him (Abacha), the exchange rate was stable. You had to defend any proposal you presented to him. Abacha never fingered government money." To drive the point fully home, Aluko told the stunned audience that officials of the Obasanjo’s government are swindling the nation through the vandalistic appropriation of illegitimate estacodes. As alleged by Aluko, whereas the United Nations, the nearest thing to a world government, paid him only $220 dollars as per diem in his capacity of a consultant, the Nigeria government under Obasanjo pays the scandalous rates of between $1000 and $1500 per day for officials on frivolous foreign trips! In simple terms, Nigeria is paying more than ten times what other nations expend on similar overheads. This outrageous drain on the nation’s lean economy is enough to lend credence to Aluko’s earlier comparison of the Obasanjo regime with that of Abacha, in which, by his own ratings, Abacha came out tops. If indeed this is what Obasanjo is giving away to government officials that continuously jet across the globe in droves, then Aluko, striped of all malice, must be near correct in his assessment of the regime as being less virtuous than that of Abacha. It is therefore understandable, why it is just too tempting to embark on endless foreign trips in Nigeria nowadays. If for example, members of Obasanjo’s presidential delegation (usually an army of partymen, hangers-on and officials) were to be collecting $1500 dollars for everyday they travel out of Nigeria, it could then be safely estimated what a fortune that Nigeria has wasted through the irresponsibility of the government. And, to imagine that these people are paid in dollars is to begin to see the truth in Aluko’s outbursts on the falling strength of the Naira.
According to Aluko, only Mobutu’s Zaire, another basket case in African, used to pay such an outrageous estacodes to her officials. I think the President needs to respond squarely to this aspect of Aluko’s submission before the nation decides whether to send him to an old people’s home or not as he is presently insinuating. If we roughly estimate that the president has made nearly fifty foreign trips since assuming office and then multiply that by the number of people (averaging fifty officials that jet with him) and further multiply that with just $1000 dollar for every night that they are out of the country, the arithmetic of it is so staggering that what would be left in the national kitty would be quite small. That calculation would just be the tip of the iceberg as all the 36 governors and their officials, the 1000-odd members of the national assembly, not to mention the 700 local government councils and their numerous councilors and officials that have all jetted out overseas all in the name of democracy. By the time you add the official and unofficial first ladies at the various tiers of government in the federation that have participated in the estacodes gathering rush, the logic embedded in Aluko’s accusation would begin to sink in. For example, Obasanjo’s official salary per year is 1.4 million Naira. But he will make more than twice that amount from estacodes only from just ten trips extended into four nights each! Why stay at Abuja and earn useless naira while you can garner dollars aplenty while on official safaris, you want to ask? On the contrary, and this is probably the heart of the comparison, neither Abacha nor any of his officials had the opportunity to travel frequently due to the sanctions that were slammed on them. That would have translated into some tremendous practical savings as against the perpetual migratory flights of the officials of the Obasanjo administration. Instead, the goggled general resorted to simply loading jute bags with tons of hard currencies that was thus "saved" for him.
That was Aluko’s allegation. But rather than reflect soberly and factually respond to them, the former Otta farmer who is still very much at home with the antics of local farmers in spite of the marvelous Aso Rock transformation agbada-wise, after assessing the present public standing and weakness of his accuser- Sam Aluko, coarsely replied, that the man has gone senile and therefore not capable of any rational thinking any more. It is probably because Alzheimer and Parkinson are not yet popular diagnoses in Nigeria I am pretty sure that Obasanjo, for effect, would have added them to the list of what he thinks are afflicting professor Aluko. Of course, he characteristically did not fail to add that Aluko’s "small boy" senator has since been adjudged a thief, apparently referring to the senate report that indicted the professor’s "small boy" who curiously is interested in a "big man’s" money. The only relevant answer that the president should have given is the one that addresses the Aluko allegation point by point. Is it true that the government spends the princely sum of $1500 as estacodes per official per night when the UN pays only $220? By the way, what does a Nigerian official touring abroad need $1500 a night for? Is that not the very definition of looting, if we pay $1500 for what could be obtained for $220? These are questions urgently begging for answers and certainly not the uncivilized personal abusive exchanges that have been deployed to unduly becloud the issue of corruption and abuse of office as openly alleged by the renowned economist.
Giving Obasanjo’s well known tendency for malice by association and transferred aggression, observers are already saying that it is not unlikely that his present extremely negative disposition and rising sarcasm against Nigerian intellectuals has some roots in his rising disdain for Professor Aluko. But that would be unfortunate because, irrespective of the recent errors of judgment of the professor, he remains one of the few pioneering intellectuals that Nigeria has ever had. And to imagine that for such a simple reason, that genocidal policies are subsequently being initiated against the nations’ academia does not help the case of the black man, which is belatedly angling for a place at the rendezvous of global progress.
In his counter attack to the presidential tirade, a beleaguered Aluko had this to say: "He is a soldier that wears the garb of a politician, and nobody criticizes a soldier. That is why he hits back at his subjects and everybody that criticizes him in this country. ..But I am not surprised that the President hits back at me. As a soldier he is used to the command structure and he has been hitting at his subjects and everybody because, to him, nobody criticizes a soldier," For a man who, though not formally well educated, but has manifested an explicable desire to be counted among the intellectuals, such a taunting reply by Aluko would greatly hurt president Obasanjo’s ego because the implication of Aluko’s well calibrated response is that the he is not civilly educated and when a professor of economics, senile or not, gives such an open oral testimonial about somebody, it tends to stick like tattoos on the recipient’s intellectual standing. I dare to say, therefore, that we are not yet near cease-fire, much less, the end of the war.
In between the aggressive torrent of abuses flowing from Aluko to Obasanjo and back from Obasanjo to Aluko, is the lamentable fact that all is not well with Nigeria. It could be rightly asked why is it that professor Aluko is only on the alert to the failings of the new democracy while he continues to speak well of a blood-thirsty dictatorship? There remains a lingering paradox and it has unduly obfuscated an otherwise very important national malady. Nigerians are evidently not ready to probe the truth or otherwise of the grave allegation by Aluko because he had on many occasions demonstrated an uncanny ability to play blind to crucial national evils even when not-so-educated people could see what is going on. No doubt, if Aluko had at least acknowledged that some mistakes were made by the Abacha regime, economically speaking, perhaps the low reception to his current castigation of the Obasanjo regime would have been more seriously received than we are getting today. Therein lies my worry. Is it still possible for the nation to separate the message from the messenger: issues from personalities, the past from the present as we grapple the arduous task of nation building? In the ensuing circumstances, I have my doubts because the dynamics of professor Aluko precedents as against the preponderance of hard evidence has tended to present Obasanjo as the likely winner in this very brutal duel centered on the search for the truthful and the credible, although certainly not on the merits of his case. Even though there is evidence of massive corruption in his government, certain realities have tended to create a critical distinction, which the learned professor must factor into his accusatory calculations if he intends to get any appreciative audience. One, this is a democracy with many hands picking the proverbial ‘dividends’ from the till. Whereas, under Abacha, which was a chilling dictatorship, (incidentally his choice regime) only very few people could come near the huge national cake.
Second, even though there is massive wastage of our economic resources by the Obasanjo regime, given what people now know about the personal irresponsibility of Abacha, vis-à-vis the nation’s money, the fact that he has not accused the president for being personally a thief makes a lot of difference for the common man in the streets who now see Aluko as the late Abacha’s alter ego on economic matters. What is more, the theory of our present dispensation is that there are institutional checks and balances. But as long as the legislature is locked in the same Ghana-must-go syndrome with the executive, Aluko’s shouting against the government would remain a muted trumpet and a voice in the wilderness, at least for now. His only hope is to hope that as the economics of democracy becomes less and less efficient, people are bound to ask questions about those issues he has so clearly and timely raised and then, what he is saying currently may then prove to be belatedly very handy. Again, this is only in the realm of speculations on the philosophical mantra of ‘all things being equal’.
In the meantime, one can speculate that it is this contemporary reality that operates to off-handedly deny Aluko any relevance in the heart and minds of the ordinary citizens and, as journalist Tunji Bello rightly puts it the Thisday newspaper of Dec 3rd 2001, "Obasanjo may have his faults but is certainly more able, honest and transparent than Abacha. These days, Professor Aluko's theories no longer fit into reality and instead of changing those theories, he probably wants to change the reality to fit into the theories, which in any case would be a major disaster to economics as a science." http://allafrica.com/stories/200112030391.html
It is therefore quite unfortunate that the once revered professor should score so low in the estimation of some of the nation’s political observers. What I just cannot get in all of this is why a man would bring himself down from the well-secured Olympian heights for plebeian disenchantment. The same Aluko that is reputed to have deftly advised the Awolowo glorious government, well before even Alan Greenspan of the US Federal Reserve matriculated, the same Aluko that taught economics and preached at the great University Ife with the authority of a guru was naturally the type that Obasanjo ought to talk to with considerable trepidation, even though he might be the serving President of Nigeria. But things have changed, rather fundamentally. But why the great Aluko opted to enlist in the Abacha inglorious army and why, even after his master’s demise, he still could not appreciate the extent of the widespread disgust with the excesses of that regime remains a mystery to many people.
The Obasanjo regime might be a bad manager of the economy; the Naira might have plummeted beyond recognition; the World Bank and its allied institutions might have inherited and shared out Nigeria. There is however one thing that is certain and that is: without the failings of the likes of Abacha, the nation could possibly have averted all those developments, including the Obasanjo administration. Why the otherwise erudite professor of economics, an indisputable candidate for national reverence, cannot see this point is just what I cannot get. And it is troubling. December 2001
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