By Kay Aderibigbe
Corruption in Nigeria is such that is widely scoped and has incomprehensible elasticity because there is barely any facet of life in this country where corruption hasn't been passively or actively legitimated. In fact, moral, societal and religious values of our people have been washed away by the tide of corruption in such a manner that one begins to wonder whether there is place for reasoning and conscience.
The most devastating aspect of our problems as a nation is political corruption. Three issues are at the base of this enigma called political corruption. The first is what Richard Joseph termed 'Prebendal Politics'. Second is the military methods of nation-building. Third is the constitutionally entrenched idea of 'powerful political centre' (disaggregative federalism).
Prebendalism is when a public official exploits public office to favour himself and the section of the society where he emanates. Little wonder ethnic people usually rally round an indicted public official and term the indictment as a 'witch hunt' against their tribe instead of appreciating the call as purely an attack on corruption. Since ethnic people in Nigeria are aware of special privileges that are attached to public offices they then conceptualize corruption to mean something else irrespective of what the dictionary says. In one word, what is corrupt in southern Nigeria may not be corrupt in Northern Nigeria and vise versa. (Kay Aderibigbe, 2014: Political Selves and the Nigerian Self).
The same prebendal inclination is what you see at work when the government of the day is 'selective' in the manner it goes about fighting corruption. On so many occasions we have witnessed the so called anti-corruption agencies indicting nearly absolutely public officials that are members of the opposition parties. Even, within a state, a sitting government can attack oppositions through a number of devices. The Governor can deploy state legislation, executive proclamation or borrow federal fiat if the same part, tribe men or associates hold sway at the centre. In most cases, the fight against corrupt public officials is seen as a vendetta mission when the initiator of the fight is perceived to be ethnically biased, strategically selective or out rightly partisan.
Amazingly, there is basically no such campaign against corruption that can win public acceptance in Nigeria because the structure upon which politics/political appointments and administration/career appointments are based is full of prebends which are in themselves typical of acute corruption.
Military and nation-building in Nigeria eventually happened as a great accident because the mode of military political operation is synonymous with corruption while nation-building is antithetical to the military urge for perpetuity in power. (Kay Aderibigbe 2014: Political Selves and the Nigerian Self). Military men always embark on policies that will make them rich. Since they rule by Decrees and such empower sole administrators and Head of States to exercise absolute discretion on Security Funds apparently, there is no room for accountability; while whoever blows whistle or awaken the public to the rot is hunted, jailed, killed or exiled.
The Military therefore organizes a societal framework where the public will legitimize its incursion into politics and reckon with its continuity in power as a matter of necessity and timely required because from republic to republic politicians are always unreasonable, uncoordinated, unrealistic and apparently clueless as to what to do in order to avert the problems they initiated as a result of playing politics. Over the years, nation-building activities by the military are incongruous due to our diversity while political actors and career appointees always employ such moves to their own advantage ranging from State creation, Local Government Reforms, Revenue Allocation formulas to Civil Service Reforms. E.g "the military embarked on a massive purge that depleted the ranks, the morals and technical expertise of the Nigerian Civil Service. The irony is that those that were sacked came back as contractors to those same offices- to connive with their former colleagues to steal government money. There were allegations that stores receipt vouchers were often written for goods that were never supplied into the store. (The Punch, Tue, Nov 12, 2013, page 26)
Prebendal politics and military methods of state-building are both responsible for the strict federal structure that is in operation today. A system, so constitutionally arranged that it will in all intents and purposes empower the federal government to the detriment of the constituent units. Consequently, only actors that can get the federal power has the tools to run the Nigerian state; hence the cut-throat approach to elections keeps intensifying. Invariably, political corruption is philosophically rooted in our national system, and as such cannot be single-handedly combated by a single regime that is even at variance with the realities of the day.
the current campaign against corruption by Muhammadu Buhari is a very good call, a commendable effort, and even a a necessary attempt to clean the Augean Stable but the questions are: (1) is the government going about it in the right ways? (2) is the society really in tandem with what Buhari is doing? (3) does he need more than the current mechanism of EfCC to nip the whole thing in the bud? (4) is the fight against corruption an indirect attack on the sustenance of the economy in the mid of recession? (5) where is the money/loot recovered so far? (6) how come is the Nigerian government still borrowing? (7) why hasn't any public official been jailed? (8) why are some known political thieves sparred so far? (9) why is Buhari not executing any concrete action on the dwindling economy?. These and many more questions will be analyzed in my next write up and we shall be able to forecast if Buhari is actually laying a good precedent for us as a country or he is just wasting our precious time the same way he did between 1983-1985 all to come back as an elected president in 2015 and met a more classified, sophisticated and elaborate pastern of corruption.
