By UnderTow
On Tuesday, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, enthused over the Muhammadu Buhari administration’s anti-corruption war, insisting that it had recorded feats. But in the same breath he acknowledged that the war was far from over.
As he put it cagily, “Nonetheless, we should not rest on our oars with the illusion that the war has been won despite the level of the successes…enumerated.” He then added that “While the fight has been very successful in tackling monumental corruption, less grandiose cases are perceived and even reported.” To some extent, despite his exaggerations, Mr Mustapha is right in suggesting that the Buhari administration has recorded some achievements. But he is even more right in admitting that the war has not been won.
However, it is not Mr Mustapha’s prognostication about the anti-corruption war that has agitated reflective Nigerians. What puts a dampener on his claims are his suggestions on how to reinvigorate and win the war. Those suggestions are not only vitiated by their gross limitations, they are also rendered ineffective by their inappropriateness. “I should like to see the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation come up with innovative policies and measures to empower auditors to halt any payment that is clearly in breach of Public Procurement Act, Financial Regulations, Public Service Rules in particular, and other laws, in general,” he had said. In other words, more administrative and even legal measures would help tackle a cancer that has defied solutions for decades.
Mr Mustapha may pull his punches regarding the ubiquitousness of corruption, just as he describes the disease as partially treated but responsive to medications; it seems evident, however, that corruption in Nigeria is grossly misunderstood both by the government and the people, making them susceptible to propaganda and disinformation regarding the course and treatment of the disease.
Starting from the Olsuegun Obasanjo presidency and up to the Buhari presidency, Nigerian governments have misdiagnosed corruption and applied the wrong remedies. This is why it has remained untreatable and is now looking incurable. Nigerians are baffled by the stubbornness of the disease, and have sought harsher legalistic and administrative treatments in the hope that naming and shaming suspects would deter new offenders and concurrently mitigate the disease.
But just as the diagnosis is misplaced, the solution is also misdirected. Indeed, any solution must begin with the right diagnosis. It is of course not out of order for the government to seek more stringent laws to regulate financial practices both in the public and private sectors, nor is it bad, as Mr Mustapha has sensibly suggested, to isolate and refit weak institutions directly or indirectly concerned with the fight against corruption.
Auditing controls are indeed not misplaced, and harsher punishments on their own are not out of order, but these will not solve a disease that is fundamentally caused by problems substantially contraindicative of the treatments relied on for decades by the government and the people. It is time to shift paradigms and set Nigerians and their governments free from mistaken beliefs.
No society is completely free of corruption, and indeed, in many developed societies, corruption is even more insidious and ramifying throughout their systems. Endemic corruption in Nigeria is neither caused nor encouraged by weak laws, but by weak and leprous social, political and economic structures. Nigeria’s unitary political system alienates most of the people, thus severing their ties with the country.
A defectively centralised economic arrangement produces inefficiency and stifles productivity, thereby encouraging a monocultural economic structure that inspires rent seeking, father a rentier culture, and enables a few oligarchs to perpetually leach on the system. And a weak and unethical social arrangement promotes obscene values that channel the country and even its sanctimonious government in a reprehensible direction.
The consequence of these bastardised structures is that Nigeria has not built a proper foundation for itself, whether socialist, capitalist, communist, or even welfarist. The Nigerian economic system is sometimes mischaracterised as a mixed economy, a nebulous system that floats in the atmosphere, hung on nothing but invisible and tenuous magnetic forces.
It is hard to see how harsher laws and stricter administrative controls can get very far in treating diseases that emanate from this sinewy, variegated system. Perhaps the most crucial question Nigerians must ask is what should be their role in a complex world, following which they must determine how to enter into and embrace that role. Without an understanding of their place in the world, they will continue to grope and roam around aimlessly. Fighting corruption is not just about freeing funds for development, it is also about ambition, about achieving great national goals and aspirations.
At the centre of that national goal is the question of how ethically the country plays its politics, runs its economy and organises the society. Adequately answering these questions will in turn help the formulation of policies that would place the people far above bare existence in terms of remuneration, respect for individual and collective rights, and, like the old Roman Empire, ensure that certain inalienable rights and privileges must be vouchsafed to the Nigerian.
A well structured economy conceived and operated under the aegis of lofty national goals inspires fair and living wage, offers house ownership structured around sound and affordable mortgage policies, enables vehicle acquisition that takes advantage of hire purchase and instalment payment plans, provides social benefit system that gives succour to the disadvantaged, and produces health and education policies that do not leave anybody behind. It is impossible to give Nigeria a great push forward or upward without learning from and copying other systems that have made a success of running themselves along modern, civilised and ethical standards.
Mr Mustapha reasons that tightening and refining auditing laws, among similar administrative and legal responses, may prove advantageous in the anti-corruption war. Perhaps; but it will not be sufficient, not even when a plethora of other administrative rules and legal provisions are added. The corruption cankerworm runs far deeper than what such laws can handle. Merely tackling symptoms of systemic disarticulations and breakdowns will never be enough, nor is that even significant in a crisis fostered by a disease that has taken hold of the very foundations of the society.
The policemen, and now soldiers, on checkpoint duties will always be susceptible to inducements because of their miserable wages. Ensnaring law enforcement lawbreakers and punishing them, as the police and military periodically do to errant staff, will not make a dent on the problem. Arresting and disgracing public officials, as the EFCC and ICPC also do often with flourish, will not substantially discourage other potential offenders from soiling their hands. As long as millions of Nigerians face unrelenting existential crisis occasioned by unfairness and inequities in the system, the fear of personal catastrophe will always weigh far higher in their minds than the spectre of disgrace and imprisonment.
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