Tag: corruption

REACTIONS to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s execrable putdown of Nigeria as a ‘fantastically corrupt’ country, ‘probably one of the two most corrupt in the world’, have been split virtually 50-50. It is not known how the Nigerian federal cabinet would vote had the matter been put before them for consideration, but between President Muhammadu Buhari and one of his spokesmen, Garba Shehu, the voting was amusingly also 50-50, with the president lining behind the condescending Mr Cameron, and Mallam Shehu extenuating the British hyperbole and feigning some excuses. Mr Cameron is generally voluble. Before the Queen on the day he broadsided Nigeria, with Afghanistan in tow, he was uninhibited. Indeed, he seemed to exult that since Nigeria had a global reputation for corruption, the Nigerian leader’s presence in the anti-corruption summit he was hosting lent credibility and gravitas to the coalition meeting.

A mortified Mallam Shehu thought the Cameron viewpoint took no cognisance of recent developments in Nigeria. The British prime minister had an old, abhorrent snapshot of the country, the presidential spokesman whined, one completely oblivious of the gains the Buhari presidency had made in the unsparing fight against corruption. The presidential spokesman took umbrage gingerly, perhaps because he was unsure how the president would react, or because he did not want to offend their host. The president was not incommoded at all by the Cameron insult. Asked by reporters last Wednesday at a Commonwealth event in London whether he objected to what many deemed as an unprovoked and unmitigated insult, the president scoffed at the utility of an apology. What he needed, he said dryly, was for Britain and other countries which had served as receivers of stolen money to quickly return the loot hidden in their vaults.

Many Nigerians were baffled by their president’s nonchalant view of Mr Cameron’s brazen diplomatic faux pas. But other Nigerians, a significant number it seems, lauded the president’s honesty and pragmatism. Nigeria’s corruption, the latter group said, was not hidden and had still not been extirpated, so why deny the obvious? What, however, miffed the first group was the timing of the Cameron putdown, the fact that Nigeria was their guest, and the apparent but superficial differentiation between the Nigerian president and his country. The president ought to be keenly aware of the implication of the insult, whether it seemed to mirror reality or not, the first group concluded.

It is perhaps pointless engaging in the polemics of British corruption, either regarding their domestic and international politics, when they imposed colonial rule on hitherto sovereign nations and expropriated their resources, or even of the crass internal financial rigmarole within Britain itself. It will have no effect on the British, not to say the unflappable Mr Cameron, to remind them of the centuries of evil and chicaneries they authored and executed all over the world and in the British Isles, a reputation that moved Bernard Shaw to describe them as perfidious Albion. Given their insufferable airs, there is apparently no Shavian criticism of their insularity that will have any effect on them as a people and on their domestic and international politics.

President Buhari needed to have an understanding of British history, a fundamental appreciation of Nigeria’s past, and a deep grounding in Nigeria’s national pride and essence to formulate a timeless response to Mr Cameron’s indiscretion. The British themselves knew their prime minister misspoke; the Queen, an exemplar of savoir-faire, also knew he overreached himself, and the world press, not to say the Afghans, had unmistakable impression of the prime minister’s uncivilised sarcasm. What is more, though he was a little restrained in responding to the insult, the president’s spokesman had no illusion that a devastating slur had been put on Nigeria’s image before the global community. But President Buhari not only corroborated Mr Cameron’s uncivil impression of Nigeria as a fantastically corrupt country, he even excused it and then impatiently waved it off.

Mallam Shehu seemed relieved that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, drew a distinction between President Buhari and his country, Nigeria. The president too appeared to be mollified by that distinction, after all, he has dedicated himself to fighting the evil of corruption, an evil that is real, not ghostly. How the president and any other Nigerian could draw a distinction between the president and the country he presides over is hard to say. President Buhari is described everywhere he goes as President of Nigeria, not a president in vacuum. He cannot be right and his country wrong; he cannot exist outside of his country; and he has no reputation outside his country’s reputation. Mr Cameron’s hyperbole was not only unjust and presumptuous, it was an ignorant generalisation about a country where only a privileged but misguided few have caused all the trouble.

This inability to draw the line properly also afflicted past Nigerian presidents, especially ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, who seemed to have begun the anomalous deconstruction of Nigeria from a proud and ambitious country to a troubled and groveling entity. President Buhari and his predecessors’ inability to draw a line in the right place, not to say the naivety of ignoring the wider implications of the self-immolation they engineered by their self-righteousness and lack of reflectiveness, have had far-reaching consequences. Rather than tighten domestic laws and reform the justice system, Chief Obasanjo set traps for corrupt Nigerians in foreign countries, especially Britain. Today, for the sins of a few Nigerians, a whole generation of Nigerians is suffering stigmatisation and mistreatment. To Chief Obasanjo and perhaps President Buhari, who has masterminded unending publicity on corruption, the pains Nigerians and Nigeria itself go through are not too stiff a price to pay.

Image is everything, as producers of great brands know. This column has always insisted that there are far better and scientific step-by-step ways to fight societal ills than the impulsive manner Nigerian leaders embrace. In battles, great commanders are mindful not only of how the war is fought in line with the rules of war, they are also mindful of the structure of the anticipated peace. Chief Obasanjo behaved and fought in a manner that portrayed him as ignorant of the future. By refusing to tackle Mr Cameron’s perhaps facetious comment on Nigeria, President Buhari gave no indication he knew he was presiding over a country whose image and reputation he must guard with his life. There were doubtless some truths in the summation of Nigeria’s corruption, but there were also some brazen lies and silly generalisations. The Americans, the president will recollect, bequeathed to the world the aphorism by Stephen Decatur: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.” It was the product of patient thinking about national ideals and the responsibility every patriot owes his country, from the president to the common man. The quote still rings inspiringly true today.

While it is true that Nigeria needs its stolen money repatriated urgently, President Buhari brilliantly standing up to the British prime minister would not have undermined that cause. He did not need to demand an apology; he could have coaxed it from the British depending on the way he framed his umbrage. Had the British not treated Nigeria (and other colonies) condescendingly over the years, had Nigerian leaders not portrayed themselves as House Negroes, had Nigerian politicians not genuflected before whites all their boyhood and adult years, had Nigerian presidents not behaved euphorically when admitted to European and American State Houses, and had their minds not been affected by certain complexes for far too long, world leaders would think twice before stigmatising Nigeria. A president not only embodies everything about his country, his primary job is to defend it even when it is weak, and to project its vision and values when it is strong.

Former Burkinabe leader, Thomas Sankara, had his faults, but being a gifted man full of finely honed ripostes, it is unthinkable he would have let the Cameron slight go unanswered in his brilliant, inimitable way, as Francois Mitterand found out to his extreme exasperation. It is too late for the remorseless Chief Obasanjo to remedy the offensive and almost uneducated manner he portrayed Nigeria abroad; No one could restrain or shush the late Umaru Yar’Adua from his euphoric admission of joy at visiting the United States White House; it was a hopeless effort to counsel Goodluck Jonathan to desist from humiliating Nigeria by his lethargy and his wife’s melodrama; and now the country is assailed by President Buhari’s misconception of how his private image intertwines with the country’s reputation. Perhaps it is time for a few professors of History to design a course to prickle the weariness of Nigerian leaders once they are elected, and excite them with the highest principles of nationalism. They need to be taught how to fight domestic causes without jeopardising their country’s external image. And they need to be imbued with such inner strength and mental vision that will make them sacrifice everything for the glory of motherland, even if it means losing a few foreign friends and forfeiting some of the funds looted by past leaders.