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Tag: corruption

  • Nigerian football is symptomatic of our famed corruption

    Nigerian football is symptomatic of our famed corruption

    Knowing now what we do about our football and its guardian angels, the crisis-ridden Football Federation, is it a surprise that Nigerians were treated to the macabre picture of a ‘scratch my back, I scratch yours’:

    Writing under the title: ‘How Nigeria Destroys’, a distinguished columnist with The Nation, this past week set me thinking; running my mind over the  entire Nigerian canvass to see if there were still any oasis of integrity left in this whirlpool of corruption. I knew quite well that the Jonathan government has taken corruption to a new high in our country, not just by its romanticisation of the corrupt, but more by the introduction of scientific rigging into our electoral process as we saw in the 21 June, 2014 election in Ekiti.  Former President Olusegun Obasanjo had started that journey into the abyss when he superintended over elections that were worse than those in Myanmar and the student had merely emerged smarter and a lot more prolific. Obasanjo’s bastardisation of elections in Nigeria was such that a sitting president could not run away from confessing, shame-faced, that the election that brought him into office was rigged. It doesn’t get more bizarre. Nonetheless, I went searching. After all, a time was in this self same country when you could beat your chest and claim that our universities were nothing but citadels of learning and integrity.  Both the columnist I am quoting and this writer were proud members of the Nigerian university system while that era lasted. Today, learning, yes, if you could take what now passes muster on those cult-infested campuses as impartation of knowledge, but integrity, certainly not, as no sane person would so affirm or bet a dime.

    The referenced columnist wrote as follows: “The great danger of being part of Nigeria today is that Nigeria tends massively to corrupt everything and everybody. There is hardly anything to look up to in Nigeria. In most directions that one may look, the beckoning is perpetually and relentlessly towards the low, the ignoble and the graceless. Most of the privileged and influential seek nothing but their own. In the reckoning of the typical powerful and influential Nigerian, the masses of ordinary Nigerians are, at best, cannon fodder for the reaching of his warped goals – and at worst, just despicable beings deserving to be ignored in their poverty, their ignorance and their hopelessness”.

    In affirmation of the above, not only the just retired Chief Justice of Nigeria, Hon. Justice Aloma Mariam Mukhtar, but legal luminaries like the late Justice Esho and others are on record  as saying that the Nigerian judiciary is reeking of massive corruption. This past week, although he just might be the most inappropriate person to so allege, former President Olusegun Obasanjo only stopped short of calling the National Assembly a den of robbers although they  have since angrily denied such claims, but to credulous Nigerians who, most probably, think worse of them and earnestly hope that they would turn patriotic for once and give up their  immoral,  absolutely unsustainable allowances in the wake of our new economic realities. I am sure Nigerians cannot wait to hear the Breaking News!

    Of course, the least said about the executive branch the better and so we need not do a rehash of all the scams it has conveniently glossed over: the Pension and Oil subsidy scams, the unremitted oil funds, the Malabu oil scam in which a whooping U.S. $1.1 was allegedly shared, not forgetting the tens of billions burnt by a minister of the Federal Republic on luxury ‘air birds’. So all consuming is corruption in the executive branch that many have concluded that corruption is the lubricator of the Nigerian system.

    It was at this point my mind went to sports, in particular the Nigerian football scene. And how fortuitous this turned out to be! Since I was writing this on a Wednesday, I naturally turned to the day’s edition of Mumuni  Alao’s beautiful effort -Complete Sports – a copy of  which I buy daily and, voila,  Sunday Oliseh, about the most professionally (soccer-wise)  educated Nigerian ex-international, who scored that wonderful goal that  retired  Andoni Zubizarreta , the incomparable Spanish goal keeper and captain at the 1998 FIFA World Cup, had an article culled from his Blog titled: THE SAD STATE OF NIGERIAN FOOTBALL. I have always enjoyed listening to Oliseh commentating on the Super Sports African football programme because you will never see him call a spade by any other name. And by the way, this is one Nigerian, I know, can take our football to where those of us Nigerians to whom football is no business, want it; not where these jesters have taken us.

    For my purpose, Oliseh’s very first paragraph would suffice. He wrote” For some people in Nigeria, football is no longer a sport, but rather it is all about money, nepotism and politics. The state of Nigerian football today is unprecedented and the worst it has ever been. Forget that we won AFCON 2013, we mean the situations of the national teams, football federation and local league! When as defending champions you fail to qualify for the African Cup of Nations from a weak group, your football federation is in disarray, you have a disputed coaching and no quality coach is interested in applying for the job, then you have a great dilemma on your hands. Nigerian football structure is a joke and has been ridiculed for scandals unlike any other federation in the world. Officials are in and out of courts instead of carrying out their duties of football development”. He continues: “I wish to God there was a situation where there was no free flowing unaccountable money involved with the federation. That would take away the fanatical interest it attracts to some today…”

    That is the Football Federation TAN was eagerly waiting to profit from had the team qualified for AFCON 2015.

    The quintessential patriot Oliseh is, he did not permit his utter disappointment to debar him from suggesting ways out of our corruption-ridden inefficiency. He therefore proffered as follows: “The government has to privatise club sides but own the infrastructure they play on in return for a rental fee that is just cosmetic. This, he says, will provoke investment, creativity, competition and renew the development of the local league. The government, he went on, should sponsor real technical education of the coaches as opposed to three-week coaching seminars”. And because he knows the level of corruption in the system, he was not particularly optimistic these suggestions would see the light of day. He therefore concluded: ‘I expect some people won’t agree with my point of view mainly because such progressive changes might affect their ‘pocket’ but if things don’t change, fanatical football-loving Nigerians will continue to stay glued to the English Premier League and other European leagues instead of our local league and national team”.

    Knowing now what we do about our football and its guardian angels, the crisis-ridden Football Federation, is it a surprise that Nigerians were treated to the macabre picture of a ‘scratch my back, I scratch yours’: of a newly appointed interim coach pleading that the sacked be reinstated? Or are we stupefied that the ubiquitous TAN was out there waiting to profit from a most unlikely qualification for AFCON 2015? This is how low, in all ramifications, the PDP has taken Nigeria in its unholy 16-year strangulation of an otherwise blessed country.

    So where do Nigerians turn for integrity and transparency? The Church? Perish the thought.

  • Aspirant says corruption is Nigeria’s biggest challenge

    A presidential aspirant has reminded Nigerians what they have always known: a country so endowed with many natural resources is crippled by corruption and criminality.

    Speaking to reporters, Williams Ad’ojo Jedidiah explained that the level of corruption in the country has pushed him into deciding to run for the highest office in the land.

    Speaking further, the Kogi State-born chemical engineer noted that if given the opportunity to lead this country, he would tackle corruption within the first two years of his presidency.

    He however noted that he is ready to lay down his life for Nigeria and  ready to forfeit all the salaries and entitlement meant for the office of the president up until his administration tackles corruptions.

    While revealing his abilities and qualifications, Ad’ojo Jedidiah noted that he has been a researcher in leadership, management, governance and human nature for the past 13 years and urged any top-level expert in leadership, management and public administration to engage him in order to prove his worth.

    Speaking further on the insecurity situation in the country, Ad’ojo Jedidiah said explained with the new internal security system also known as “watching eyes security system”; which is developed ýlocally and by Nigerians, the issues of crime, corruption and insecurity would be a thing of the past if only there is political will to handle that.

  • The chicken of rentier states coming home to roost? (2)

    The chicken of rentier states coming home to roost? (2)

    The country now needs, more than ever before, governments that are sincerely committed at all levels to fighting corruption.

    The conclusion to the piece last week pointed at the two suggestions from the federal government about the fast-falling oil price: devaluation of the naira and the imperative for states to look for new sources of revenue. Some of the readers of this column called me last Sunday to advise me to desist from being pessimistic about the future of petroleum and Nigeria.  I was urged to accept that there was nothing in the facts I had listed regarding advances in energy research that can be taken as providing a sufficient condition for my conclusion that the value of fossil fuel may be waning from now on rather than waxing.

    The intention of last week’s piece and of the piece for today is not to propagate pessimism, as some of my commentators have alleged, but to heed pragmatism. Moreover, there is no effort to use the piece to criticise the Jonathan presidency. The problem of our political leaders’ irresponsible attitude to petroleum revenue is much older than Jonathan’s presidency. It goes back to the years following the civil war and under the watch of several leaders: military and civilian, but the Jonathan regime has not done much to right the wrongs of the past on this matter. It was not Jonathan that started the policy that transformed the existence of petroleum into a curse for the country. It is also hard to argue that his presidency has done anything to end the curse that petroleum would not bring progress but hardship to citizens. Readers should resist the temptation to read partisan politics into a matter that is likely to affect the life of every Nigerian, regardless of his or her political party affiliation.

    Getting back to the two suggestions by agents of the federal government, devaluation may not be a very bad option if the country eventually has something other than petroleum to export, to attract foreign exchange. No doubt, devaluation will be painful. It will drive inflation up and further impoverish those already at the bottom of the economic ladder. But with an economy that uses oil to acquire over 90% of its foreign exchange; to determine the size of its budget; and to pay for about 85% of import bills, a Nigeria with drastic reduction in revenue from oil cannot but devalue. Not having a huge reserve and not having saved a lot in the excess crude account, devaluation has to be high on the list of responses to the country’s latest challenge. Devaluation then becomes a bad consequence for poor judgment of the past.

    One way to delay devaluation is to look for ways of increasing the country’s reserve. This will require adoption of a more aggressive attitude to corruption. Probing as many of past political leaders and bureaucrats as possible, with the hope of liberating much of foreign exchange stolen and stashed in foreign banks by them and repatriating this to the country can boost the country’s reserve and increase the chances of the country to pay for its high import bills in the event that the flow of foreign exchange from petroleum refuses to get better. But even such additional revenue may not be able to stave off devaluation for long. It may delay it a little only if new outflow of funds from petroleum revenue is stemmed or stopped through draconian steps to discourage further stealing of public funds. In other words, the country now needs, more than ever before, governments that are sincerely committed at all levels to fighting corruption.

    The other piece of advice by the federal government last week that states should look for sources of new revenue may sound creative. But this advice is not any better than the rhetoric of diversification that citizens have been fed decades to no avail. The imperative of diversification of the economy has been around since the era of Structural Adjustment Programme. If it has not happened in close to thirty years, there is a need to look into why it has not happened.

    Guaranteed revenue from oil has fuelled corruption. This has been so, largely because over 50% of the revenue that flows into the country has gone and still goes to the federal government. This level of government has no direct population that it serves. But like other levels of government, it has a huge bureaucracy that consumes a lot of revenue while producing very little. Now that the chicken seems to be coming home to roost with respect to the country’s use or misuse of oil revenue over the years, it is more important for the federal government with a huge chunk of national revenue and very little direct interaction with citizens to review the revenue allocation formula than it is for minders of the federal government to call on states to look for sources of additional revenue.

    This should be no time for blame game or for scapegoating the states. Most of the states were created at the instance of mangers of the federal government between 1967 and now. When citizens and even governors cried out since the exit of military dictatorship that many of the existing states are not sustainable, owners of federal power who out of misconception of what national unity means in a multiethnic state have ignored such calls. For example, the recent amendments to the constitution by the national assembly and the recommendations from the recent national conference convened by Jonathan failed to come to terms with the danger inherent in structuring the polity on the expectation that revenue from petroleum is more or less infinite and will always be sufficient to foot the ever-increasing recurrent bills of the three levels of government that live off the manna from the bowels of the earth.

    It is ironical that the federal government which has dispossessed states of their traditional sources of revenue is now quick to call on the states to find new ways of attracting revenue. All the services that used to bring revenue to states and local governments have virtually been taken over by the central government or passed to federal agencies. A federal agency is in charge of issuing driver’s license, vehicle registration, collecting and distributing consumption taxes, etc. For decades, the central government has turned states into agencies to spend money allocated to them from the federation account, made possible largely by petroleum.

    As this column had observed in three articles in the past titled “Petroleum and the future of Nigeria,”dwindling revenue from petroleum provides an opportunity for the country to re-examine its methods and re-invent itself.  The new economic challenge that may ensue from reduced revenue from the country’s only crop may make obsolete the view that all that is needed for Nigeria to survive is that the country is pampered and made to be seen to be united. After throwing whatever is not stolen from the revenue that has accrued to the country since 1967 at sustaining 774 local governments and 36 states put perpetually on life support by huge flow of oil revenue, Nigeria does not appear to be any more united than it was when the country had just four regions and each region functioned as a centre for production and development by using the model of optimising comparative advantage.

    To continue to think that the present structure of the polity can be sustained if the era of oil boom comes to an end is for our leaders to knowingly bury their heads in the sand in order to avoid coming to terms with an unpleasant reality. There appears to be plenty of time to do a lot of re-thinking before the few amendments of the 1999 Constitution reach the state legislatures. Endowing 774 local governments with autonomy to spend funds allocated from a petroleum-driven federation account may no longer in the next three months be as realistic as it was to federal lawmakers a few months back. Correspondingly, President Jonathan needs to review his pledge to delegates at the recent national conference on implementing their recommendations, particularly creation of additional 18 states. The game may not have changed completely but it is changing fast. Let us start to get realistic and embark on removing traces of military inscriptions on our polity and economy.

  • Fight corruption, uplift engineering, don advises

    The Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Administration), Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Prof Adekojo Waheed, has said corruption must be fought headlong for engineering to experience more breakthroughs.

    He spoke at the second lecture/first induction of the College of Engineering, Bells University of Technology (BellsTech), Ota.

    Waheed, who decried corruption in all facet of life, noted that if bureaucratic bottlenecks that had hindered flow of  funds to appropriate quarters are removed, disciplines, such as engineering would henceforth enjoy free flow of funds which could facilitate its operations.

    Said Waheed: “Government and the society should rise up to fight against corruption. This should include direct remittance of funds to the account of executing companies and more serious actions and sanctions should be meted out to those found guilty of corruption.  Middle level engineering personnel should also undergo regular training; policies and governance should be enhanced, appropriate research and development should also be carried-out.

    Speaking on the topic: Challenges of engineering practice in Nigeria emerging economy, Waheed said: “Another way forward for the engineering profession to move on, is enhancing quality assurance measures towards guaranteeing top quality job delivery.

    Waheed listed challenges militating against the engineering practice to include inadequate engineering education and re-training.

    “There is poor funding, poor attitude of employers, inadequate equipment, students population explosion without commensurate facilities, lack of high-quality manpower, inadequate industrial training, poor remuneration for practising engineers and lack of appropriate government policy,” he said.

    He said there was also insufficient engineering research, dearth of engineering material-producing industries, and poor quality assurance measures, among others.

    He said Nigeria has abundant human and natural resources that can make her a truly great nation, adding that Vision 20:2020 is achievable.

    “As a matter of fact, Nigeria’s potential are far greater than what we are seeing presently. The greater potential will manifest when the professionals, especially in engineering and technology take their appropriate lead that would bring the technical and engineering know-how to boost the productive and productivity capacity of the nation economy,” he noted.

    He listed other professions that influence status to include Accounting, Architecture, Dentistry, Dietetics, Education, Engineering, Law, Mathematics, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Psychology, Science, Statistics, Surveying, Teaching, and Veterinary Medicine.

    The disciplines, he said, play significant roles in the provision of public goods and services, adding that the development, growth and well being of citizens of a nation depends largely on the contributions of her professionals in various fields across private and public sector.

    The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof Isaac Adeyemi, congratulated the students who were also graduating.

     

  • ‘Bad governance breeds insecurity’

    ‘Bad governance breeds insecurity’

    Corruption, inefficiency and imbalance in the distribution of the national resources are the bane of the country. Thus, Nigeria is burning its candle from both ends of the stick and, if appropriate steps are not taken to address the anomaly and move the country away from the brink, the America prediction may become a reality. This was the conclusion drawn by the immediate past chairman, Nigeria Bar Association, Ikeja Branch, Mr. Monday Ubani, at a lecture organised by the old boys’ association of Ibadan Grammar School, 1965 to 1971 set, recently in Lagos.

    Ubani, who was the guest lecturer at the ‘October Roundtable’ said the unity and development of the country is held back by corruption, impunity and imbalance in the distribution of the national wealth.

    At the roundtable, which took place under the theme, ‘Democracy, Security and Good Governance’, Ubani emphasised that the country cannot change through the actions of the oppressors alone. “Unless every Nigerian gets angry with the system and resolve to play an active role in turning the situation around, Nigeria would not make progress,” he added.

    Drawing a correlation between good governance and security under the democratic set up, Ubani said there would be no development and that insecurity would continue to distabilise the country.  He noted that wastefulness associated with the current structure of the Nigerian federation robs it of the wherewithal to finance the development of infrastructure, to provide the enabling environment to attract investment from within and without.

    Therefore, he urged the ruling elite to dismantle the over-centralised structure of the federation, which gives 54 per cent of allocations from the Federation Account to the government at the centre, leaving the state and local governments that are closest to the people to share the remaining. Besides, he said 75 per cent of the annual budgets at both the federal and state levels are allocated to recurrent expenditure, leaving only 25 per cent for capital projects.

    As a result, he said there is a criminal neglect and abandonment of the health and educational sectors. For instance, he said: “It is obvious that in Nigeria, neither the federal nor state governments have built major modern medical facilities and centres to cater for the teeming Nigerian population in the last three decades. It is obvious that the rich always go overseas for their medical needs while leaving the rest of Nigerians to suffer at home.”

    Ubani, who holds a Masters Degree in Law from the University of Lagos, said the system naturally breeds frustrated and traumatized Nigerians who are easily provoked at the slightest misunderstanding. This is why crime is prevalent in the country and those behind Boko Haram insurgency can easily recruit foot soldiers to join their ranks.

    He added: “If the political leadership of the country and the state/regions create programmes to maintain the public welfare, there will be less inclination towards being antagonistic to the government. In Nigeria, there is no public welfare programmes geared toward reducing the suffering of the people. Thus, a generality of the population are on their own. The suffering can instigate actions that threaten the national security.”

    The guest lecturer said there is bad governance because political leaders allow corruption to run wild. “The nation’s wealth disappears into private pockets of the same officials who suppose to use the wealth of the land to develop the state. Imagine that Nigeria (that prides herself as the giant of Africa) do not have sufficient weapon to fight Boko Haram insurgency in the North,” he noted.

    Ubani believes good governance entails a political system in which the leadership is responsive, transparent and accountable to the citizens. He said: “Good governance entails respect for the constitution and the rule of law by all, including the head of state, governors, high public officials and political representatives… Good governance requires a fair distribution of the national wealth so that all citizens, groups, states, and regions of the country benefit.

    “Good governance entails building accessible public health care facilities, so that Nigerian citizens can take care of their medical needs without having to pauperize themselves by going to exorbitant private medical clinics.” It also requires the creation of sustainable economic ventures in both the public and private sectors that are capable of employing thousands of citizens annually, he added.

    Ubani’s emphasised that democracy and good governance are necessary requirements of enthroning security in the polity.

     

     

  • Bringing corruption to light

    Bringing corruption to light

    In India, where petty corruption is endemic, the website ipaidabribe.com invites citizens to share their stories of bribery, believing that awareness and transparency can help to transform the system.

    “Yesterday I paid Rs 100 to a police constable for passport verification.”

    “I paid [a] bribe to collect death certificate, no freedom in corruption even in death.”

    “Harassment was only stopped when the amount was paid.”

    Tales by the victims of petty corruption fill page after page on the Indian website ipaidabribe.com. According to Transparency International, 54 percent of Indian citizens say they paid a bribe in 2010, the same year the site went live. I Paid a Bribe refers to the phenomenon as “retail corruption,” where the government machinery doesn’t work until you grease an officer’s palms.

    I Paid a Bribe was founded by a couple, Swati and Ramesh Ramanathan, who left careers in the United States to return to India and establish a non-profit organization, Janaagraha. Based out of India’s Silicon Valley, Bangalore, I Paid a Bribe is first and foremost a reporting mechanism. Its goal is to raise general awareness of the issue and improve government systems by sharing crowdsourced reports with the media and officials. Claims are made anonymously and no names are published, to avoid libel or defamation.

    “Retail corruption, in my view, corrupts the value system of the entire society,” Swati Ramanathan said. “It is very easy for everyone to go and protest in a maidan (public square) against a corrupt regime or government, and later come back home and not even blink when a cop or a government official demands a bribe.”

    I Paid a Bribe claims to have received over 4.5 million page views since its inception, and publicizes more than 27,000 stories of how people across the country have been coerced into coughing up money. Collectively, these victims report having paid about US $35 million in bribes to corrupt officers.

    The website offers information on how people can avoid paying bribes, and includes a section where people share their stories of not budging. It also encourages people to write about honest officers they come across, to encourage such behavior. “Knowing that such information is available, and that these are the steps to go through to, say, get a property registered, empowers citizens and gives them the courage to resist paying bribes,” Swati Ramanathan said.

    Ipaidabribe.com’s followers include government agencies who track the cases and sometimes even crack the whip on greedy officers. Bangalore-based engineer Manik Taneja’s post about how a customs officer browbeat him into paying a bribe resulted in the latter’s suspension. In 2012, Taneja purchased a kayak on a visit to the United States, and calculated that he would be required to pay no more than US $150 in import tax. However, the customs official at the airport demanded almost three times that amount, then threatened to impound the boat if Taneja didn’t pay him a bribe. Exhausted after a 20-hour flight, Taneja relented and paid.

    The next day, he double-checked the rules and learned that he had correctly calculated the exemption. Stung, he vented his anger on ipaidabribe.com. Soon after he received a call from the customs department, requesting him to lodge a complaint. The officer concerned was suspended.

    Joylita Saldanha, who works on the website, said the transport commissioner for the state of Karnataka (where Bangalore is located) was embarrassed to learn that his department had the city’s highest incidence of bribe-seeking. So he collaborated with the team from I Paid a Bribe to plug any loopholes. They found that driving tests, for example, were highly problematic, since determining whether or not an applicant could drive well enough for license was a subjective decision, and officers often asked for money to boost a person’s score. In response, the motor vehicle department introduced automated driving test tracks with computer monitors.The impact of I Paid a Bribe has attracted global attention. Various countries and NGOs have approached Janaagraha, asking to replicate the website’s source code. A dozen countries are now using it, including Pakistan, Greece, Hungary, and Kenya.

    “Like they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Swati Ramanathan remarked. “As more and more people start sharing their experiences with corruption on a public platform, it is bound to discourage people from indulging in it, owing to the greater chance of getting caught. I think in 20 years, retail corruption can be eradicated, and certainly from our end we will do everything possible to ensure that.”

     

  • SEC urges Nigerians on zero tolerance for corruption

    TALK of a case of the hunter becoming the hunted. This wisecrack becomes apposite in describing the outcome of the FY: 2013 audited results of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), which showed that in terms of fundamentals, the company’s bottom line leaves  much to be desired.

    AMCON announced its operating results last week, with a whopping loss of N635.88 billion. The amount, according to experts is more than the 2013 fiscal budgets of seven states in Nigeria.

    This is AMCON’s first publication under the IFRS accounting reporting format. The result revealed improvements across both top and bottom lines, despite its role as an intervention vehicle to absorb Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) from banks and recapitalise weak banks. We present the highlights of the results and our initial views.

    The Corporation’s top line grew by a significant 50.0 per cent from N182.7billion in FY:2012 to N274.9billion in FY:2013. However, bottom line improved only 10.3 per cent from negative N702.4billion in FY:2012 to negative N630.0billion in FY:2013. The improvement in top and bottom lines were both driven by 21.9 per cent increase in interest income to N181.3billion in FY:2013 from N148.7billion in FY:2012. Non-interest income also contributed to the growth in topline, increasing 15.9 per cent to N16.3billion in FY:2013 from N14.0billion in FY:2012.

    Interest expense came in at N556.8billion in FY:2013, 1.9 per cent higher than N546.3billion sustained by the inclusion of financing cost, which constitutes 65.2 per cent of the total cost. We expect AMCON’s financing cost to moderate over the years as it pays down its bond exposure to the CBN and the Banks. Nonetheless, management will need to be inventive in designing strategies that focus on driving this cost item down to quicken the recovery process. Similarly, the Corporation managed to tame its operating expense at N121.2bn in FY:2013, a 159.1 per cent decline from N205.0bn in FY:2012. This underscores the Corporation’s commitment towards ensuring that AMCON recovers the cost of its intervention over time.

    A cursory look at AMCON’s 2013 financial statement also revealed that it redeemed N4.5 trillion bonds in 2013, which was partially refinanced by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN’s) loan of N3.8 trillion at six per cent per annum. Also, its operating expenses were N121 billion, down by 40.6 per cent from N204 billion the previous year.

    In addition, AMCON’s portfolio revealed a total of 12,383 loans made up of individuals, corporates and government entities. About 6.7 per cent of the total loans acquired were loans valued at N10 million and below.

    But another 1,992 loans within the range of N100 million and N1 billion, accounted for 16 per cent of the portfolio value, while 433 loans of between N1 billion and N10 billion on size accounted for 36 per cent of the loan portfolio. Also, 65 loans all in excess of N10 billion represented 41.5 per cent of the portfolio.

    AMCON is funded by a combination of loan recoveries, contribution from the CBN, sales of assets pledged and a sinking fund that currently constitutes a 0.5per cent levy of banks’ total   assets and a 0.33 per cent of off-balance sheet items annually. Management has advised that based on the current revenue projections and contributions, it has the capacity to pay off all liabilities at the end of the required time frame (2023).

    Curiously, the Financial Derivatives Company Limited (FDC) observed in a report that the alternative of not having AMCON would have had some grievous consequences on the economy, which are better imagined than experienced.

    “There is, however, a pressing need to ensure that its financial operation is equally viable. One will also hope for an improvement in the general state of the country’s economy and asset prices as this will aid AMCON to achieve this task in a timely manner.

    “However, the point stressed is that with or without accounting profit, AMCON has turned out a huge economic profit for the nation,” the firm stated.

    Lending credence to the foregoing, Afrinvest Securities Limited noted that AMCON could achieve cost savings by focusing on the top 2,500 loans in its portfolio, which accounts for 93 per cent of the value.

    But while warning that a cyclical economic downturn is not unlikely due to both global and domestic issues, the FDC report urged AMCON to prepare “to start detoxifying the banks.”

    “There is also the real threat of rising inflation considering the increase in money supply to be witnessed as AMCON redeems N866.73 billion worth of bonds in October, 2014,” it stated.

    Besides, the report stressed that the activities of AMCON had helped in ensuring a less destabilising effect on Nigeria’s financial and non-financial sectors in contrast to the experience of many other countries in the crisis and post-crisis era.

    Specifically, some companies in different sectors that had benefited from AMCON’s intervention include the oil and gas, general commerce, capital market, manufacturing, finance and insurance and aviation.

    Afrinvest Securities further advised the corporation to engage third parties in the recovery of the balance, saying this would provide a more efficient approach in the recovery process.

    “The establishment of AMCON has brought both benefits and handicaps for Nigerian banks. The eventual signing of the trust funds deed by AMCON and the banks in August 2013 officially institutionalised the contribution of 0.5 per cent of assets and 0.3 per cent of off-balance sheet items into the sinking fund.

    “The AMCON levy increased by approximately 76 per cent from N54.6 billion in 2012 to N96.0 billion in 2013; thus constituting a chunk of the banking industry’s operating expenses.

    “This has invariably put pressure on the net earnings of banks hence increasing the scramble for earnings. However, this has been a complementary source of funding in AMCON’s cashflows, applied towards the redemption of AMCON bonds,” the firm added.

    Afrinvest also estimated that AMCON’s levy on banks may hit N143 billion by the end of the year, further strengthening the corporation’s cashflows in the years ahead.

  • Ribadu’s defection, corruption and the unending disappearance of productive, modernising political elites in our country (2)

    Ribadu’s defection, corruption and the unending disappearance of productive, modernising political elites in our country (2)

    The thing that is coming is so strange that it has a head and also wears a hat.
    Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God

    The year was 1971. With my friend Professor Femi Osofisan, I was a graduate student resident of the Tafawa Balewa Postgraduate Hall at the University of Ibadan. Of course neither Femi nor I was then a professor. As a matter of fact, neither of us was remotely close to completing our Ph D studies for at that point, we were both preparing to go abroad to advance our doctoral studies, he to the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and myself to New York University. For this reason, that year at Balewa Hall was for us like a temporary holiday from academic studies of the most rigorous kind. He wrote plays and had them staged; I wrote reviews of books and theatre performances and literary journalism for the newspapers; and we both continued to act in stage plays and television dramas.

    And we read, we devoured newspapers. And this is the point that I wish to highlight in this journey down memory lane to that year at Balewa Hall. For it was this daily activity of going to the newspaper vendors’ stalls in front of our Hall that drew the attention of Osofisan and myself to what must strike every single Nigerian now as an astonishing fact. This is the fact that people would stop by these stalls, take which papers they wanted to buy, and leave the monies for the often absent vendors in the absolute certainty that no one would steal the monies. Balewa Hall is at the junction where the roads leading to Sultan Bello, Kuti, Azikiwe and Independence Halls converged and so the daily traffic that went past our Hall was great. But we never heard of anyone having ever stolen a kobo from the monies left for absent newspaper vendors. Corruption was not unknown then, but it was nowhere close to the pandemic social and economic contagion that it has become in our country in about the last four decades.

    I have said over and over again in this column that for the most part, I write the column with youthful Nigerians under the age of 50 as my main audience. Nigerians of my generation and those older are also welcome to the column and indeed, I often do get email responses to what I write in the column from elderly compatriots, women and men. But for the most part, it is the young that I think about, together with the future that we will leave for them. This is why I am starting this conclusion of the series that began with last week’s essay with this account of the relative low level and manageable scale of corruption in our country in my youth more than forty years ago. It is the great social tragedy, the great moral and political burden of members of my generation that are still alive and that are men and women of conscience, decency and compassion to see their country, their society descend into levels of corruption, rot and decadence that we could never have imagined and that cause unspeakable degrees of poverty, suffering and insecurity among most of our peoples, all this in a land flowing with vast wealth.

    Among the multiple and diverse areas of our collective national life that I could use to illustrate this social tragedy, I choose only one – the infrastructures, practices and realities of our educational system. Nigerians under 50 may find this hard to believe or even comprehend now, but in my youth, examination malpractices were very, very rare. And when they happened they were severely punished. There were many poorly trained teachers in the primary and secondary schools, but they were for the most part very aware of their deficiencies and took every step necessary to improve themselves professionally. In the universities, standards of instruction, learning and research were very high and we took great pride in the fact that degrees from Nigerian tertiary institutions were respected all over the world.

    Today, all of these accomplishments that set us firmly on the road to an equable and well adjusted modernity are in total shambles, consumed by and in an ethos in which corruption reigns with a sovereign power that has eaten deep into every sphere and level of society. Exam malpractices are so rife that they are like an epidemic of cultural and intellectual ete, leprosy. Hundreds of thousands of primary and secondary schoolteachers with certification as highly trained professionals are in reality barely literate. Moreover, they tend to be militantly opposed to retraining and self-improvement – as Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State found to his cost in the state’s last governorship elections. Our universities are so poorly ranked now that they not only rank lowly among the universities of the world but also among universities in Africa. The list goes on and on. And since the median age for Nigeria is only 19, this means that this dreadfully dispiriting list of rot and corruption at all levels of our society is all that the great majority of the living generations of Nigerians have ever known. From this fact, I extrapolate this sobering observation: as those of us of the generations that have known a Nigeria that was very different from the rot, the corruption that is now drowning our society watch for signs of what the future portends for us, we seem like the perfect example for the witty, laughable but deeply sardonic saying from Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God that serves as the epigraph to this piece: “The thing that is coming is so strange that it has a head and also wears a hat”.

    For those of us who have known and experienced a Nigeria that was not among the ranks of the most corrupt societies of the world, a Nigeria in which, at Balewa Hall at the University of Ibadan in 1971, you could leave monies for absent newspaper vendors and no one would steal the monies, we should reflect on what lessons we can extrapolate from that period and pass on to the generations of our younger compatriots. That is a huge task that is, quite frankly, beyond the scope of this series of only two essays. In place of such a comprehensive review, I wish to end this series with only one example that I deem of extraordinary importance. This is the fact that we did have politicians, we did have significant factions among our ruling class political parties that made it a crucial aspect of their electoral manifestos and their policies and actions in governance to contain corruption lest it completely derail the requirements of economic and social development and the public good. This will no doubt seem like pure fantasy to most Nigerians under 50, but it is a sadly forgotten or even buried aspect of our political history. Let me draw the attention of the reader, especially the young reader, to some salient facts.

    The three main ruling class parties of the First Republic, the NPC, the NCNC and the AG, were all very efficient in the management of their budgets as ruling parties in the regions and in the centre. At the Crown Agents in London in which the greater portions of their surpluses were banked, they maintained considerable reserves which were not stolen or looted by any political leader or chieftain. If, as an indigene of any of the regions, you got a scholarship to any Nigerian or foreign institution, you received your stipends in a timely fashion. All the regions were in a sort of healthy competition for growth and development of their peoples and this helped to severely curtail any impulses or temptations for looting public coffers. Above all else is this crucial fact: all these parties had within them sizeable factions of productive, modernizing elites that put regional or public interests far above personal self-aggrandizement. Even the NPC which was the most conservative of these parties had many such politicians at the helm of its affairs, for the NPC was not so much against modernization per se as it was against modernization that was too rapid and that was dominated by the South and Christianity. Perhaps the most interesting case of all is that of the combined impact of the AG and its leader, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, on the political economy of capitalist modernity and modernization in our country.

    To put this case in a nutshell, Chief Awolowo amassed great personal fortune as a lawyer and businessman; at the same time, he zealously pursued economic and social programmes that benefitted the poor and the marginalised. He did not see one as the opposite of the other: great personal wealth; and policies and programmes that were welfarist or social democratic. Of especial significance was the fact that Awolowo took this stance into the innermost sanctum of his Party’s moral, ideological and political struggles. He knew those who were with him and those who were against him on this all-important issue of the distribution of the social surplus between the haves and the have-nots. Moreover, he formulated his political alliances outside the Western Region and his own Party around this distinction between those that merely wished to enrich and aggrandize themselves and those who were for both self-enrichment and the interests of the poor and the disenfranchised.

    It is true that outside the Western Region, Awolowo was mostly seen as a Yoruba leader. Nonetheless, in virtually all the other regions of the country and among the diverse ethnic communities of the land, it was also known that he had deep quarrels with politicians in his own Party and in the other Parties that were for only their own self-enrichment. This was why he was the bellwether, the catalyst for all the productive, modernising political elites of the First Republic. At any rate, his significance for the present discussion is this: party politics in the modern world for Awolowo was not only about differences of ethnicity, region and religion, each party or politician representing his or her own part of the country; party politics for Awo was also about redistribution of wealth between the haves and the have-nots across the length and breadth of the land.

    I was not and I am not now an “Awoist”. None of the ruling class parties in our country has ever moved close enough to my vision of consistent and principled progressive politics for me to feel inclined to join any of them. My concluding focus on Awolowo has one reason and one reason only and this can be put in the form of three questions. One: In the last four decades, have you, dear reader, seen, heard or read about major, bitter differences among our politicians and political parties that are primarily based on how to distribute our national wealth between the haves and the have-nots? Two: Are the emerging battle lines for the 2015 general elections not almost exclusively about where the Presidency will go? Three: Have you ever read the Preamble to the 1990 Constitution that states quite clearly that wealth accumulation and income redistribution cannot be simultaneously pursued in our country at its present stage of (mal)development?

    Self-enrichment reigns supreme now, with systemic and miasmic corruption as its enabling, fructifying environment. Nigeria was not always like this. Armed with knowledge of our political history, we may yet be able to carry out reforms before it is too late.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Corruption: Let’s call a spade by its name

    SIR:“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet”

    Mahatma Ghandhi

    Let’s call a spade a spade; the level of corruption in Nigeria is astronomical. Corruption runs in the blood of most Nigerians and most are ready to participate in corruption at the earliest blast of the whistle.

    Nigeria is a house built on the sand of corruption, but regrettably its people expect it to withstand the calamities and afflictions that go with such quest.

    Many Nigerians will profess several verbiages to convince themselves that they are not part of the Nigerian corruption. They convince themselves that things are not what they are and expouse fallacious claims to support every corrupt practise. The fact remains that Nigeria is corrupt by default.

    Irrespective of what you convince yourself to believe, the fact cannot be erased.

    Nigerians live, dine and wine in corruption and these corruptions run from the leaders to the common man on the streets. The leaders steal and share the big money, while the rest steal and share the money left.

    You can hide the fire that is burning, but you can’t hide the smoke. The smoke is everywhere, nothing gets done except bribe change hands. Ask for a little favour without throwing a bribe, then consider the job best ignored.

    Everywhere you go, it is the same from public sectors to private institutions, everyone readily participate in bribery.

    I cannot overemphasis the facts that we all need a radical change in our ways. Let’s call a spade a spade, we cannot continue to live this way and expect to get a sudden transformation.Life is only a miracle to those who obey the rules. You cannot live your life anyhow and expect to get a worthwhile result out of it.

    Until we all stamp out corruption, yes every one of us, Nigeria may not yet be ready.

    We need determination and discipline to live corrupt free life.Bribery and corruption has become part of our culture and way of life, we are so much enmeshed in it that it ceases to make any difference to us anymore.

    Corruption is now normal. If you can’t beat them, you better join them, but must we live our lives this way?

    Nigeria has reached the climax of corruption; you either play by the rule or get sucked in forever.You are not allowed to say no to bribery and corruption, if you do, you may get cut down in their wheel of scandals. This unfortunate predicament has got to a very dangerous level, it now runs in every sector of the economy, from judiciary to legislature, executive to business, religion to education, health to power generation and many more. Nothing works on merit in Nigeria; you either pay for it or lose out on it.

    Sad, really sad, how can we continue to live our lives this way?

    Let’s join hands to say no to corruption. Play your part in stamping out this deadly practice. We cannot be free if we continue to sell our conscience for money. Edmund Burke wrote; “among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”

    We need to come together and say no to corruption in Nigeria, which is the only way forward.

    • Oni Oluwatobi David,

    Lagos

  • Ribadu’s defection, corruption and the unending disappearance of productive, modernizing political elites in our country (1)

    Ribadu’s defection, corruption and the unending disappearance of productive, modernizing political elites in our country (1)

    The fly that has no one to advise it follows the corpse to the grave.
    Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God

    Let me state from the very onset of this piece that what has brought me back to the subject of Nuhu Ribadu’s defection from the APC to the PDP about which I wrote in this column two weeks ago is the unusually high number of emails that I got in response to that column. In number and sheer emotional intensity, almost no other column that I have ever written in this newspaper comes close to the responses I received to the piece on Ribadu. The majority of such responses were, as I had expected, full of bitter disappointment, anger and derision. Some responses were thoughtful and measured, but these were very few.

    A special category of emails among these responses concerns those that were full of sarcasm and invective. Perhaps the choicest among this group of responses were those that played satirical language games on Ribadu’s name, using the first two of the three syllables of the former anti-corruption czar’s name, “Ri-ba”, as a pivot for all kinds of printable and unprintable rubbishing of the character of the born-again PDP chieftain. “Riba” in the Yoruba language can be severally translated as bribery, graft or sleaze. From this, one particularly caustic email to me replaced the name Ribadu with the three-syllable word Ri-ba-dun, which literally means graft, bribery or sleaze is sweet, is profitable. I do not know if the same process is going among Nigerians who speak other languages and are as bitter as the person who coined “Ri-ba-dun”, but it would not surprise me in the least to discover that this is the case.

    Ribadu’s defection to the PDP, the worst, the most corrupt and the most mediocre ruling party in Africa and perhaps in the world, has demonstrably increased the level of cynicism in our country. He enjoyed great respect and credibility across nearly all social and ethnic groups in the country, especially among the masses of ordinary Nigerians. True enough, he did very poorly in his bid for election as President in 2011, but the cause for that failure had more to do with the systemic nature of the massively monetized corruption of the electoral process in Nigeria than to any personal failings in the man himself. I was very aware of the contradictions and inconsistencies in Ribadu’s work as the volatile, energetic and outspoken Head of the EFFC, but I did have considerable admiration for him and some members of his staff. It is for this reason and this reason alone that I am returning again this week to the matter of his defection to the PDP, my intention being to open up an aspect of the consequences or ramifications of his defection that I think that, for the most part, many who have commented on his defection have ignored. That dimension is what I describe in the title of this piece as the unending disappearance of productive and modernizing political elites in Nigeria, with special reference to the commanding place that corruption now has in the political affairs of our country. Let me explain what I mean by this.

    Beyond Ribadu himself, beyond the charisma and mystique that his work at the EFCC created around his personality in Nigeria and in the international community, and indeed beyond the moral implications, there is the crucial issue of what his defection to the ruling party says about the fundamental nature of our political elites in all the ruling class parties, especially the PDP and the APC but not excluding the other parties. Expressed in its simplest form, this is the view that our politicians, in all the parties and with only few individual exceptions, are soft, indeed even tolerant towards corruption. They may condemn it in the strongest of words and even make opposition to it a part of their electoral platforms and manifestos, but fundamentally, they do not have resolute, self-defining, self-constituting opposition to corruption. There are many signs and indicators of this but we can only highlight a few here.

    One: Regardless of how much you are publicly known to have stolen from public coffers, you can defect from any party to another party and you will be welcomed with open arms, no questions asked. Two: Legislators from all the parties enjoy salaries and bonuses that, in being the highest in the world and therefore not affordable for a developing country like Nigeria, more or less amount to a form of legalized but totally corrupt looting of our national coffers. Three: All the ruling class political parties, without exception, participate in the massive monetization of electoral politics in our country. The consequence of this, both obvious and implicit, is the transformation of electoral politics into a form of “business” whose yield, whose profit, fuels corruption of a very high and grandiose order in the political affairs of our country.

    It is on account of these and other manifestations of widespread and systemic corruption among the generality of our political elites that Ribadu’s defection to the PDP has been quite rightly seen as a confirmation, a revelation of the bitter fact that no matter how much they talk or seem to act against corruption, in the end virtually all our political elites, with only a few notable individual exceptions, are fundamentally tolerant toward corruption. Much in the way in which the dung beetle lives in and on excreta, they live and feed fat on corruption as the very medium of their existence as politicians. My main purpose in this series of two articles is to take this idea one step further from its emphasis on a moral critique of the scale of corruption in Nigerian politics to an emphasis, quite frankly and deliberately, on the prospects for reform and/or revolution in our country in the years ahead of us.

    On this matter, let me go directly and unambiguously to some distinct but interconnected central theses. In the first place, the moral critique of the humungous scale of corruption in our country can have positive political results if and only if there are reasonably large numbers of political elites who do take the struggle against corruption seriously and are willing and able to base both their electoral politics and their policies and actions in political office on that struggle. Such politicians are those I have designated in the title of this series “productive, modernizing political elites”. Incidentally, in the First and Second Republics, political elites of this kind used to be quite numerous – in spite of the political crises of those periods. But they are now a fast disappearing breed within the ranks of our present political class. Let me restate this point carefully: we can preach and moralize on the scale of corruption in our country as much as we want, but if political elites that are willing to take the struggle against corruption seriously can be counted only in single digits and not in their dozens, hundreds or thousands, reform will never happen within the present political order and we are headed toward revolution – of the Right or the Left, either of which can be very bloody or extremely self-destructive.

    Secondly, while corruption has probably for long existed and will perhaps forever exist in all forms and at all stages of human social development, and furthermore, while it has managed to coexist in one way or another with modernization and modernity throughout virtually all the regions of the world, there is a limit, a boundary beyond which corruption on a monumental scale is a great, crippling obstacle to progress, peace, sustainable development and well-adjusted modernity. Nigeria, under our former military dictators and now under the reign of the PDP – with some connivance from the other ruling class parties – has long gone well beyond such limits and boundaries. There are Nigerian economic or business moguls that make their wealth from productive, value-added and job-creating enterprises but by a wide margin, the great majority of our wealthy, propertied classes make their wealth from corruption-related connections to the state in ways that ultimately make their wealth non-productive. This is the economic or institutional basis of the rapidly disappearing breed of productive, modernizing political elites in our country.

    Thirdly, Ribadu, in his defection to the PDP, is highly symptomatic of this disappearing breed of modernizing political elites in Nigeria. While in the APC, he was extreme in his savage attacks on corruption within the ranks of the PDP but since crossing over to the ruling Party, he has said not a word on whether he has either changed his mind on that score or hopes now to work from within the PDP to rid the Party of its endemic corruption. And while we are on the topic, we might as well note here that while in the APC, Ribadu saw and spoke about no corruption within that Party. This strongly indicates that either now or in the past, he has probably never really seen the struggle against corruption as fundamental to his or our country’s political future. Thus, like the fly in the adage from Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God that followed the corpse into the grave because it had no one to advise it, Ribadu has chosen to follow the PDP into what is almost certainly going to be the graveyard, the dung heap of history.

    The struggle against corruption is fundamental to our country’s future, Ribadu or no Ribadu. Reform is still possible in our country, even if Ribadu’s defection to the PDP has dealt a nearly fatal moral blow to that possibility. In next week’s conclusion to the series, we shall explore past and present indications in Nigeria’s political history that provide a basis for hoping that before a revolution of the Right or the Left sweeps everything away, genuine, radical and humanistic reform has a chance in our country, even if it is the slimmest of chances.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu