How can the anti-corruption war be won? It is by involving the masses who are the direct victims of official malfeasance in the crusade, reports Associate Editor ADEKUNLE YUSUF.
IT was a conference-cum-dialogue. Unlike the usual practice of bringing in experts to talk to the audience, participants at the two-day conference on effects of corruption also doubled as resource persons. All participants left with a vow to shun, discourage and resist corruption in whatever guise. The dialogue, aimed at strengthening citizens resistance against corruption, was organised by ActionAid Nigeria, a humanitarian organisation working to achieve social justice, gender equality and poverty eradication.
To set the ball rolling, Adewale Adeduntan, social mobilisation manager at ActionAid Nigeria, asked participants, mostly women and young people, to explain how corruption affects them in their individual lives. The conference, which featured many break-out sessions, saw journalists from the print and electronic media, women and young people sharing experiences on how corruption affects them in their private and professional capacities. Adeduntan said the essence of embracing the bottom-up approach during the event is to let women, children and other young people who are the real victims of corruption to share their perspectives on what corruption means and how best it can be tackled.
With corruption prevalent in the society, including the private sector, he stressed that it will continue to inflict monumental disaster on the country’s development aspirations until the victims resolve to say enough is enough. That was the theme that ran through the proceedings and break-out sessions, with participants agreeing that the war against corruption should not be left to the government and its agencies alone.
In her welcome address, Ene Obi, country director, ActionAid Nigeria, said it was important Nigerians are empowered to fight corruption because it distorts competition, reduces investments, slows development, widens economic and social inequalities and heightens injustice, discontent, exclusion and polarisation. Corruption, she stressed, has caused more deaths than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, adding that it is a global scourge that “has disproportionately affected us as a country.”
With many communities littered with abandoned or non-existing projects that would have improved the lives of the people, Obi described corruption as “our common enemy” because every Nigerian is affected by its consequences. “Corruption seems to have caused more deaths than HIV/AIDS and malaria. It has stolen the future of children both present and expected. It has ruined our educational system, destroyed our healthcare facilities, increased the inequality gap, exacerbated the level of insecurity and conflicts, pushed back foreign direct investment opportunities, and weakened the capacity of successive governments to provide basic amenities of life for citizens.
“You may ask why it is important to empower the Nigerian citizen to effectively fight corruption. You may be wondering why the burden of eradicating corruption is not mounted on the government and our public officials. You may even – and rightly too – say the government should bear the burden because corruption began with the government institutions and the government is better positioned to end it. You must also think and ask yourself, what you have done about corruption in your community or where you live or work,” Obi said.
The answers, the ActionAid boss said, were in the social cost of corruption and the mass unemployment and pervasive poverty it has engendered in the country. While acknowledging that it is true governments have attempted to curb corruption by setting up anti-graft agencies, she said such efforts seemed to be insufficient to curtail the evil and its effects on the people. “For us in ActionAid Nigeria, we believe that a government that can manage its resources effectively can eradicate poverty or reduce it to the barest minimum. ActionAid Nigeria has implemented projects in several states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). We have seen the reality of poverty at the different levels, including rural and urban communities, and without any doubt corruption, being one of the major causes of these deprivations, when dealt with decisively, will liberate many Nigerians from the strongholds of poverty.
“Social infrastructure is the right of citizens; we must demand for it when it is not given. We need to build the capacity of citizens with the critical mindset to ask the right questions from our political leaders as we use human rights-based approach to development. We must decentralise and localise issues about corruption down to the household levels and also interpret the messages for people to understand. People need to connect the state of the road, non-existing infrastructure to acts of corruption. That way, they can courageously stand up and make demands. Citizens must be dogged and determined to ask the right questions, and political institutions must be answerable to the people because it is only in this balanced format we can collectively address our common enemy called corruption,” she said.
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A participant, Femi Falana, SAN, noted that no nation can successfully fight corruption outside its political economy, adding that the root of corruption in Nigeria can be found in the neo-liberal policies being religiously pursued by successive administrations. Specifically, he fingered the progressive withdrawal of subsidies from social services, which he said is a key component of the IMF/World Bank-sponsored Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), as the biggest driver of the mass poverty that is enveloping the country. The privatisation of public enterprises, commercialisation of social services, mass retrenchment of workers, devaluation of the naira, unrestrained capital flight, repatriation of profits by foreign companies and hijacking of the rule of law by the ruling elite, he maintained, have all combined to worsen the crisis of poverty and inequality in the country.
While admitting that corruption is a resilient disease that is prevalent even in advanced capitalist countries where institutional mechanisms for fighting it are strong, Falana said the effects of corruption were more pernicious in Nigeria with weak institutional infrastructure such as bad leadership, weak judiciary, frail legislature, anaemic police system and compromised anti-corruption agencies. “As a result, the poor and vulnerable segments of the society continue to suffer as they rely very heavily on government for the provision of social and essential services, which has failed to provide the most basic needs of the people. The point I am labouring to make is that a neo-colonial state cannot meaningfully fight corruption because it is administered on the basis of corruption, executive lawlessness, brigandage and violence.
“Anti-graft agencies are essentially set up to impress the international community in order to attract direct foreign investments. While the impression is given that corruption is being fought, the anti-graft agencies are deliberately underfunded and controlled by the executive to render them ineffective. The example of Kenya and Nigeria has shown that anti-corruption officials who fail to cover up the corrupt activities of a rogue regime and its friends may end up in a shallow grave or exile,” Falana said.
However, despite the enactment of laws and creation of anti-graft agencies, Falana lamented that “it is common knowledge that corruption is on the increase in the country due to the poverty-induced programmes of the government.” This, he insisted, is bound to be so since the government is zealously committed to the implementation of neo-liberal policies. He criticised Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele for failing to defend the naira. Falana aligned with Henry Boyo, an economist, who said recently that CBN has failed to achieve its prime mandate of price stability, leaving inflation rate to be beyond 10 per cent for years. Said Falana: “But how can the governor defend the naira when he is busy supervising the auctioning of small rations of the United States dollars on a weekly basis in a market that is said to be flushed with surplus naira liquidity? Since the CBN lacks the power to remove any money from the Federation Account without appropriation, it is submitted that the weekly withdrawal of hundreds of millions of dollars from the nation’s foreign reserves by the CBN to fund the importation of all manners of goods from foreign countries is illegal and unconstitutional.”
To arrest further manipulation of the foreign exchange market and the skyrocketing inflation rate, he urged the National Assembly to, as a matter of urgent national importance, conduct a public hearing on the management of the economy by the executive. Citing constitutional provisions to buttress his point, he said the rights of Nigerians to socio-economic development were justiciable, adding that governments at all levels are under obligation to ensure national resources are harnessed to promote collective prosperity, maximum welfare and happiness of the people on the basis of social justice and equal opportunity.
Besides ensuring that the country’s resources are used to serve the common good, the activist said Section 16 (2) (d)) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) compels government to provide suitable and adequate shelter, suitable and adequate food, old age care and pension, sick benefits for all citizens as well as the welfare of the disabled. He however insisted that the rights, despite being guaranteed by the constitution, cannot be actualised unless the government abolishes corrupt practices and abuse of power. “But since successive governments have failed to promote the welfare of the people, about 100 million citizens have become extremely poor. President Muhammadu Buhari has promised to rescue the 100 million people from the labyrinth of poverty in 10 years. With respect, that is a tall order as the implementation of neo-liberal policies of the Federal Government will continue to promote poverty among the generality of Nigerians,” he said.
Falana urged President Buhari to heed the advice of his Rwanda counterpart Paul Kagame, who at the Democracy Day Anti-Corruption Summit on June 11, urged his fellow African leaders to fight corruption from the top to bottom. The Rwandan leader submitted that the anti-graft war should be guided by four key principles of culture, responsibility, accountability and effectiveness. Falana advised Nigeria to take up Kagame’s challenge by creating wealth, “not merely fighting corruption.” “This is a fight that can be won; tolerating corruption is a choice, not an inevitability. It is within our power to end it. That is the most important starting point; otherwise, it will be a waste of time to keep talking about it. Corruption does not take decades to eradicate once we decide to break the habit. We have to set our sights high; it is not enough to fight corruption by just merely fighting poverty. It is too small an ambition for Africa. We want to create value; we want to create wealth, not merely fighting corruption,” Falana quoted Kagame to have said.
The activist urged the government to also fight impunity, instead of celebrating the war against corruption. According to Falana, the regular breach of the provisions of the Appropriation Act will be reduced if the execution of the budget is closely monitored by the people. “Let the Buhari administration demonstrate its commitment to the prosecution of the war against corruption by complying with the provisions of the Public Procurement Act, 2007. Even though the Bureau of Public Procurement and the National Council on Public Procurement are charged by the law with the sole responsibility to award Federal Government contracts, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) has usurped the powers of both bodies by approving the award of contracts in their weekly meetings.
“The illegality, which started in 2007, has continued unabated. On account of such illegality, not less than three corruption cases filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have been dismissed by courts on the grounds that the contracts involved were illegally awarded by FEC. To avoid the loss of more corruption cases, President Buhari is called upon to constitute the National Council on Public Procurement without any further delay,” he said.
He lamented the secrecy surrounding assets declaration by public office holders. “A few days ago, the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) turned down the request made by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) for the release of copies of the declaration forms of former state and Presidents on the grounds that the declaration forms are private documents. With respect, it is illogical to claim that the asset declaration forms submitted by the erstwhile public officers are private documents.
“Accordingly, the rejection of the request by SERAP is a contravention of Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act (2011) and Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. However, it is hoped that the CCB will review its position and allow citizens to access the information in the declaration forms submitted to it by all public officers in view of the new policy of the Buhari administration to enforce effective assets declaration by public office holders,” he said.
Urging civil society groups to link the fight against corruption to the struggle for participatory democracy, economic independence and social justice, Falana said since the law was too weak to curb official corruption, civil society groups should mobilise professional bodies and faith-based organisations to censor their members who engage in corrupt acts with a view to bringing them into disrepute. Said he: “While the anti-graft agencies are encouraged and supported in the prosecution of a few corrupt elements in the society, civil society groups should demand full compliance with the provisions of the Appropriation Act, Public Procurement Act, Money Laundering Act and Freedom of Information Act, while the campaign for the enactment of other anti-corruption laws should be intensified. In order to enhance the fight against corruption at all levels, states should be encouraged to adopt these legislations.”