Nothing illustrates better the conceptual ambiguity, moral ambivalence and legal quandary in which the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s ongoing war against corruption in Nigeria is trapped than the recent triumphal return to the country of Chief James Onanefe Ibori, former governor of Delta State, following his release from prison on the order of a court in the United Kingdom where he had pleaded guilty to gargantuan charges of corruption at the expense of the Nigerian state and people. While the Delta State and South-South political titan, may be perceived by the Nigerian state as an ex-convict and a criminal, even if he is yet to be legally convicted for any infraction in a competent court of law in the country, Ibori is unquestionably seen and revered as a hero by a not insubstantial number of his die-hard supporters particularly in large swathes of the Niger Delta.
Ibori’s largely undiminished political capital despite his travails and his enduring popularity as ‘a man of the people’ was abundantly demonstrated by the uninhibited fervour, which his regained liberty and re-emergence in his Niger Delta political redoubt has elicited among his resilient admirers. Even from prison in faraway UK, Ibori was said to have called the shots in the politics of Delta State while also exerting considerable influence on the political terrain at the national level. From what I saw on television, the crowd that welcomed Ibori back to his native Oghara kingdom in Delta State was remarkable. Their enthusiasm at being reconciled physically and perhaps emotionally with their ‘native son’ was infectious.
Was this the same man who had been accused of misappropriating about US$250 million from the Nigerian treasury and who pleaded guilty to ten counts of money laundering and conspiracy to defraud before the unrelenting UK legal authorities? Was this the political strongman, supposedly fallen from grace, that had forfeited to the state choice property and other illicitly acquired assets abroad worth billions in local and foreign currency? Of course, all of this means nothing whatsoever to the large number of people from diverse walks of life, including former and serving office holders, who converged on Oghara to attend the thanksgiving service and reception organized for Ibori by his kinsmen. The traditional ruler of Oghara, Noble Echemitan, Orefe III, was no doubt speaking the minds of his people when he described Ibori as a very humble man who has nothing but the most profound respect for his seniors.
Waxing almost lyrical, the Vice President of the Pentecostal Federation of Nigeria (PFN), Bishop Francis Awomakpa, who led other pastors in presiding at the thanksgiving service held at the First Baptist Church, Oghara-Efe, offered a perception of Ibori that must certainly reflect the thinking of the latter’s teeming supporters. In his sermon, titled ‘knowing the gift of God’, Bishop Awomakpa described Ibori as a worthy son of Delta State and Nigeria as a whole- indeed an unappreciated gift of God. Even more emphatically, the man of God reportedly compared Ibori to great men of God in the Bible like Jesus Christ, Moses, Joseph, Samson, Paul, Jonah, among others, who suffered tribulations as a result of their service to God. The man of God attributed Ibori’s travails to his service towards uplifting and empowering humanity.
It is, of course, tempting and easy to condemn Bishop Awomakpa and dismiss his characterization of Ibori as utterly fictional, even contrary to everything that Christ and all the biblical characters he mentioned stood for. Yet, we would be deceiving ourselves if we deny that is exactly how a large number of other people within and beyond his community, rightly or wrongly, perceive Ibori, no matter what crimes the state may accuse him of. Indeed, this tendency to bestow communal honour and accolades on ‘sons of the soil’ labelled as dishonourable and corrupt thieves by the Nigerian state is not limited to Ibori or Delta State. Throughout the length and breadth of the country, we have scores of Nigerians who have been accused, and many even convicted, of abusing positions of public trust by stupendous acts of criminal enrichment but who remain highly respected and adored members of their communities, local governments, states and regions. It is possible to convict a person for corruption in a court of law and yet he remains a veritable saint in the hearts and minds of his ‘kinsmen and women’ who, perhaps, are naïve and unreflective beneficiaries of his or her perceived milk of human kindness.
The noted political sociologist, Professor Peter Ekeh, sought to grapple with this dilemma over four decades ago in his famous theory of the two publics. As a result of the colonial experience, Ekeh argued, the public sphere in Africa is bifurcated between a primordial public that consists of indigenous ethno-cultural and communal entities that predated colonial rule and the more recent ‘civic public’ that refers to modern institutions, organizations and structures of state – the civil service, state government, local government, judiciary, parastatals, legislature, higher institutions, research institutes, banks, multinational corporations etc – that came into being with the colonial intrusion. As a member of his ethnic, cultural or communal group, the African is governed by constraining moral and ethical values. However, the public officer at whatever level has a largely amoral disposition to the modern institution of state within which he functions.
While a member of an ethnic or communal association, for instance, is likely to face serious condemnation and sanctions if he pilfers the funds of the group, the officer functioning as a bureaucratic employee or elected member of what Ekeh calls ‘migrated social structures’ will most likely be lionized if he utilizes his office, including the embezzlement of funds in his care, to favour or benefit the communal group. It appears to me that the humongous level of stealing that takes place at the centre, which is largely an artificial entity divorced psychologically and emotionally from the more natural cultural components of the federation, can be explicated within the prism of Ekeh’s ethno-cultural theoretical framework. Thus, the average Niger-Delta indigene perceives a federal government that subsists on petro dollars forcibly extracted from the oil producing areas and inequitably allocated with scant respect for justice, fair play and equity, as no better than an armed robber itself and thus morally incapacitated to label anyone else a thief.
However, Ekeh’s theory, in my view, does not explain why so much stealing goes on at the sub-national levels of administration – states and local governments – that are spatially closer to and more structurally affiliated with the ethno-cultural components of the polity. In other words, how is the fierce agitation for greater resource control by the Niger Delta compatible with the ferocity with which elites from the region plunder the resources, and thus deepen the impoverishment and misery of the same people they claim to be fighting for? This is particularly so when the collective resources of the region so brazenly and recklessly appropriated by thieving public officers from the South-South are stashed abroad or expended on wasteful luxuries rather than invested in ways that can create jobs or alleviate the poverty of the people in any meaningful way.
It is because of the famished moral context and ethical wasteland within which political, economic and legal structures operate in post-colonial Nigeria, for instance, that the Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, Delta State, on December 17, 2009, could easily discharge and acquit Ibori of all 170 charges brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) without any serious backlash. Yet, it is noteworthy that it was a petition by the Delta State Elders and Stakeholders Forum led by Chief Edwin Clark in March 2010 that spurred the EFCC to commence a fresh round of investigations into Ibori’s finances after the initial legal setback. And it was the agitation by this same group through their lawyer, Kayode Ajulo that as far back as 2007 compelled the initial investigations that ultimately proved to be Ibori’s waterloo.
This offers a ray of hope that in the battle against the culture of graft that so badly hobbles the potentials of Nigeria, a commitment to elevated standards of integrity and morality can trump narrow and stultifying communal justifications of corrupt enrichment. Yet, the Buhari administration’s war against corruption must urgently transcend the current phase of rhetorical flourishes and media sensationalism to engage the deeper psychological, sociological and structural roots of the problem so as to outwit the forces of corruption, who are fiercely fighting back, in the battle for the minds of Nigerians.
Adieu Sir Innocent Oparadike
‘I am innocent’. That is the simple way I heard him introduce himself many times as Managing Director of the Daily Times, which was still a respectable even if hugely diminished media behemoth in the mid-1990s. He was a brilliant and incisive intellect. He was an astute manager of men and materials, a patriotic and large hearted visionary who soared above pettiness and an accomplished journalist both as a professional and a media administrator with some significant firsts to his name. Sir Innocent Oparadike, whose remains will be committed to mother earth on Friday, February 24, in his native Ogwa, Imo State, was a great even if very unassuming Nigerian. Above all, he was a remarkable and genuinely good human being. May his soul rest in peace and may God strengthen his loved ones to bear this sad loss.
