The standard reply to every critic of the Buhari presidency’s method of fighting corruption is that corruption is fighting back. The Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, reiterated this fact last week when he took on the critics, describing them as blackmailers, hack writers, sophists, and sponsored corruption orchestra. In plain language, there can be no criticism of their methods, and anyone who offers one is either corrupt or has been hired by corrupt people to fight their dirty war. The same anomalous understanding of what it means to run a pluralist society is found among supporters of the government who naively equate dissent from those questionable methods as in fact support for corruption as a whole. If you are not for them, take note, you are against them, for there can be no middle ground.
But who is blackmailing whom? Those who say the constitution and the laws of the land have dictated, indeed circumscribed, how the war should be fought? Or those who insist the weight of the financial crimes is so heavy that that in itself legitimises every means, orthodox or not, moral or invidious, in fighting it. Is it those who warn that the laws could not be subverted without doing damage to the body politic, and thus setting dangerous precedents; or those who insist that if extraordinary means were not used, there would be no society to administer with elegant, so-called sacrosanct laws? It is this kind of dangerous dualism encased in hysteria that hallmarks military regimes, ruins civilizations, creates an atmosphere of repression and intolerance, and diminishes the person and humanity of the citizen.
It is also a clever manipulation of the anti-corruption narrative. In the opinion of the Buhari presidency, as emphasised by Alhaji Mohammed, you could not oppose their methods without being in support of corruption. This column has no patience with that sort of vile argument. There is no law anywhere in the world that is perfect; they are constantly being improved, as criminals exploit loopholes in them. But until the law is tightened through legitimate amendments, no one, not the presidency, and no crime, not even murder, must be used as reason to flout the constitution. On this, there can be no meeting point between this column and the Information minister, nor with the fainthearted who perch on the fence, afraid to be cast as pro-corruption. The laws, even as they are at the moment, can knock corruption into a cocked hat. But they can be made better, more brutally efficient, and more discouraging to criminals.
Hear the Information minister: “Well, I can tell you today that corruption is already fighting back, and it is fighting hard and dirty. Sponsored articles have started appearing in the newspapers and in the social media while ‘Talking Heads’ have started making the rounds in the electronic media, all deriding the fight against corruption as well as this Administration. Not stopping there, they have been creating distractions by sponsoring articles in both local and international media to deride the administration’s policies generally, tag the President a budding dictator and even write off his 2016 budget. We know that the sole purpose of these attacks is to distract attention from the war on corruption.
“It is saddening that some otherwise credible voices have unwittingly allowed themselves to be railroaded into the bandwagon of pro-corruption orchestra. They engage in sophistry to try to rally Nigerians against the anti-corruption battle…
“This Administration will neither be distracted nor intimidated by anyone into abandoning or weakening the fight against corruption, which is a war of survival for our nation. No amount of media or other attacks will stop the fight. The pseudo-analysts and hack writers will labour in vain in their quest to stop the train of this anti-corruption fight…What are we even talking about? Is the human rights of the 55 persons more important than human rights of 170 million Nigerians? But again, let me make it clear that we do not disobey court orders”.
It is not clear how the Information minister, himself a lawyer, could draw a distinction between the rights of even one person and that of the rest of Nigeria. But he did. Worse, without offering proof, he is saying very clearly that every critic of how the anti-graft war is being prosecuted has been bought. When the critics put their lives and money on the line to support the APC and the Buhari candidature last year, were they bought by the APC? When they fought Goodluck Jonathan, were they directed by the APC? Alhaji Mohammed must stop his propagandist approach to defending the government in such a manner that Dr Jonathan would begin to look like the better democrat. He insults writers, and demeans them. It will be a poor country indeed when and where everyone heads in one direction, bowled over by the government’s methods and policies, whether those methods are right or wrong.
The Information minister must understand that fighting corruption is a noble and necessary task. But to prevent impunity and excesses, the laws of the land have indicated how that war must be waged. What the public wants to hear is the government’s proof that it has kept to the ambit of the law, not unsubstantiated accusations about whose conscience has been bought or sold, and certainly not scary figures deployed and interpreted to whip the public into lynch mob readiness. Imagine if the Jonathan government had equated APC’s criticism of how the anti-terror war was being fought in 2014 with support for terrorists. The Buhari presidency is not infallible. If he does not have people around him to restrain him, as many now fear, critics will do the job, even at the risk of being stigmatised.
