Corruption stories have been the dominant theme of governance since the President Muhammadu Buhari government came into being more than eight months ago. In many ways this is not surprising. His candidacy was marketed on his well-known integrity and apparent incorruptibility. Buhari was also reported to have said that he would like to be remembered as a President who fought corruption to a standstill.
One of the most recent of the corruption stories is the one from the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, who was reported as saying that about 55 persons looted N1.3 trillion in seven years. To lend credibility to these figures, the Minister sought to speak with the specificity of a statistician by breaking the figures down: “15 former governors allegedly stole N146.84 billion; four former ministers allegedly stole N7 billion; 12 former public servants, both at federal and state levels, were said to have stolen N14 billion. Apart from public officials, 19 persons in banking and business were indicted in this looting. Eight of these were banking officials who allegedly stole N524 billion, and 11 businessmen who helped themselves to the tune of N653 billion.”
Not to be out-done, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was also reported to have said that the country recovered more than $2 trillion that had been looted from the national treasury over the last twelve years. Dasukigate and the alleged $2.1 billion meant for arms procurement which was reportedly shared among friends and cronies is now an old tale.
Apart from the question of the veracity of the above huge figures, there are several unanswered questions around these apparently unending corruption stories: What is the real reason for these corruption stories?  Is it to de-market the PDP? Or to mobilize a sense of outrage against impunity? Or to appropriate a moral  high ground by playing the ostrich? Is it because the APC-led government is truly enraged by the cases of corruption it met on the ground? Or is it because corruption stories are the government’s comfort zone?
Largely because the country is deeply polarized it is highly unlikely that Nigerians will ever agree on why corruption stories have completely drowned other conversations on how to resolve other compelling challenges that the country faces.
Anyone conversant with my writings will obviously know I have been a consistent critic of the system of fighting corruption in the country –  from  as far back as the days of Nuhu Ribadu’s EFCC.  There are a number of issues to ponder about in the current corruption stories:
One, is corruption really the fundamental problem of the country? I have never believed so. It is more a symptom of a more fundamental problem. I have consistently argued that what the country needs more than anything else is reconciliation and re-energizing the nation-building process because unless this is done, any solution thrown at the country’s numerous problems will only quickly become part of the problems. Is it then any wonder that some are already sneering at the current corruption fight as being selective? Selectivity is of course embedded in any form of fight against corruption in our type of society because no government will realistically be expected to move against its core supporters and sponsors.  This creates a big room for those currently being accused of corruption – including those who know that they are guilty as charged –  to use ‘selective justice’ and ‘persecution’ to turn themselves into heroes and heroines as soon a new government replaces this one. That has been the standard practice in the country’s history of fighting corruption.
Meanwhile, while we are regaling in the numerous corruption stories foreign news headlines create a profile of a country on the verge of implosion. For instance the highly influential bi-monthly Foreign Policy Magazine of 8 February 2016 titled its story on Nigeria: ‘Nigeria Is Coming Apart at the Seams’. Similarly Wikistrat, the crowd-outsourcing consulting firm (founded in Australia in 2009 but headquartered in the United States) recently opened a forum on Nigeria, which it titled ‘Nigeria: From Opportunity to Crisis’. A key question we must ask ourselves therefore is whether the numerous corruption stories are accentuating a certain negative profile of the country in the international imagination.  Put differently, are we unwittingly de-marketing the country with these corruption stories and the fantastic figures of stolen money being bandied about?
Two, is also the question of what we have benefited from the corruption stories? How many people have been convicted as a result of the corruption stories?  Have we really established the necessary frameworks for fighting corruption? What became of the idea of corruption courts that were mooted several months ago?  Have we defined what we mean by corruption and separated it from impunity?
Three, the corruption stories raise the question of the place of ‘name and shame’ or media trial in a country like ours.  Why are ‘ordinary people’ fascinated by such corruption stories that will at least show that the super rich are only rich at their expense? Does name and shame really deter corruption in a country like ours? If so, why is it that ‘budget rats’ are being accused of padding the 2016 budget proposal despite the current corruption stories and the no-nonsense mien of the President on matters of corruption?
Four, there are legitimate fears that the promotion of competitive stories of corruption may be turning the regime into a single issue government. In the process, the country is missing an opportunity for earnest conversations on how to find solutions to her other and even more compelling challenges. For instance most of the current Ministers are made to look ‘ordinary’ because the hot stories are about corruption. They do not seem to have enough space to engage the public on what they do or want to do for their ministries.   Compare this with the Obasanjo era and even under Jonathan when some Ministers were allowed to become ‘celebrities’ who could bounce off ideas on the populace. Who are the ‘celebrity’ ministers in this dispensation?
Five, while the corruption stories may, at least in part, be aimed at mobilizing the citizens’ sense of outrage against impunity, the steady stream of such stories can also paradoxically numb that sense of outrage.  For instance, with the humongous sums being mentioned in the corruption stories, if you come across a story where one is sentenced to a jail term for stealing say N2m, the instinctive feeling is that the punishment is disproportionate to the crime.  Suddenly N2m seems like a peanut compared to the figures that are being bandied around in the steady stream of corruption stories.
Six, the country needs to do an impact analysis of the previous efforts at fighting corruption? How do you know if we are winning the war? It is wrong to assume that just because you have scared those prone to corruption to go underground, that you are winning. In the same way, the amount of money recovered by the contraptions used in fighting corruption may be important but hardly a reliable metric for measuring the success or otherwise of any fight against corruption. The metric should be: has it lessened the incidence of corruption? Unfortunately such a question cannot be answered by any regime waging such a war because our experience is that it is the succeeding regime that determines how corrupt the preceding regime was.
I am not against fighting corruption.  I will however have preferred a conditional amnesty (you can call it plea bargaining) for those facing certain cases of corruption allegation. Those who have committed impunity will simply have to face trial quietly. Media trial and politicising the fight against corruption ends up polarizing the country the more. We can still achieve the same objective without the unnecessary ‘gra gra’ and a narrative that is couched on the simplistic binary of ‘good guys versus the bad guys’.
. Adibe writes from pcjadibe@yahoo.com and tweets at: @JideoforAdibe. [myad]

For a man who looks lanky, whose disposition portrays a man of stern leaning, and whose battle to wrestle power from the hands of its previous custodians has always been predicated on his personal life of frugality and asceticism, and a claim of wanting to extend those features to the country’s leadership via sensible governance based on probity, accountability and the need to cut waste, the nation is still at a loss to the kind of man President Buhari has become.

Both in his public and private engagements, one might confuse Buhari’s company with a-day-with-a-mute, except when corruption is brought up for discussion and analysis. Then you see a change in his countenance, his face becomes red. If he had been sitting, he would stand.  His uneasiness each time corruption is hinted would make him want to grab his host to exorcise the disease of the heart from him.

That’s the Buhari Nigerians honoured with “FeBuhari” this time last year and a “March for Buhari” a month later. But it becomes evident that in less than a year since the president got a new home for himself, he seems consumed in the euphoria of the moment.

Look closely, something has changed. And nothing epitomizes this than “The Budget of Change.”

As the name suggests, a change in a man whose budgets – for 73 years – had been frugal to that of a spendthrift, a change from asceticism to hedonism, from scantiness to lavishness, and from moderate to piggishness. With the Budget of Change, President Buhari appears to have fallen into the cesspit of the power condition whose victims – hitherto known for infective goodness and some iota of decency – leave the ditch forever battling with a messed-up, deformed and whitewashed reputation on their persons.

While presenting the document at a joint session of the House of Representatives and senate on December 22nd, President Buhari mounted the platform on the premise of change while at the same time defending opulence, waste, and his government’s unwillingness to break away from the shackle of the old order – reflective of an indigent personality who wakes up to find himself inside a cash vending machine.

A cursory look at the budget reveals stack similarities with those of previous administration; and a thorough one, would leave one with no iota of doubt that the Budget of Change is a fussy sham, a polished document of excessive and unacceptable duplications, a formal way of institutionalizing our maladies, and a document that bears similitude with a vehicle whose Ferrari body sits on a motorcycle propeller.

It was a spectacle of contradictions as the Nigerian people found it difficult balancing an equation where the president held the Nigerian Father Xmas, Sambo Dasuki and some previously notable Vagabonds in Power (VIP) in custody for the vicious looting of our commonwealth at the same time wanting to spend N322,421,971 to link a cable to the drivers’ restroom at the seat of government all in the name of ensuring “that our resources are managed prudently and utilized solely for the public good.”

In keeping with his tradition of ensuring “that resources are aligned with government’s priorities and allocated efficiently,” the development of the mental faculty of vice president would have to be placed above that of the nation. According to a report by Premium Times titled “Inside the massive fraud in Buhari’s 2016 budget,” the vice president would read more books than half of the nation’s federal polytechnics, ditto for every institution of learning in the country save two. As the second most powerful man in the country, the Budget of Change plans to counter his headaches and stomach pains with N7.54m aside the almost N4bn allocated to health equipment and supplies in the State House Medical Centre where the same vice president has unfettered access to.

It becomes apt to ask if an evil spirit was planted in the presidential villa by the Evil Genius whose fear makes every occupant of the property allot to its medical centre, drugs in quantities far greater than those in all hospitals across the country, and health equipment whose quality renders every single one in our health centres’ as mere mechanical devices.

While the people are left at the mercy of nature’s providence – the moon – to lit up the dark skies at night, the president would spend over N600m on the installation of electrical fittings on a property whose history of magnificence is echoed by the impossibility of knowing dusk from dawn, morning from afternoon, sunrise from sunset.

How else does one conceptualize the misery of the mysterious Budget of Change of Mr. Buhari who, in the build up to the 2015 elections was captured taking a sachet of milo but plans to eat, drink and take his desserts with an amount 733% more than that of his deputy? One wonders how long it would take for the president to drink N114,967,140 worth of 20g sachet of milo!

Nigerians have accepted all manner of ostentation and flamboyance from public officials but not at this time when the nation totters on the brink with at least twenty states finding it either difficult or impossible to pay a family man the minimum wage of N18,000.

And this is the gospel the president has to preach to himself, his party and his employees in this period when the country is consumed in a precarious situation with annihilatory poverty on one side and excruciating terrorism on the other.

With a nation so battered and shattered like ours, the several infelicities and insulting duplications that litter all over the so called Budget of Change would leave our country in a worse state than ever.  The ascension of Mr. Buhari to the presidency like never before raised the hope of every hopeless citizen that at least with a non-thieving head, the Nigerian machine, hitherto characterized with motion without movement would begin a journey out of perdition.

But with each passing day, it looks as though the silent revolution is lost or what else is a budget that spends N2,469,986 daily on vehicles than an unfortunate process of wheel and deal?

President Buhari had better realise before its tool late that it would be counter-productive to betray his brothers. A brotherhood that was birthed –paraphrasing Malcolm X at the Militant Labour Forum – via oppression, exploitation, degradation, discrimination, segregation and humiliation meted on us by the Nigerian elites.

This budget as it stands, even after its alleged theft, withdrawal and replacement, deserves condemnation irrespective of one’s political leaning or ethnic affiliation for it encapsulates a tragic case of what Stokely Carmichael, in his condemnation of racial integration in the United States called “insidious subterfuge” surreptitiously aimed at selling us a “thalidomide drug” of change.

May we overcome.

Modiu Olaguro, a youth corps member, teaches mathematics at Jebba.

Email: dprophetpride@gmail.com

Twitter: @ModiuOlaguro. [myad]