Buhari’s anti-corruption: Of scapegoats and sacred cows

“When it comes to fighting corruption in the National Assembly and the Judiciary and in the larger Nigerian sectors, the President uses insecticide, but when it comes to fighting corruption within the Presidency, they use deodorants.” – Senator Shehu Sani in January 2017.

President Muhammadu Buhari campaigned on a three-point agenda in the lead-up to the 2015 general election. He promised to fight insecurity, revamp the economy and tackle corruption. On these, while he may have recorded some baby-step successes, his performance has been anything but sterling.  In all honesty, we cannot in good conscience claim to be more secure now than we were before Buhari came to power on May 29, 2015. While he’s been able to contain the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East, banditry, herdsmen killings and kidnapping have soared. The economy is still on tenterhooks with Nigeria currently ranked as the country with the highest number of poor people in the world while the anti-corruption crusade has been largely lopsided.

For the over three years that President Buhari has been in power, his administration has done much to demonise the former ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party, as the locust that ate our patrimony. It was lamentations galore for the ruling All Progressives Congress. “Oh, PDP destroyed this country!” “Oh, we would have become industrial giant but for PDP which stole us blind!”, the APC and Buhari are wont to say. Now that a new sheriff is in town, what’s our scorecard on anti-corruption?

The Treasury Single Account, Bank Verification Number and weeding Nigeria’s civil service of “ghost” workers are not the initiatives of Buhari’s government. They were initiated by ex-President Goodluck Jonathan but sustained by the incumbent. I admit that the current administration has recorded greater success than its predecessor did in the anti-corruption war. However, the perception out there is that a lot of corruption is still going on under this administration. Critics of Buhari’s anti-corruption fight are quick to point out the “grass-cutting” scandal that led to the sacking of the immediate past Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, is a sore point. While President Buhari vacillated in sacking Babachir, it is instructive that the man has not been prosecuted since he was removed from office over a year ago.

There is also the Abdulrasheed Maina case. The former chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reform who was indicted for his inability to account for billions of naira recovered by his committee was secretly recalled into civil service and given double promotion from Assistant Director to Director despite having been declared wanted by the security agencies. In October 2017, the incumbent Minster of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, accused the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru, of insubordination and of awarding contracts to the tune $25bn without due process. No probe was ordered and the administration has carried on as if nothing happened.

 Under this administration, a serving senator, Isa Misau, last year opened a can of worms on the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris. Rather than set up an independent panel of enquiry, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minster of Justice, Abubakar Malami, only denied the allegations on behalf of the IGP and charged Misau to court.

When Premium Times broke the news about the immediate past Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, forging her NYSC Exemption Certificate and daring her to sue it if she felt libeled, President Buhari maintained a studied silence. It took 69 days before the minister, of her own accord, voluntarily resigned last Friday, September 14, 2018. Not even the NYSC was able to inform the public whether the request for exemption by Adeosun was approved by it or the outcome of its self-imposed investigation into the matter till date.

Early this year, the Minister of Information, Lai Muhammed, named alleged looters of Nigeria and all of them were reportedly from the opposition PDP. I asked then, if there were no corrupt persons in the APC.  In April 2018, the APC asked each of its then 24 governors to pay a princely sum of N250m in order to help the party fund the congresses and convention it later held in May and June. The alibi was that it was their dues to the party. According to the then APC Publicity Secretary, Malam Bolaji Abdullahi,  “At the meeting of the National Working Committee and the governors of the party held at the party secretariat on Thursday, April 26, it was pointed out that many of the governors have fallen behind in the payment of their party dues. While some of the governors have been up to date with the payments, a few others have not paid at all. The governors were therefore requested to pay up, especially in view of upcoming party activities. It is therefore possible that a governor that falls in the category of those that has not paid since inception could be owing up to N250 million,” Incredible! President Buhari, the anti-corruption czar and the Economic and Financial  Crimes Commission did not see anything wrong with using state funds to bankroll a political party.

In a Saturday, September 1, 2018 features story entitled, “Eight politicians with N232bn corruption cases working for Buhari’s re-election”, Saturday PUNCH reported that  at least eight out of the politicians working for the re-election of President Buhari in the February 2019 election had pending corruption cases worth N232bn. It reported that the amount involved in the various graft cases, which were pending before security agencies, especially the EFCC, ranged from N223m to N100bn for each of the politicians. Some of the eight politicians, who used to be members of the PDP and other opposition parties, had defected to the ruling APC to stop the dangling axe of the EFCC and other security agencies from falling on them. Specifically, the politicians who are currently either under probe or prosecution for allegedly diverting government funds have separately vowed to ensure Buhari remains in power until 2023. I expected that since members of the PDP were the “looters”, the APC and the President should not have allowed anyone from the PDP who is under prosecution for corruption to join their rank. However, the party, just like all others, has been non-discriminatory.

Recently, there was a controversy about the propriety of a group, Nigeria Consolidation Ambassador Network, paying for the President’s N45m Expression of Interest and Nomination forms fees. My take on that is, while it may be legally acceptable, it is morally reprehensible. It is a Greek gift meant to curry favour from the President. Why did the group not pay the N27m needed for the President’s nomination fee in 2015 only for him to take a bank overdraft to pay for the form then?

I have chronicled the people’s perception of the president’s anti-corruption fight. There is a lot of double standards at play. If it were members of the opposition party that did most of the things being done with impunity by members of the ruling party, they would not only have been hounded and molested by the anti-corruption and security agencies but would have been presumed guilty even before being  charged to court.

Mr. President must know that the three pillars of rule of law are: Supremacy of the constitution; equality before the law and Fundamental Human Rights. These are core principles that should not be observed in breach.