My anti-corruption campaign in Bauchi
Fraternal greetings to you all
from Bauchi where I’m attending a two-day capacity building workshop for
journalists from both print and electronic media. The gathering tagged,
Journalists against Corruption Workshop, is organised by the Centre for Information
Technology and Development better known as CITAD, a non-governmental
organisation with its head office in Kano. The funding support came from
MacArthur Foundation, an international NGO. I was one of the resource persons
at the programme.\
It was not my first time in
Bauchi, I have been there several times but my last time here is five years
ago. I was thus very impressed with the developments in the state. Bauchi now
has an Air Force base and a brand new network of roads among other
infrastructures. In case you do not
know, what is today known as Bauchi State was created in 1976 from the
North-Eastern State. With a population of about 5 million according to the 2006
census.
Unknown to many, Bauchi State
has a total of 55 tribal groups in which Hausa, Fulani, Gerawa, Sayawa, Jarawa,
Kirfawa, Turawa, Bolewa, Karekare, Kanuri, Fa’awa, Butawa, Warjawa, Zulawa and
Badawa are the main tribes. In the Hausa language, the word Bauchi means the
land of freedom and tourism. No wonder the state goes by the moniker, Pearl of
Tourism. It is noteworthy that the state has produced many prominent Nigerians.
They include the first Prime Minister of Nigeria, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, the
former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, the immediate
past Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Prof. Sulaiman Elias
Bogoro, as well as the present Independent National Electoral Commission’s
Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu.
Interestingly, the incumbent governor of the state, Senator Bala
Mohammed, popularly called Kaura, is one of the few GSMs in Nigeria. I mean
those who have been governor, senator and minister.
Back to the core of this
piece, CITAD was able to assemble powerful and knowledgeable resource persons
to facilitate at the workshop. They include Prof Habu Muhammad of the
Department of Political Science, Bayero University Kano. He presented a paper
titled, Corruption: theoretical and Definitional Discourse. This was followed
by my presentation titled, Reporting Corruption to the Ordinary Citizens:
Demystifying Figures and Exploring Consequences of Corruption, followed by the
presentation of an anti-corruption activist, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, who is the
Executive Director of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre. His
presentation was on Tools for Investigating Corruption.
Other facilitators include the
Executive Director of CITAD, Dr Y.Z Yau, who spoke on Challenges and
Opportunities in the Fight Against Corruption and Understanding and Dealing
with Fake News in Investigating and Reporting. It wasn’t an all-male affair as
there were also two female presenters—Mrs. Kemi Okenyedo, founder, Rule of Law and
Empowerment Initiative (also known as Partners West Africa – Nigeria) whose
presentation was on Security and Safety of Journalists Reporting Corruption and
Jamila Dahiru of the Department of Mass Communications, Ahmadu Bello
University, Zaria who delivered a paper titled, Paying Attention to Corruption
Issues in Reporting Conflicts.
As rightly observed by
Rafsanjani, “The media (including social media) has an important role in the
fight against corruption as it can demand accountability and transparency from
the public and private sectors. The United Nations recognises the significance
of media in providing information on public sector corruption where
governmental activity is opaque by design or by default. The media, and in
particular investigative journalism, plays a crucial role in exposing
corruption to public scrutiny and fighting against impunity.”
Truth be told, corruption is a
global phenomenon. It has been pointed out that the world loses $2.3 trillion
to corruption annually. This figure translates into five per cent of global
gross domestic product. In Africa, the African Union estimated that 25 per cent
of the GDP of African states or some $148 billion was lost to corruption every
year. There is no gainsaying that corruption is a cankerworm that has eaten
deep into the fabric of Nigerians. Despite the purported avowed fight of the
regime of the President, Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), against corruption, the
hydra-headed monster has refused to die. In fact, it remained a festering sore.
The 2021 Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International has placed
Nigeria at 154/180 countries surveyed having scored an abysmal 24/100.
As if to justify Nigeria’s
poor anti-corruption rating, on Monday, May 16, 2022, operatives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission arrested the Accountant General of the
Federation, Mr Ahmed Idris, in connection with alleged diversion of funds and
money laundering activities to the tune of N80 billion. A statement by EFCC
said its “verified intelligence showed that the AuGF raked off the funds
through bogus consultancies and other illegal activities, using proxies, family
members and close associates.”
In a similar fashion, on
Wednesday, May 18, 2022, the EFCC arrested the former Managing Director of the
Niger Delta Development Commission, Nsima Ekere, for alleged diversion of funds
to the tune of N47 billion through registered contractors of the agency. Due to
the massive corruption unearthed by the forensic audit of NDDC, the commission
issued a statement last Sunday saying that it has cancelled unexecuted projects
awarded between 2000 and 2019. Contractors are thus expected to refund the
monies for the projects.
As I observed in my
presentation at the workshop, there is a need to demystify the huge figures
being published about large scale corruption in Nigeria and, indeed, globally.
I said, “Oftentimes when the media reports grand corruption, which more often
than not is in billions of naira or foreign currencies, ordinary citizens do
not understand what this humongous amount of money can do in terms of provisioning
of social amenities such as schools, hospitals, kilometres of roads, airports
and seaports and other infrastructures that such amount can provide. They do
not know how many citizens such stolen wealth can feed. They do not know how
many poor patients’ hospital bills it can pay. They are unaware of how many
more jobs such gargantuan sum can create until the figures are humanised.”
Unless corruption challenges
are addressed, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa risk missing their
Sustainable Development Goal targets come 2030. I raised six consequences of
corruption in Nigeria namely: Corruption will make Nigeria, nay Africa, unable
to meet any of the 17 SDGs; retards national development; promotes poverty and
unemployment; exacerbate insecurity; leads to social unrest (strikes, protests
e.g. #EndSARS) and, finally, promotes trust deficit between the leaders and the
led.
In my recommendations, I
posited as follows: It is gratifying that the president on Thursday, May 12,
2022, in Abuja signed into law three bills aimed at improving anti-money
laundering and counterterrorist financing/proliferation financing framework in
Nigeria. The bills are the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Bill,
2022, the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Bill, 2022, and the Proceeds
of Crime (Recovery and Management) Bill, 2022. It is hoped that these new Acts
will be duly implemented. However, there is still the need to quickly pass the
Whistleblower Protection Bill so that volunteers will feel safe enough to blow
the whistle on corrupt practices. There is a need to intensify civic education
on anti-corruption while the government has to embark on poverty reduction
schemes and pay workers a living wage.
I couldn’t agree more with
Prof. Habu Mohammed when he said, “Journalists can key into the fight against
corruption when they understand its various dimensions and are free,
independent and committed to professionalism instead of allowing idiosyncrasies
to determine their news rapportage. They should expand the frontiers of
investigative research to ensure balanced reportage. Sensationalism and
partisan political interests are not the prerequisite elements of information
dissemination. A corrupt journalist has no capacity to be fair without the fear
of his action.”
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