By
Sam Ejike Okoye
"The accomplice to the crime of corruption is
frequently our own indifference." Bess Myerson. (First Jewish Miss
America, 1924-?)
Introduction
Bribery, which is an important aspect of corruption,
needs two parties for it to happen: the bribe giver and the bribe taker.
In some countries the culture of corruption extends to every aspect of
public life, making it more or less impossible to stay in business without
giving bribes. The most common bribe-giving countries are not in general
the same as the most common bribe-taking countries. The 12 least corrupt
countries, according to the most recent Transparency International
perception survey, are (in alphabetical order): Australia, Canada,
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway,
Singapore, Sweden, and Switzerland. On the other hand, the 13 most corrupt
countries are (in alphabetical order): Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bolivia,
Cameroon, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia,
Tanzania, Uganda, and Ukraine.
In Nigeria, corruption is akin to cancer. As the
great English intellectual, Rev Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1932), put it:
"Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must
increase." Indeed this has been the Nigerian experience with corruption
developing to such staggering proportions that it is now not only a bane
of the country, but has largely defied present and past efforts to stymie
it. The position now is that corruption is so entrenched that anyone
hoping to do any kind of business with the Nigerian bureaucracy must take
it into account. Indeed the situation is now so bad that even some
government officials are alleged to bribe one another to get government
business done. But in the political arena, Nigeria has found it difficult
to prove corruption, but also impossible to prove its absence. Indeed
there are indications that many Nigerians, some of them politicians,
retired civil servants, judges, and a few generals, have engaged in
corrupt practices. Indeed politicians are often placed in apparently
compromising positions because of their desperate need to solicit
financial contributions ostensibly for their campaigns, but in reality for
rigging elections. They appear sometimes to be acting in the interests of
those parties that sponsor them, but mostly they are driven by personal
aggrandisement.
For the most part, corruption has bedevilled
Nigeria’s political scene encompassing abuses by government officials such
as embezzlement and nepotism, as well as abuses linking public and private
actors such as bribery, extortion, influence peddling, and fraud. As the
award winning US scientist and social critic, David Brin, put it: "It is
said that power corrupts, but actually it's truer that power attracts the
corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power."
Indeed there is a certain nexus between mediocrity and corruption which so
far has been ignored in the Nigerian corruption equation. May be as David
Brin suggests, it is the wrong people that get into positions of influence
and merit in Nigeria (thanks to “federal character affirmative action
based only on arbitrarily created states of origin”). For this reason, the
question that Nigerians should be asking is not, who among the moneyed
elite class is corrupt? But, who is NOT corrupt? That this must be
so is evident from the way many Nigerians today seem to live above their
visible legitimate incomes. Otherwise how does one explain the sources for
the financing of those luxurious, palatial, stately mansions (that have
mushroomed in many Nigerian cities, towns, and even villages), not to
speak of the sumptuously lavish social parties and very expensive top-end
luxury cars put on display by a large number of businessmen, senior public
servants and military personnel, serving and retired. Perhaps the real
challenge with tackling corruption in Nigeria is that most of the
corruption warriors (in the form of the policy makers, the legislators,
the police and the judiciary) pressed into service are themselves not
exactly clean. These are the realities that have stared past and present
Nigerian leaders on the face as they moan about corruption and pretend to
fight it.
Causes of corruption
Although Nigerian leaders in the last twenty to
thirty years have made such a sing-song of fighting corruption, it does
not appear that any serious effort has been made to address the real
causes of corruption. Thus without a proper diagnosis of the causes of
corruption, trying to fight it is akin to treating symptoms rather than
rooting out the disease itself. This unfortunately appears to be the
strategy adopted so far in fighting corruption in Nigeria. We must now
attempt to answer the questions that Nigerians should be asking their
crusaders of corruption. What indeed are the domestic causes of corruption
in one of the world’s most corrupt countries?
It is necessary to observe that aside from the
quality, or lack of it, of people running the Nigerian economic and
political shows, there are some systemic conditions in the Nigerian polity
that promote corruption. To start with, it is unfortunate that power is
concentrated in the hands of decision makers who in reality are not
directly accountable to the people as is often seen in non-democratic
regimes. This is a direct result of Nigeria’s inability since independence
to always conduct credible, free, fair and uncontroversial elections to
political offices in the country. With political office holders acquiring
power through disputable if not illegitimate methods, the situation is not
helped by perennial lack of government transparency in decision making.
Again costly political campaigns in recent times, with expenses exceeding
normal sources of political funding mean that elected officials’ first
priority on assuming office is to recoup their election expenses. This is
facilitated by the design of marginally relevant prestige projects
requiring expenditure of large amounts of public capital. In the
subsequent award of contracts for these projects, self-interested closed
cliques, ethnic-cum-family members, and "old-boy" networks are favoured.
The bulk of the bureaucracy (often poorly paid) and bedevilled with
below-living wages and supported by apathetic, uninterested, or gullible
populace, become actors and accomplices in the public contracts gravy
train. With a weak rule of law in the land and the absence of adequate
controls to prevent bribery, the express corruption train rolls on.
But the crux of the present Nigerian corruption
problem is the overarching crude oil economy and politics. It is not a
secret that “lifting crude oil” is a major form of political patronage in
Nigeria since the 1970s oil boom. Indeed since the advent of the oil boom
in the 1970s, Nigerians have developed an unhealthy love for easy wealth
and luxury goods while at the same time loosing their traditional appetite
for hard work, as well as the knack to generate resources and accumulate
capital. Instead the national preoccupation now is the sharing of the
so-called “national cake” which in an imposed quasi-federal regime has
been raised to the high level of state policy via a revenue sharing
formula! With the spending of Nigerian oil incomes in the Gowon days being
declared to be a problem, Nigerian agriculture (the former mainstay of the
Nigerian economy) was abandoned and the many assembly plants that
masqueraded as manufacturing industries soon followed suit.
According to allegations made by some members of the
House of Representatives, the Nigerian oil industry appears to be a den of
corruption. If their allegation is to be believed, no one outside a
certain restricted inner circle of government knows exactly how much oil
income flows into the national coffers. Not even the legislature could
compel the executive to exhibit total transparency in the handling of
Nigeria’s oil resources. As if to underline this situation the new
Minister of Solid Mineral Resources, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, while speaking
recently in Port Harcourt at the road show of the Nigeria Extractive
Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) accused oil and gas companies
operating in the country of corrupt practices, and said that was the
reason why they avoid disclosure of their annually generated revenue and
expenditures.
Indeed for a long time, Nigeria was the only OPEC
member without an oil minister. The reason for this anomaly could be that
the President, who himself is presumed to not only be clean, but the de
facto oil minister, may have believed that no other Nigerian could be
trusted with honest management of such a major source of Nigeria’s foreign
exchange earnings. But following the conclusion of the recent National
Political Reform Conference and the controversy for “resource control”
demand by the South-South zone that trailed it, the President perhaps in a
deft move to deliver a sop to the South-South zone has now appointed an
oil technocrat from Bayelsa State as petroleum minister of state while
remaining the de facto oil minister. Nonetheless, it is difficult not to
suspect that any transaction shrouded in secrecy, as is the case in the
oil industry, may not be free from corrupt practices or even above board.
It seems logical that any
effort to tackle corruption in Nigeria must start with sanitizing the oil
industry, because of its all pervading knock-on effects on other sectors
of the national economy.
The effects of corruption
Corruption poses a serious development challenge. In
the political realm, it undermines democracy and good governance by
subverting formal processes. Corruption in elections and in legislative
bodies reduces accountability and fair representation in policymaking;
corruption in the judiciary undermines or suspends the rule of law; and
corruption in public administration results in the unequal provision of
services. More generally, corruption erodes the institutional capacity of
government as procedures are disregarded, resources are siphoned off, and
officials are hired or promoted without regard to performance.
At the same time, corruption undermines the
legitimacy of government and such democratic values as trust and
tolerance.
Corruption also undermines economic development by
generating considerable distortions and inefficiency. In the private
sector, corruption increases the cost of business through the price of
illicit payments themselves, the management cost of negotiating with
officials, and the risk of breached agreements or detection. Although some
claim corruption reduces costs by cutting red tape, an emerging consensus
holds that the availability of bribes induces officials to contrive new
rules and delays. Where corruption inflates the cost of business, it also
distorts the playing field, shielding firms with connections from
competition and thereby sustaining inefficient firms.
Corruption also generates economic distortions in the
public sector by diverting public investment into capital projects where
bribes and kickbacks are more plentiful.
Officials may increase the technical complexity of public sector projects
to conceal such dealings, thus further distorting investment.
Corruption also lowers quality of standards of compliance with
construction, environmental, or other regulations; reduces the quality of
government services and infrastructure as is too evident to Nigerians;
and increases budgetary pressures on government. This may be the
reason why in spite of the unprecedented hikes in crude oil prices that
have led to the so-called excess oil revenues, the federal government is
still finding it quite difficult to balance its annual budgets.
Economists argue that one of the factors behind the
differing economic development in Africa and Asia is that in Africa,
corruption has primarily taken the form of rent extraction with the
resulting financial capital moved overseas rather than invested at home
(hence the stereotypical, but sadly often accurate, image of African
dictators having Swiss bank accounts). Also, corruption has been
identified as the main cause of poverty and underdevelopment in most
African countries. By contrast, Asian dictators such as Suharto had often
taken a cut on everything (requiring bribes), but otherwise provided more
of the conditions for development, through infrastructure investment, law
and order, etc.
Political corruption is widespread in many countries,
and represents a major detriment to the well-being of their citizens.
Political corruption means that government policies tend to benefit the
givers of the bribes, not the general public. Another example is how
politicians would draft laws that protect large corporations while hurting
small businesses. These "pro-business" politicians are simply returning
favours to those commercial enterprises that contributed heavily to their
election campaigns.
How to wage a credible war on Corruption.
The establishment of the Independent Corrupt
Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as well as the Code of Conduct Bureau
and its Tribunal is a laudable start on the war against corruption.
Unfortunately, though some successes have been registered by these bodies,
the general impression is that these bodies have gone after the tail of
the monster of corruption rather than its head. It is not helpful that
some politicians meanwhile allege that these bodies are being used by the
Presidency as instruments of blackmail or vendetta against political
opponents. There is therefore a need to expand the activities and range of
instruments available to these bodies.
Indeed, an effective war on corruption has to be
fought on, at least, the three axes of (a) Prevention, (b) Detection, and
(c) Sanctions and Restitutions. While to date some efforts have been made
in terms of the prevention (e.g. the Due Process mechanism) and sanctions
of corruption offenders, present efforts being made to detect corruption
are at best half-hearted. It is no wonder that when some time ago the
Nigerian media accused a former military head of state of embezzlement of
public funds, Mr. President was to retort that he would take immediate
action if he is provided with actual evidence of wrong-doing of this
particular predecessor. Yet the President himself announced that he has
received the names of some naughty public officials who have been reported
to him by Nigeria’s western creditors as having siphoned and are still
siphoning some huge resources abroad.
Clearly Nigeria needs robust corruption detection and
bursting agency as up and doing, and as zealous as the Nigerian Police
Force sometimes demonstrates at road check points, and the SSS always
exhibits in matters of the President’s personal security.
Prevention of
corruption
If corruption is to be given a short shrift in
Nigeria, then the social, business and bureaucratic environments must be
corruption-hostile rather than friendly. This means that there must be
well funded comprehensive public education and enlightenment programs on
the nature of corruption as well as the negative effects of corruption in
the Nigerian polity. This is a job that the National Orientation Agency (NOA)
as well as the Federal and State Ministries of Information must undertake.
This could take the form of well tested public enlightenment techniques
such as the use of hand bills, public posters, print media adverts and
Radio and TV jingles. At the same time, the citizenry must be made aware
of the stiff penalties that await those to be engaged in corrupt
practices. To this end, certain legal instruments must be put in place to
enable unfettered corruption detection, arraignment and conviction to be
facilitated. In this regard, appropriate legislation should be enacted
along the following lines:
A law compelling all banks to report to both the
appropriate Federal and State Boards of Inland Revenue/Tax Authorities,
as well as the law enforcement agencies any deposits, transfers or
withdrawals of funds in excess of a specified amount (e.g. N5 million)
by any individual. Such a law should provide for the automatic State
confiscation if it turns out that the sources of such funds are proved
in a court of law to be illegitimate or are connected with illicit money
laundering.
A law requiring tax in the form of “capital gains
tax” to be levied against people who appear to have come into large sums
of money illegitimately or even legitimately, other than as a result of
a legitimate business transaction (for example, accruals to registered
businessmen who have declared taxable business profits), or otherwise
sums received by a salaried person as part of an emolument package (for
which normal income taxes would have been paid).
A law requiring the Federal and State Ministries
responsible for Lands and Housing to make it a condition for the
granting of Certificates of Occupancy, as well as for approval of
building plans on registered plots of land, to require applicants to
indicate legal sources of funds for the development or purchase of a
landed property, as well as evidence of income taxes being paid that are
commensurate with the acquisition or possession of such valued property
in question.
A law enabling the Federal and State Tax Assessment
and Collection Agencies as well as the Anti-Corruption Intelligence
Agency (discussed below) and the Police to demand explanations for large
acquisitions and expenditures (for any purpose including donations and
pledges at “public launches“and other events) of large sums of money
beyond the legitimate incomes whether of public servants or private
entrepreneurs, and to impound same when sources for such funds cannot be
justified in a court of law.
A law requiring the mandatory public declaration of
the assets of the “immediate family” (meaning husband, wife and
children) of all specified senior public officers on appointment or
assumption of duty as well as after disengagement. In addition such
assets (which must be covered by the Freedom of Information Act) must be
verified and monitored routinely by the Anti-Corruption Intelligence
Agency and the EFCC. (In this regard, it is relevant to observe that
Nigerians can be very creative over asset declaration. Hence an elected
or appointed official who targets stealing 100 million naira during
his/her term in office could, for example, declare 105 million naira
upon assumption of office. Usually, the declaration is taken on its face
value; no further attempt is made to ascertain that the official is
actually worth the declared amount. He/She subsequently would steal 100
million and when he/she is about to leave office, he/she declares 100
million plus whatever little money he/she might have made legitimately.
No one can query the loot because it was declared when the official came
into office. Hence what the government should do is to demand physical
evidence of the declared assets and at the same time establish their
legitimacy).
A law should be enacted, declaring all crimes of
corruption “federal crimes” justiciable in federal courts or tribunals.
Finally, a law should be enacted creating Federal
Tribunals for Corruption offences (FTCO). The powers of such courts,
sitting in Abuja and State capitals, and the form of sentences within
their scope must be carefully spelt out, and the court or courts of final
appeal specified.
It is relevant to mention that virtually every
American is wary of the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), because it can
land on anyone’s doorstep, at any time and indeed, the IRS has the power
to examine anyone’s lifestyle and to ask for explanations about one’s
sources of income, and woe betides anyone who is unable to account for any
newfound wealth. That in a nutshell is the sort of social environment that
must be established in Nigeria if a credible start is to be made in the
difficult job of corruption prevention and eradication.
Detection of corruption
It is often said that it is difficult to nail down
corrupt officials, but it has to be observed that such circumstantial
evidence as someone’s luxurious or flamboyant lifestyles, could easily
give away a corrupt person and lead to detection. Unfortunately, Nigerians
are not in the habit of questioning the sources of sudden wealth. Instead
those who flaunt unexplained sudden wealth are extolled. Moreover, it has
to be understood that corruption is a crime of calculation not passion.
When bribes are large, the chances of being caught small, and penalties if
caught meager, many officials will succumb to corruption. The problem in
Nigeria is that when corrupt officials are caught, they are not punished
severely. Most of the time, the authorities go through the motions (e.g.,
fanfare in the media about the apprehension and trial but then nothing
happens). Severe sanctions that are actually required to act as a
deterrent are not applied. Nevertheless, corruption like crimes
relating to sedition and national security are often hatched in secrecy
and without an effective intelligence facility, it would be difficult if
not impossible for government to expose and scuttle corruption.
Because corruption is a very serious crime, its detection must
follow a similar route as the detection of other crimes which are often
aided in the advanced countries by “wire tapping” and the use of secret
informants. Hence Nigeria should give the country’s law enforcement
agencies the leeway to use electronic intelligence gathering techniques to
catch offenders of corrupt practices. In looking for evidence of
corrupt deeds of accused persons, government should set up a corruption
intelligence agency similar to the “E Branch” and the Criminal
Investigation Division (CID) of the Nigeria Police Force. In other
words, there is a need for government to establish a well funded
Anti-Corruption Intelligence Agency (ACIA) which can be a stand-alone
agency that could have a relationship with the present Independent Corrupt
Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) as well as the EFCC,
but which preferably should report to the Federal Minister of Justice
(which ideally should be different from the Attorney-General of the
Federation). The legislation establishing the ACIA should provide for
powers of arrest and detention (for a limited short period) of accused or
indicted persons as well as the power to use electronic intelligence
techniques to apprehend their quarry. Efforts should also be made by the
Presidency and the National Assembly to ensure that funding of the ACIA is
made part and parcel of the national security vote. But if different, the
ACIA funding must be comparable in size and handling to the security vote,
since corruption in the end impinges very significantly on overall
national security.
Sanctions and restitution from those found guilty of
corruption.
Before discussing methods and forms of trial and
sanctions of those indicted of corruption, it is necessary to observe at
the outset that it is immoral to allow those indicted of corruption
offences to be allowed to still enjoy their alleged loot while their trial
is in progress. In this regard, there should be established, interest
yielding escrow accounts maintained by the ACIA where any seized funds
suspected to be associated with corrupt activities will be lodged. If at
the end of trial, the accused persons are found innocent, all seized
assets must be returned in full and any seized funds returned with
commensurate interests, except that such persons will not be entitled to
subsequently sue the ACIA claiming damages for any wrongful arrest or
detention.
However application of sanctions on corruption
offenders must always be a matter for the courts of the land. However in
handling corruption cases, the current arcane court processes and rules
that lead to delayed justice because of legal technicalities and endless
injunctions and adjournments of court proceedings based on contrived court
motions and legal arguments by counsels on both sides must be dispensed
with in corruption cases. To this end, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA)
should come up with home grown fast track procedures, including rules of
evidence, for handling cases in Corruption Tribunals. Indeed election
tribunals could also benefit from such fast track procedures to deal with
election results petitions arising from election malpractices, which
represent a veritable form of political corruption.
Where persons or group of individuals or corporate
bodies have been convicted of corrupt practices, any funds or assets
seized by law enforcement agencies must automatically be forfeited to the
relevant arm of government which has been a victim of such corruption. In
addition, persons convicted of corrupt practices must be disqualified from
holding any public office for a specified period, such as ten years. In
the case of convicted corporate bodies, sentencing will include heavy
fines as well as the suspension of any legal instruments that facilitate
their existence and enable them to operate in Nigeria. In addition, the
executive directors of corporate firms convicted of corrupt practices will
be debarred from serving on the boards of any publicly quoted companies or
holding any elective political office, for a specified period, such as ten
years.
Epilogue
"Power
does not corrupt men. Fools, however, if they get into a position of
power, corrupt power."
–George Bernard Shaw
It is often claimed that corruption like prostitution
cannot be wiped out entirely in any society. This may well be so. But it
seems evident from the examples of some virtually corruption free
countries, like the Scandinavian countries, that any country, that can
muster the will, can indeed reduce corruption to the barest minimum. This
is the gauntlet that Nigeria must embrace. For a start, the war on
corruption will be bedevilled by quite a few people of questionable
integrity that have already worked their way into positions of political
(executive and legislative), judicial, corporate and bureaucratic
authority and influence. Hence Nigeria must draw a line somewhere and
grant amnesty to past offenders of corruption up to an arbitrarily set
cut-off date to be determined. But the key to preventing and controlling
further corruption crimes is to implement such measures geared towards
prevention, detection, sanctions and restitutions as suggested in this
article. These measures, particularly the sanctions, may appear draconian
and stringent. This may not sit well with some Nigerians who may feel they
will loose out. Indeed from the experience at the recently concluded
National political Reform Conference(NPRC), some Nigerians did not seem to
have the stomach for the imposition of stiff sanctions on those that
destroyed the Nigerian economy and rendered at least a hundred million
Nigerians destitute, and in like manner left hundreds of thousands
(including children) dying annually because of malnutrition and lack of
adequate medical care (a crime that compares well with genocide) arising
from official corruption and poor governance. The debate at the NPRC,
about disqualifying former military rulers (who came to power by force)
from occupying any elective offices, soon took a sectional coloration and
vehemently resisted by some retired military officers. In the controversy,
disqualification (which in the present constitution even applies to
illiterates and criminals) was simply equated to a blanket ban.
When all is said and done, Nigerians must not forget
where the country would have been today had they not been subjected to the
misfortune of being ruled by selfish and self serving leaders. But it is
not enough to start a credible war on corruption. The Nigerian elites and
the political class in particular, must get their acts together and desist
from the malaise of indifference that has overtaken them since the
military entered into national governance and politics. They owe it to
their compatriots to politically re-engineer their country by restoring in
Nigeria the true structures of federalism dismantled by their erstwhile
military rulers. Even so, it is one thing to politically re-engineer the
country and another thing to make it work. After all, one cannot hope to
achieve a victory in a grand prix by putting a bad driver in the
driving seat of the best engineered racing car. Hence the rules of the
political game in Nigeria must be reviewed to open up the political space
and to make it attractive for Nigeria’s best minds, as well as men and
women of ability, commitment and integrity to volunteer to serve the
people by joining the partisan political arena without the handicap of not
having the financial clout that present day politicking demands.
Nigeria has
indeed been endowed (thank God!) with all the human and natural resources
it takes and requires, to become a great African and world power. But she
cannot achieve that potential by her relying on mediocrity and people of
questionable integrity to run her affairs.
Sam Okoye, a
former Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka,
and former Science Attaché at the Nigeria, High Commission, London, writes
from London.
No comments:
Post a Comment