Last week four Nigerian ministers were
relieved of their services. Some of them had been pointedly accused of
corruption. They are Stella Oduah (Aviation), Godsday Orubebe (Niger
Delta Affairs), Caleb Olubolade (Police Affairs) and Yerima Ngama
(Finance).
Interestingly, from the relieve, it
seems the “national quota” and “ethics” of “federal” character
commission are at work! Thus the question is: will it ever be possible
for a Nigerian president to take the morally right decision as each
corrupt case arises without “balancing” it with some ethnic
consideration? Time will tell.
Corruption is a universal poor ethics.
It is not peculiar to Nigeria or Africa, nor is it genetic or ethnic.
However two things are Nigerian about corruption. They are failure of
the Nigerian state to act decisively and prosecute corruption and the
deliberate ethnic muddling of corruption cases by common folks in
Nigeria and especially those in surprisingly “high” places.
The supposedly “well read” Nigerian
would normally waive the ethnic flag when officials they think are from
“our” ethnic group are accused of corruption! That was the case with
some of the recently sacked ministers and those ministers President
Jonathan continues to protect and shield for reasons of his own personal
economic interests and political survival.
Here I am talking about Ms. Diezani
Alison-Madueke the corrupt minister of petroleum who sits on the most
reported corruption in Nigerian history in the so-called Nigerian oil
industry. I am sure Stella Oduah must be chuckling cynically at Nigeria
and her sack while the main source of corruption in the Nigerian
presidency Diezani Alison-Madueke is jealously guarded by an equally
corrupt president!
At the time President Jonathan was
“sacking” some corrupt ministers without prosecuting them, here in the
Diaspora something similar and morally instructive unfolded. The former
Mayor of New Orleans in Louisiana State, Mr. Nagin was being convicted
for corruption charges.
And far away in Europe, the 28-member
country European Commission released a report, which indicted corrupt
European countries. The Commission’s Home Affairs Commissioner, Cecelia
Malmstrom, described the findings of the report on European corruption
as breathtaking because under European graft and corruption €120bn are
lost annually to corrupt practices and shady deals. Also, in the report
we know that 60 per cent of Europeans say that corruption has increased
in their countries as opposed to 47 per cent three years ago.
These continental cases show that
corruption does not have any ethnic coloration, which Nigerians
deliberately give it to muddle the issue and defend the corrupt. Take
Mr. Nagin’s case in America for example. Remember hurricane Katrina
where lives were lost? As the mayor during that sad period of
hurricane Katrina, Mr. Nagin was the face of the call for help and
succor that came to the survivors of the hurricane. It was the same
sadness and grief which hurricane Katrina brought that Mr. Nagin
allegedly turned into a source to milk the American public through abuse
of his office.
The interesting thing is that Mayor
Nagin is black like me. But there was not a single reference to his race
or ethnicity in his prosecution and conviction. In his case there was
no fallacy of division where it would have been awkwardly and
dubiously said that Mr. Nagin was being prosecuted because of his race
or ethnicity.
That Mr. Nagin is corrupt does not mean
that we peoples of African descent are corrupt. No one referenced
his blackness, race or ethnic origin in his prosecution and eventual
conviction.
Legitimately, in Mr. Nagin’s conviction
it was all about law and ethics. Shame and jail are the prices the
corrupt individual pays for his/her corruption. So Mr. Nagin goes to
jail like any other corrupt persons black or white or whatever. But this
is not the case with respect to my country, Nigeria. Abuja, New
Orleans, two cities, different ethics.
In Nigeria, it is duly documented for
all eyes to see that Ms. Stella Oduah was one of the major funding
sources of President Jonathan’s campaign in the last election. This is
a fact that the most fervent defenders of President Jonathan cannot
refute. The organization Neighbor 2 Neighbor owned by the sacked Stella
Oduah and Godwin Orubebe was one of the illicit conduit pipes for the
support for President Jonathan in the last election.
So it is silly that when the story of
Mrs. Stella Oduah’s corruption broke religion and ethnicity were
deployed in her defense. Like the case of Mr. Nagin, those who accused
Stella Oduah took her on as an individual who allegedly abused her
office to her own personal benefit, the companies she has interest in
and to the benefit of her political sponsors in the Nigerian
presidency and the companies like Coscharis Motors-they are invested
in.
But unfortunately like most Nigerian
politicians if not all of them, Stella Oduah and her handlers muddled
the issue. Behind the scene, like the typical Nigerian politician,
they deployed ethnicity. It was so bad and ridiculous that chiefs and
ethnic organizations were lined up to show how she is innocent.
I do hope that these chiefs, persons
,ethnic organizations and Oduah handlers who openly said Stella Oduah
was being prosecuted for ethnic reasons will have the good sense to
rethink their bad faith and breadth- given how intensely corrupt
Stella Oduah has proven to be.
But the problem goes beyond Stella
Oduah. Diversity is a good ethics in multinational societies, which our
country, Nigeria is. However, when officials/ministers/commissioners
are appointed principally as representatives of ethnic groups and not
for their moral merit, then it is no longer about the goodness of the
pragmatism of the ethics of diversity but an un-ethical political
appeasement. The dubious and immoral ethnic then trumps otherwise good
pragmatic ethics. This is why corrupt ministers and their companies
appeal to the ethnic when they are caught pants down.
Finally, here in America, companies
which are cited sites of corruption that are used by pubic officials to
perpetuate corruption are made to inherit the opprobrium of the same
corrupt public officials who used them to loot. But this not the case
in Nigeria. Companies like Coscharis Motors who are cited sites of
corruption go scot-free even when public officials that collaborated
with them are sacked for corruption!
But as corrupt public officials fall,
companies they have used to steal must go down with them. The EFCC must
beam its searching lights on companies that are cited sites of
corruption like Coscharis Motors.
Like all immorality corruption is a
teamwork, it is a network. To take out a few individuals while leaving
the network will only re-grow corruption and strengthen it.
So, this is the time to ask Coscharis
Motors and other companies, which are, cited sites of corruption to come
clean and inform us about what they know in the looting and moral
destruction of Nigeria.
Adeolu Ademoyo aaa54@cornell.edu is of Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
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