IS NIGERIA FOUNDED ON CORRUPTION?

FACT: Before you are done reading the first few lines of this piece, a grand corruption has taken place in Nigeria; if you factor other petty corrupt practices which the National Bureau of Statistics recently reported accounted for the loss of about 400 billion Naira, then it would be safe to say that an act of corruption occurs in Nigeria in less than the time it takes for you to say the word C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N.

FACT: The continued assault of corruption on our collective psyche has made the average Nigerian nonchalant to its consequences even when they consistently assail us. The tens of thousands of lives lost annually on Nigerian roads due to a neglect of their repairs, itself due to stolen billions allocated for such ventures; the lives lost in decrepit hospitals that have been deprived of equipment and consumables because monies meant for the purchase of same have been stashed in some financial safe havens; the quackery we call an education system that could have benefitted from much need funds, stolen to finance the gluttonous luxuries of some officials; the insecurity we constantly live with because some fat security chiefs have decided that monies meant for the procurement of tools for fighting crimes are best stowed away in septic and overhead water tanks and for the building and purchase of choice expansive properties around the world; the literal darkness that we are forced to live with because monies meant to address this 21st century anomaly has been diverted for the purchase of private jets, yachts, condos and the maintenance of high-flying ‘side-chicks’ around the world.

The most befuddling fact yet is that as a people, we have grown accustomed to corruption such that we do not rain on perpetrators of this dastardly crime against humanity the rage and scorn that they deserve. Once a grand fraud is exposed, we momentarily feign disgust and visit the alleged perpetrator with sanctimonious opprobrium that lasts just long enough for the next exposure to take place before we get consumed in our insensitivity. The perpetrators knowing fully our weak threshold for sustained disdain for and resigned permissiveness to corruption, realign their political loyalties and networks and before long are reintegrated back into the civil space where they continue to pillage what is left of our collective patrimony. This description is not sensationalism nor is the trend new. The late musical icon, Fela, identified this revolving door in his classic “Army Arrangement” when he bemoaned the fact that the same politicians that were arrested and jailed for various acts of corruption returned to be the leaders of the new Republic and were the ones saddled with the responsibility of crafting anti-corruption legislation for the country.

Picture this further: Umaru Dikko, a man, once declared the most corrupt official of the Second Republic. His crimes against the state concerning fraudulent practices were so grime that the military administration of the Buhari/Idiagbon duo was willing to throw the nation into a most despicable diplomatic impasse with Britain all in a bid to repatriate Dikko to Nigeria by any means necessary to face charges against him. A few short years later, same Dikko returned to Nigeria to a red-carpet reception by another military Junta and was the de facto leader of the Northern Delegation to president Obasanjo’s National Conference. You have serving ministers that have been indicted by legitimately constituted Commissions of Inquiries still calling the shots in Ministries. When you think that you have seen it all, you witness a former first lady, the extent of the graft allegedly committed by her still unravelling in the courts, unveiling a book on anti-corruption strategies endorsed by the Senate and written by a senator whose source of wealth is questionable. If this was not pathetic enough, how about the case of a man who was in detention for corrupt practices winning an election from prison while another who was being tried for corruption and murder contesting and winning an election while the case is still ongoing. The latter wants to be Nigeria’s president in 2019 and given our chronic tolerance for corruption; I will not be surprised if he becomes one. Surprised? Wait for this! A former president while trying to trivialize the ramifications of corruption once declared that what most people call corruption in Nigeria was mere stealing and therefore should not occupy the attention that it is being given. Try this one for size: a discredited former pension task force chairman, forced out of the civil service and declared wanted by anti-graft agencies surreptitiously gets reinstated into the public service and rewarded with a promotion.

The instances can go on and on. However, the indignation among country folks when former British Prime Minister David Cameron declared that Nigeria was fantastically corrupt left quite a few bemused for he stated what every one of us has firmly established about our country. Perhaps the irritation among commentators stemmed from the fact that corruption as determined in a previous article (Corruption Is a Nigerian Born Again Christian), is one of the legacies of our colonial past, therefore pontificating and assuming a moral high ground on corruption was not the place of the then British Prime Minister or any other British official for that matter. However, a more in-depth analysis of the historical development of corruption in Nigeria will leave any discerning commentator to wonder if beyond our exposure to colonialism there was more to this malaise than meets the eye. Succinctly put, how come our founding fathers did not do much to rid Nigeria of the corruptive legacies and influence of our colonial experience? Given the pervasiveness of corruption in our society, is Nigeria founded on corruption such that we have grown insensitive to it? This piece is a historical unpacking of the not so open past of some of our founding fathers and their attitude towards corruption aimed at determining if their approach could explain why we have laissez-faire towards corruption. This article is the second in the series on corruption.

Nigeria’s road to flag independence from Britain was tedious; any attempt to claim otherwise aimed at whittling down the historic achievements of the founding fathers of this nation is at best reductionist, this writer rejects that revision with every strand of the vein in his body. However, I argue with the same vehemence that if the founding fathers had repudiated the sharp practices that reared up its ugly heads at that early stage, perhaps, the Nigerian situation would have been different. On the contrary, some of the justifications, labelling, blame-shifting and cries of victimization that we usually hear when today’s “fantastically corrupt” officials are caught with their hands in the public till is a leaf from some founding fathers’ playbook. Listening to many of the older generation’s account of the “good old days” in Nigeria, many a younger citizen wonders how with the level of honesty, dedication to service, patriotism, and hard work ascribed to that period, corruption crept into our national life. Nothing is further from the truth. The British colonial authorities no doubt loathed Herbert Macauley, the founder of Nigeria’s nationalist movement, for championing the course of greater rights and opportunities for locals. Between 1893 to 1898, Macauley worked in the colonial service as a Surveyor of Crown Lands. During this time, he was accused of using his office to confer personal gains to himself and his friends. Some of the accusations against him ranged from acquiring choice lands for himself and selling them at a profit. (Let’s just call him a modern-day Minister of FCT. I am aware that a former Minister is undergoing trial for doing the same thing that Macauley was accused of over 100 years ago). If supporters of Macauley would argue that his accusers were his enemies who perhaps loathed him for his stance against colonialism, what explanation would they proffer for his sentencing to a two-year jail term for embezzling the money realized after disposing of client’s properties upon commencing private practice? In fact, Macauley could not run for public office because he was barred from doing so having been convicted twice by the colonial authorities, the first time for fraud and later for sedition (due to his political convictions).

Even within the pre-independence civil service, corruption was so rife that Abubakar Tafawa Balewa is quoted in Stephen Ellis’ book on the history of organized crime in Nigeria as condemning the “twin curses of bribery and corruption which pervade every rank and department” of the Northern Regional government. He went further to lampoon the Native Authorities for instituting a sophisticated system of bribery collection wherein they made returns to their superiors from collections (the Nigerian Police must have studied this scheme). And yet, much earlier than that, the line between the personal and the public by officials within the Sokoto Caliphate was tough to delineate, which made the colonial authorities to shudder at the lack of “honour” among Africans. John Iliffe in his 2005 book “Honour In African History” notes that the Sokoto Caliphate had a hard time trying to combat corruption and documented the failed efforts of reformist Emirs like Yahya of Gwandu who refused to accept gifts for appointments or whenever he was on tour. Balewa’s 1950 speech was a denouncement of the huge graft that accompanied the activities of the Native Authorities who were saddled with the responsibility of collecting local taxes. Not surprisingly, in 1943, Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto was convicted and sentenced to a one-year jail term for embezzling £136 of Jangali (cattle) tax by the Caliphate. He served only three months and was released after swearing an oath of innocence (recognized by the Sharia legal system) known as the “tuhuma”.

Interestingly, the first opportunity to challenge a British foisted constitution on the colony was truncated by accusations of corruption against Nnamdi Azikiwe. In 1947, the British had completed plans to operationalize a new constitution in the Nigerian territory, an act that was met with a lot of opposition. The decision was then taken for a delegation led by the NCNC’s leading officials to visit the United Kingdom to make a solid case against the adoption of that constitution. The NCNC went around the country collecting donations from Nigerians to enable them to pay for the trip and raised about £14,000. Sadly, on getting to London, Obaro Ikime in his book “Groundwork of Nigeria’s History” reports that disagreements broke out among the group over Nnamdi Azikiwe’s handling of the funds amidst accusations and counter-accusations of embezzlement. This fight over money efficiently brought an end to that mission.

Apparently, Azikiwe learnt nothing from that experience for he was to be accused of corruption and abuse of office again in 1956 by the NCNC Chief Whip, E.O. Eyo. This time, he was accused of funnelling the sum of two million pounds of public funds in the custody of the Eastern Regional Government into the African Continental Bank(ACB), a bank where he and his family had huge interests. These funds were channelled into this bank at a time he verily knew that the bank was posting operational losses. Eyo called for a Commission of Inquiry to be constituted to unravel the facts behind the allegations, but Azikiwe stalled this by instituting a series of legal actions against Eyo(a former governor and now senator whose family had substantial interests in a defunct bank must have been emboldened by this episode). The Foster-Sutton Commission of Inquiry set-up in 1957 found Nnamdi Azikiwe guilty of having a financial interest in ABC when the decision to inject funds into it was taken and asserted that his conduct had “fallen short of the expectation of honest, reasonable people”. The controversies around this issue led to the dissolution of the Eastern Regional Government by the colonial authorities, who then went ahead to conduct another election which Zik’s NCNC decisively won again. This time, even in the face of accusations of grand corruption, Zik engineered a resounding campaign that got the people to overlook the severity of the allegations and to return him to office overwhelmingly.

Obafemi Awolowo was also not spared of allegations of corruption although his case was not that straightforward. The Action Group’s interest in the National Investment and Property Company(NIPC) which was to be at the heart of allegations of corruption against him were more than just passing. Awolowo and some of his supporters incorporated the NIPC using personal funds and maintained the company while in government as the means to service party needs and to finance elections. While in government, the NIPC whose directors were known associates of Awolowo such as Alfred Rewane, S.O. Shonibare S.O. Gbadamosi and Dr Akinola Maja enjoyed lots of patronage from the regional government. All went well until Awolowo fell out with S.L. Akintola and rumours of the availability of incriminating and indicting documents over the beneficial relationship between the regional government and some private companies, particularly the NIPC started flying around.

No doubt, these issues were raised because of the determination of the central government to clip the wings of a fiery political foe in Awolowo, however, the Justice G.B.A. Coker Commission found enough evidence to indict Awolowo of a conflict of interest. I must concede that the whole case against Awolowo was stage-managed and more or less a charade to cripple a strong opposition politician, but the fact that there was evidence to suggest that certain infractions were committed in the inability to delineate personal and party interests from interests of government was at the core of Awolowo’s culpability( this reminds us of the practice of award of contracts by governments in today’s democracy to cronies in the private sector for financing elections during campaigns. We are also reminded of cries of stifling of opposition whenever stalwarts of opposition parties are arrested for fraud).

At this point, we must begin to ask some serious questions. Why did the colonial authorities still allow individuals they identified as having integrity deficiencies to inherit their legacy? Why were the colonial authorities not decisive enough in dealing with these issues of corruption especially as exhibited by some of our founding fathers? I argue that the colonial authorities’ interests in Nigeria were not nobler than the integrity of the founding fathers. The need to sustain dependency after the decolonization process can only be achieved through a class of comprador collaborating elite class whose “files” of graft, and tendency to marry the private with the public was known to the colonial powers. To buttress this point, we only need to look at the permissiveness of the colonial powers to bribery and corruption that pervaded the Northern protectorate which irked the imperialist powers. Stephen Ellis argues that the colonial authorities turned a blind eye to this trend owing to the need not to unsettle the ruling Oligarchy. It is instructive to note that the first conscious and effective strategy to tackle corruption in the North was only undertaken by that incorruptible Nigerian, Sir Tafawa Balewa through the enactment of a law proscribing the collection of gifts by public officials like the Native Authorities and Emirs in the discharge of their duties.

The foundations of Nigeria with regards to an evolving and active anti-corruption strategy was not reliable in any shape or form. For one, some of the prominent founders of the country were either directly or indirectly enmeshed in one form of graft or the other, so it would be tantamount to class suicide for these individuals to adopt a robust and firm anti-corruption stance. They simply turned a blind eye to it like their colonial enablers. Little wonder then that the first coup which swept away that generation of leaders had the cardinal spin of its speech: the overriding corruption that had eclipsed the nascent nation. Documentary evidence abounds that showed that before the ethnic imbalance in the dastardly executions came to the fore, the streets of Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, Enugu and virtually everywhere in the country were agog with celebrations after news of the coup filtered out. Citizens were just tired of the corrupt practices that riddled the new nation, perpetrated or condoned by their revered leaders. Unquestionably, some outstanding individuals distinguished themselves as incorruptible amongst the founding fathers and mothers, however, the fact that the arrowheads of this era were at best unperturbed about the environment of corruption that was gradually enveloping them simply meant that they could not create within the citizenry a disdain for graft through force of personal examples. They bequeathed to the succeeding generation an absorption and a tolerance for corruption. This attitude explains why voters today have no qualms in returning to the public office an individual that has several allegations of corruption against him or her in courts. An example of the same happening many years ago substantiates its acceptability in their minds. Indeed, Nigeria’s foundation may have been cemented with corruption, and only a deconstruction and reconstruction may be sufficient to tackle this menace.

For More Readings

(1). Oba Awolowo, Adventures in Power II: The Travails of Democracy and the Rule of Law, Evans Brothers, Ibadan, 1987, pp.329-330.

(2). Obaro Ikime, Groundwork of Nigerian History, Heinemann Educational Books, Ibadan, 1980, pp. 539-540.

(3). Bola Ige, People, Politics and Politicians of Nigeria (1940-1979), Heinemann Educational Books, Ibadan, 1995.