In a bid to fulfil a critical plank of their campaign pledge, President Muhammadu Buhari and his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, have stated that they would soon make public their assets. The two leaders had earlier submitted their asset profiles to the Code of Conduct Bureau on the eve of their inauguration. Though this is in line with the 1999 Constitution, their initial action has elicited controversy.
Sections 140, 149, 185 and 194 of the constitution state that the President, ministers, state governors and commissioners cannot perform official duties until they have declared their assets. Section 140 (1) says in part: “A person elected to the office of President shall not begin to perform the functions of that office until he has declared his assets and liabilities…”
The CCB, by law, is vested with the power to receive and verify the asset declarations of top government officials. But in an era of change, Buhari and Osinbajo should not hesitate to make their assets public as they bid to enthrone a culture of transparency. For a start, they will be joining the late Umaru Yar’Adua, who was the first Nigerian president to publicly declare his assets when he assumed office in 2007. Nigerians are enamoured of Buhari’s promise to tackle corruption, and one of the ways to dislodge the uncontrolled sleaze in public life is to lead by example.
But what the President and his deputy have promised has thrown up another challenge for the Nigerian public: how to make all other categories of top government toe the line of public asset declaration. The culture of graft, waste and impunity is particularly high among state governors, ministers and even commissioners and their aides. There was righteous angst in the land when former President Goodluck Jonathan kicked off his tenure in 2011 by declining to publicly declare his assets.
It is alarming that the level of assets disclosure among governors and their commissioners is not encouraging. It is the same dire situation among previous ministers. Till date, only Kayode Fayemi, the governor in Ekiti State between 2010 and 2014, has publicly declared his assets that totalled N750 million in November 2010. He was joined by his late deputy, Funmi Olayinka, who filed a N1.2 billion declaration.
Global best practices, which should also be the norm among our political elite, dictate that top public officers declare their worth publicly. After extracting the promise of public declaration of assets from Buhari and Osinbajo, the battle against corruption is just starting. As a matter of convention, the Nigerian public is bound to demand from our ministers and 36 governors to publicly declare their assets in order to bring some sanity into governance.
For Nigeria to make progress in governance, public office should be synonymous with high morality. For now, transparency is only observed in the breach by government officials. Things should not continue this way. Between 2000 and 2009, said the Global Financial Integrity, an NGO, using statistics collated from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, estimated that Nigerian leaders looted $182 billion of public funds. This is perfidious.
Former military dictator, Sani Abacha, was discovered to have brazenly looted public funds estimated at over $5 billion during his five-year tenure (1993-1998). While the United States has $480 million of the stolen money in its custody, Liechtenstein has returned $227 million; Switzerland $700 million, with another $380 million still expected to be returned, and Channels Island £315 million.
A House of Representatives probe found in 2012 that the Jonathan administration paid N2.5 trillion in fraudulent subsidy to petrol importers in 2011. As the country was in the grip of recession, a former Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah, was discovered to have coerced the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority into buying two luxury BMW cars at $1.6 million (N255 million). She was patted on the back and went on to win a senatorial seat in the March 28 elections.
Early in 2014, Lamido Sanusi, who was then the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, said that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation could not account for $20 billion of crude oil sales over a nine-month period. The issue has not been satisfactorily resolved.
But Transparency International, an international corruption watchdog, says the declaration of assets by top government officials is a critical step in checking the excesses of political office holders. “A well-defined asset declaration system is a strong tool to fight public sector corruption and abuse of power,” TI said. “Published information on a person’s assets allows civil society to hold leaders to account.” The organisation added that of 29 European countries it studied, only two “do not fully allow for public disclosure of assets.”
In May 2009, four months after he took office, the White House released President Barack Obama’s financial statement, which put his earnings at $5.5 million. The All Progressives Congress cannot take the people for granted, and it must not be seen to be in tacit support of using public office for personal enrichment.
For the party to live up to the “change” mantra that brought it to power and exorcise the impunity of the past 16 years under the Peoples Democratic Party administration, it should mandate the state governors and commissioners under its umbrella to publicly declare their assets at the beginning and end of their tenure. This will make it possible to detect false declaration of assets and encourage the public to come forward with petitions on the hidden assets of government officials.
The CCB should reinvigorate the war against impunity and graft by implementing the law on asset declaration to the letter, fully prosecuting public officials who declare false assets. Its explanation that it doesn’t have enough manpower is not tenable, as it could hire consultants to do the verification while it goes ahead to prosecute those who observed the law in the breach.
