Law enforcement agencies continue to make ever more befuddling discoveries of stolen funds, just as the stench of corruption in the public service is overpowering. From fleets of vehicles and plum real estate to huge sums of money traced to them, some public sector employees have been exposed as common thieves. Clearly, not only politicians have been stealing the country blind, but civil servants have also been neck-deep in the looting spree.
The Muhammadu Buhari administration’s onslaught against corruption will not go far unless the entrenched culture of graft and impunity is uprooted from the civil service. Recent findings offer only a glimpse into a gigantic machinery of graft, indolence and privilege civil servants have built for themselves. From a sole female officer, a king’s ransom of 62 houses were seized by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, whose Chairman, Ekpo Nta, marvelled at the stupendous wealth amassed by some public sector employees. Shortly before this, 40 vehicles allegedly stolen by some retired directors of the Water Resources Ministry had been similarly impounded. Some 124 vehicles illegally acquired in all were recovered by the ICPC in 2016. Another bombshell, this time from the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, indicated that $151 million and N8 billion were deposited in some banks by some faceless bureaucrats, but mercifully recovered, courtesy of whistle-blowers.
There is also the high incidence of “ghost workers,” up to 60,000 in 2014, in addition to 50,000 fictitious workers in 2013. Undaunted by the anti-corruption credentials of the current government, civil servants, in connivance with politicians and crony-contractors, have continued to “pad” the federal budget. They are undeterred by the indictment of the employees that embarrassed the President, who, unsuspecting, presented a fraud-infested 2016 budget draft to the National Assembly. Civil servants also disgorged N1.6 billion stolen pension funds in 2016 while N195 billion of pension funds once incredibly vanished under a task force that was, ironically, set up to stop the plunder. Some officers of the Federal Capital Territory Administration agencies, declared Nta, “are richer than their organisations.” How can such a rotten system deliver development?
Considered as the primary vehicle of public administration, a corrupt civil service, however, cannot drive development. Nigeria’s is a pathetic case of decline. At independence, the federal and the defunct regional bureaucracies followed the best British tradition of a neutral, efficient administrative corps that drove the rapid growth witnessed in the 1950s and 1960s. L.G. Coke Wallis, a colonial official, described the Western Region civil service of the 1950s under the late Simeon Adebo as comparable to that of the British. It was our civil service that prepared and implemented the first, second and third national development plans.
Analysts trace the ruin of the civil service partly to the long years of military rule, whose impatience for due process led to upheavals and who, by relying on civil servants to make up for their inexperience, exposed bureaucrats to the corruptive influence of unaccountable power. The returning politicians thereafter entrenched and deepened the cracks into gullies of graft.
A former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, lamented that the civil service as presently constituted “cannot drive development,” initiating reforms that neither he nor his successors have fully implemented. Like the judiciary, Buhari and the anti-graft agencies need to urgently turn their attention to the civil service. As the Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, noted, civil servants have drawn up rules to protect themselves and invariably outlive every administration. They are the ones who tutor political office holders how to steal and ensnare those they don’t like, like they did to a reputed doctor, who, as Health Minister, was enticed into misapplying funds.
The civil service reforms should be revived, with an emphasis on stamping out corruption and imposing severe punishment to deter future malfeasance. Diligent investigation and prosecution to avoid a repeat of the N750,000 fine imposed by a judge on a pension thief involved in a N33 billion scam, are essential. No effort should be spared to recover ill-gotten assets. The Code of Conduct Bureau should begin to demand regular, periodic asset declaration by civil servants as provided for by its enabling law and any false claims taken up and offenders prosecuted.
To drive its economic miracle that has made it the fifth least corrupt country in the world with per capita GDP of $53,053 (Nigeria’s is $2,640), Singapore made uprooting of corruption from its public service a top priority, initiating reforms that raised pay, attracted the best hands and punished graft with an iron fist. President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive between 2012 and 2014, indicted 300,000 Chinese officials with many jailed and 80,000 handed “severe sanctions,” according to a report in The Economist of London.
Nigeria is not the only country grappling with public service corruption; it is only distinguished by its lack of political will to crush it. The government of India, in response to a 2012 finding that corruption was pervasive in its bureaucracy, launched a crackdown that has sent many to jail, just like in Romania, where 1,170 cases of graft by public servants have been prosecuted in the last three years. But here, those who facilitate payment of tens of thousands to fictitious workers, pad budgets, steal pensioners’ stipends and amass unaccounted-for wealth, walk free, exploiting the corrupt judiciary to evade justice.
This should not be allowed to continue. The Head of Service, Winifred Oyo-Ita, should key in to the change move by initiating cleansing measures. The government should demand no less. Regular audits of all the 542 ministries, departments and agencies should be undertaken. A new culture of accountability should replace the prevailing reign of impunity and sleaze. We re-emphasise the point that a major component of the war on corruption should be cleaning up of the civil service, whose operatives remain in place to build or ruin amid the endless flowing stream of political office holders.
