TWO former foreign presidents have told Nigeria that without first getting the anti-corruption crusade right, making economic progress would be a mirage. Mikhail Saakashivil, ex-President of Georgia, was a guest speaker at the last Lagos Economic Summit. He said that a cocktail of reforms, which also struck at the heart of graft in his country between 2004 and 2013, pushed it to the global top 10 countries with the best economic growth rate. Before him, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa had slammed the citizenry for not mounting enough pressure on the leadership to end the corruption mess.
We could not agree more. Corruption is the reason why there are more Nigerian billionaires in the public service than there are in business; and also why 70 per cent of Nigerians live below the United Nations poverty threshold of $2 per day. Saakashivil’s sacking of the police and customs operatives in Georgia and replacing them with fresh blood is instructive. Because of compromise by the Nigerian Customs and Police officers, contraband goods have overwhelmed our local markets, while robbery, kidnapping and other forms of banditry are on the rise.
Ordinarily, other countries in Africa look up to Nigeria for leadership because of its oil wealth, size and human capital. But what they get is abysmal disappointment, which has induced a country like Zimbabwe to make a comic tale of it. On the occasion of his 90th birthday recently, President Robert Mugabe told his country’s folk not to behave like Nigerians. “Are we now like Nigeria where you have to reach your pocket to get anything done?” he cynically said.
The Federal Government might have found Mugabe’s sweeping broadside most denigrating, evident in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ protest and summons to Zimbabwe’s Head of Chancery, Stanley Kunjeku. But such a diplomatic disapproval hardly redeems anything. The issue is why a pariah state like Zimbabwe could cajole Nigeria on matters of integrity and accountability.
Frankly, the country has been rendered prostrate by the pillaging of the public treasury and by irresponsible and unaccountable leadership at all levels. Last year, the United States-based Global Financial Integrity, relying on data from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, found that a total of $182 billion was siphoned from Nigeria between 2000 and 2009. According to it, Nigeria ranked eighth out of 20 countries notorious for illicit financial outflows. “Nigeria is the leading source of illicit financial outflow from sub-Saharan Africa,” GFI said.
We find the report quite revealing as it covered a period of our purported democratic governance. Some Nigerians now wonder if our brand of democracy falls within the Abraham Lincoln category of “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
As an oil producing country, Nigeria depends on other countries to meet its local petroleum products needs. This irony, promoted by high-level official corruption, has endured for over two decades despite the country having four refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna. The manipulation reached its climax in 2011 when the Federal Government spent N2.5 trillion on the so-called fuel subsidy claims by importers of the product. A national protest and probes have since forced the authorities to review it downwards to N971 billion annually. Yet, no recovery of the looted funds; neither have the culprits been punished.
Surprisingly, the subsidy jigsaw has reappeared in other forms. The Federal Government in 2013 used $1.6 billion, borrowed from abroad to repair the refineries, which the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, said would equip them with 90 per cent capacity utilisation. But a report on April 15, credited to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, put their capacity utilisation at just 26 per cent, as of December 2013, a far cry from the official justification for the expenditure.
Public funds have gone down the drain in the 7,000 federal projects abandoned because contractors collected money and bolted, or because the projects are plainly white elephants. A Presidential Task Force headed by Bunu Sheriff, a former minister, which looked into the matter, said a staggering N11 trillion was needed to complete the projects.
It is a painful paradox that while oil price soars at the global market, Nigeria has no money to deliver basic social services such as potable water, electricity and pothole-free roads spanning 198,000 kilometres. They are appropriately described as death-traps. A Federal Road Safety Commission “Dash Boards records for the months of 2012” showed that 4,266 persons died from road accidents. The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the busiest in the country, constructed in 1978, has broken down. Because there are no funds, its planned reconstruction is being delayed unnecessarily as government shops for a public-private partnership deal.
In its recently released Country Report, IMF raises a number of puzzles on the management of our oil resources, especially the worsening poverty and income inequality, concluding that the lack of an effective oil-revenue monitoring system had made it more difficult for the Nigerian government to identify the factors behind the mysterious decline in oil revenue and take appropriate corrective actions.
According to the IMF, oil price vacillations and volume, contrary to what our corrupt government would want us to believe, do not fully explain the drop in oil revenue. “In 2013 oil prices were 12 per cent higher and production 10 per cent higher than in 2008, yet, oil revenue was 20 per cent lower. The oil revenue yield — the ratio of revenue received by the Federation Account to the gross value of oil production — reached 0.47 in 2013, substantially below the 2000-2009 average of 0.70.” Why the drop? This was the same riddle the embattled suspended Central Bank Governor, Lamido Sanusi, raised that earned him President Goodluck Jonathan’s wrath.
Honour and integrity must return to governance at all levels. Consider the case of an Australian state premier, Barry O’Farrell, an ally of Tony Abbott, the prime minister, who recently resigned over a $3,000 bottle of wine gift. According to Reuters, “O’Farrell is the latest official to be caught up in a wide-ranging investigation into corruption in the state that has also ensnared his fellow Liberal Party Senator, Arthur Sinodinos, who stood aside as assistant treasurer last month.” But here, impunity has become a major plank of our governing ethos.
Jonathan has an awful anti-corruption record. Under his watch, public officials cannot control their greed, while others find themselves in difficult situations and cut corners or take inducements. And when whistleblowers pick on them, they find solace in the protective arms of the Presidency, instead of resigning. This is seriously undermining his government’s efforts against poverty and unemployment and facilitating serious crimes. It is also harming investment and economic growth.
Mikhail Saakashivil has hit the nail right on the head. President Jonathan needs to overhaul the anti-corruption system and demonstrate strong political will to prosecute whoever engages in shady practices.
