The unfolding ugly drama over the $43 million cash found in an unoccupied apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos, is entrenching Nigeria’s global notoriety for corruption. While graft is ubiquitous worldwide, it is difficult to imagine anywhere else where so much raw cash would be stashed away and some public officials, including state governors, would be publicly making asses of themselves. President Muhammadu Buhari should wield the full arsenal of the law to ruthlessly punish all those involved in this horrendous heist.
The find was spectacular by itself; but the ensuing verbal gymnastics of key players has made Nigeria a laughing stock. Following a tip-off, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission operatives raided the apartment in Ikoyi. Neatly stacked bundles of currency: US$43 million, 27,000 pounds sterling and N23.2 million, totalling N13.3 billion at current exchange rates. Unlike similar recent discoveries − N448.5 million at a shopping complex on Victoria Island; the equivalent of N250.55 million in euro, pounds sterling and naira, and N49 million at a baggage point at the Kaduna Airport − a messy controversy erupted. Earlier, $9.8 million and other currencies had been retrieved from a nondescript apartment owned by a former head of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in a rundown suburb of Kaduna, Kaduna State.
No one can say just how much of public funds were looted under the Goodluck Jonathan administration, but this case offers another peep into its irresponsible fiscal behaviour. According to reports, even as the Ikoyi raid was in progress, the now-suspended director-general of the National Intelligence Agency, Ayodele Oke, rushed to the EFCC office in Abuja, demanding in vain that its acting chief, Ibrahim Magu, should back off as the money belonged to the agency. The latest update is that Oke claimed $289 million was approved by Jonathan for “crucial and covert security projects,” and it was obtained from the National Petroleum Investment Management Service, a subsidiary of the state oil company. This is further proof of how the Nigerian government turned the NNPC and its subsidiaries into handy ATMs.
Within hours, two state governors, Nyesom Wike of Rivers and Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti, were making ghoulish claims: the one that the money belonged to Rivers State and was allegedly taken away by Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, the other alleging a “cover-up,” further evidence that corruption of gargantuan magnitude can be so cavalierly trivialised and politicised by insensitive public officials. Unravelling the link, if any, among Oke’s fiscal adventures, the two flippant governors and the political parties should be part of the mystery the three-man panel headed by Vice-President Osinbajo should work out, especially as Jonathan’s 2015 campaign paraphernalia was said to have been found among the hidden treasure. Oke needs to explain what “covert operations” he and Jonathan were undertaking within Nigeria that the domestic intelligence service could not have handled. The NIA, like the American CIA and British MI6, undertakes foreign espionage.
Buhari should not miss the opportunity provided by this latest national disgrace to restructure governance processes and the anti-corruption war. Even failing states do not have such weak governance mechanisms that would allow such vast sums of unbudgeted public funds to leave a state-owned company and the central bank vaults directly and moved around in private homes. Investigators must unravel the roles of NAPIMS, the CBN and the office of the National Security Adviser.
Really, that Nigeria is “fantastically corrupt,” as a former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, famously told the Queen, is being reinforced daily. Buhari should retool the anti-corruption campaign to improve the country’s rating of 136 out of 175 countries in the 2016 Corruption Perception Index. He needs to sanitise his team to eschew any whiff of scandal. His delay in pushing out Babachir Lawal as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who admitted giving a grass-cutting contract to his own company, dented his image. He should look again at his inner circle, some of whom have been repeatedly accused of wrongdoing.
No one should be a sacred cow. In China, President Xi Jinping’s vow to fight corruption until “officials cannot, dare not and do not want to be corrupt” had resulted, by the end of 2016, in jail terms for over 120 national leaders, high ranking officials and generals. In Brazil, two former presidents are to face trial on corruption charges; impeached president, Park Geun-hye, is to be tried in South Korea for offences that pale into insignificance compared with allegations of misuse of public funds levelled against Jonathan. Yet, our system is so broken that the political will to even question him for the approvals is lacking. Park was first questioned by investigators while still in office; Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Premier, has also been questioned by investigators while in office. In Nigeria, every corruption enquiry dies once a former ruler is linked to it.
This self-destructive template has to give way to global best practices. Everyone involved in this scandal should be subject to the law. Efforts should be stepped up to locate and recover all the stolen funds and the complicit officials, past or present, no matter how highly placed, prosecuted.
