On Monday, September 28 at the 70th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York, the United States of America, President Muhammadu Buhari called on the international community to urgently redouble its efforts to strengthen the mechanisms for dismantling safe havens for proceeds of corruption. “Let me reaffirm the Nigerian government’s unwavering commitment to fight corruption and illicit financial flows. By any consideration, corruption and cross border financial crimes are impediments to development, economic growth and the realisation of the well-being of citizens across the globe. Nigeria is ready and willing to partner with international agencies and individual countries on a bilateral basis to confront crimes and corruption,” was how he put it.
This newspaper sees the present development as a reaffirmation of the Buhari administration determination to confront the twin evils of corruption and illicit financial outflows. Without doubt, the stance of the President and the audience chosen to restate it are indicative of a leader posed to address the most threatening malaise to the corporate existence of Nigeria. It is evidently clear that Nigeria has in Alhaji Buhari a leader with the iron cast resolve to tackle corruption so that Nigeria may survive. It is axiomatic that if Nigeria does not kill corruption, corruption may eventually kill Nigeria.
However, our worry is how far the West can support Nigeria’s drive for the recovery of the over $150 billion allegedly siphoned out of the national treasury under this current democratic dispensation. It is a well established fact that the anti-corruption war has become an obsession for President Buhari. It was his unique selling point for the presidency in the electioneering preceding the last presidential election that swept him to power. The President is known to have said he would move against even members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to clean the nation’s Augean stables. There is no point reiterating the fact that Nigerians and the international community are watching to see how this crusade will pan out given the fact that within the ruling party are individuals that cannot stand serious integrity scrutiny that are known closest associates of Mr. President and who are also big financiers of the party, which by extension means financiers of his last presidential campaign.
Internationalising of the anti-corruption crusade might have its own merit given that most of the proceeds of political corruption are laundered outside the shores of Nigeria. However, experience has shown of inexplicable reluctance by western leaders to give unalloyed support for leaders of Third World countries to repatriate such laundered monies from their safe havens in the West. Such reluctance might have flowed from the apparent integrity deficit of some of the Third World leaders. Good enough, President Buhari does not have such excess luggage. Even at that the slow pace of the judicial process involved in securing the release of such laundered funds must not be overlooked. The experience with the late General Sani Abacha’s ill-gotten loot is instructive. It is on record that some of the traced loot have not been repatriated to date.
What this suggests is that the President and his team must be ready to wage unrelenting judicial wars across the globe if need be. Such wars might end in futility without the necessary information backing the claims. It is, therefore, imperative that the Federal Government must enlist the support of the global coalition against corruption led by Transparency International and all other international groups involved in tracking illicit financial flows globally. For this cause at hand, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) must tap into their own data base and equally draw on the goodwill of parallel bodies across the globe for the needed support.
We hasten to add that the Federal Government must strengthen national institutions relevant to the country’s anti-corruption drive. It has become imperative that the EFCC, CCB and ICPC be strengthened, personnel and capacity wise, because they are very crucial to the success of the crusade. Both the police and judiciary are acknowledged not to have lived up to national expectation on this score. President Buhari and the Chief Justice of the Federation have openly expressed grave reservations on the shortcomings of these two institutions in the anti-corruption war. The chairman of the Governing Council of the National Human Rights Commission, Dr. Chidi Odinkalu, has equally expressed similar reservation, which was why he recently advocated that Mr. President reform the nation’s judiciary to guarantee the success of the anti-corruption war.
The recent institutionalisation of the Treasury Single Account by President Buhari is one policy in the right direction. The apparent opacity of the nation’s public finance management in the past accounted for the ease with which public funds were siphoned out of national treasuries. It is thus imperative that the governments of the 36 states of the federation buy into the current Federal Government’s public finance management template. Sustained pressure must be mounted on the state governors by civil society groups and all well-meaning individuals and groups to get this done.
This is the only way to make the West believe we are serious with the current anti-corruption crusade.
