President Muhammadu Buhari has given Nigeria’s anti-corruption crusade a boost when he asked his USA counterpart, Mr. Barack Obama to come to his administration’s rescue in locating the $150 billion he alleged was stashed in foreign banks by political officeholders in the administrations before his, and the repatriation of same back to Nigeria. He made the declaration in Washington DC during his just ended four-day official visit to America. The development is a very bold step that underscores the President’s commitment to the anti-corruption crusade. His courageous enlistment of the West in the recovering of the stolen funds poignantly demonstrates the top spot corruption fight occupies in his administration’s scheme of things. We now expect the West to walk the talk of their pledged support for Nigeria in her travails.
Echoes of Nigeria’s corruption scourge are very unnerving. Between independence in 1960 and May 1999, when the seed of this democratic dispensation was sown, about $600 billion was looted from the nation’s public coffers, according to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report. The same report had it that stolen monies stashed in foreign bank accounts increased from $50 billion in 1999 to $170 billion in 2003, three years into the new dispensation. The systematic pillage of Nigeria’s resources and concomitant arrest of her development potential have caused alarm globally, and equally spurred frenzied articulations of intermediation measures that could save Africa’s biggest hope.
Such global concerns are understandable given that corruption undermines nations’ developmental efforts by diverting financial resources from the needed social infrastructures that could make Nigeria more competitive. It is known to drain nations’ treasuries of funds that could improve education service provisioning necessary for enhancing Nigeria’s socioeconomic future. And corruption stunts spending on healthcare provisioning without a country’s health is not guaranteed.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, appreciating the enormity of the corruption challenge when he was sworn in on May 29, 1999, as Nigeria’s first democratically elected president under this political dispensation, responded to the exigency by establishing two high profile anti-corruption agencies – the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) inaugurated on September 29, 2000 and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC), established in 2003, as added impetus for combating the burgeoning corrupting scourge in the country.
If with these efforts that complement those of the Code of Conduct Bureau, the Federal Character Commission and the Public Complaints Commission, the nation is still mired in pervasive corruption that has wreaked serious damage on the country, it is very clear that our various corruption intermediation measures are too few and far between or have failed woefully. The stunning leakage of a whopping $150 billion from the coffers of the nation over a 10 year period and other visible scars of a country seriously wracked by the social malaise, the reevaluation of our anti-corruption template has become imperative. And a critical part of this reevaluation is a diagnostic review of the extant government paradigm.
The much we can say here, given the space constraint, is that we should strengthen the capacities of the anti-corruption agencies and institutions to make them more functional and effective. More importantly, the existing anti-corruption laws – the Electoral Act 2010; the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000; the Money Laundering [Prohibition] Act, 2004; the Public Procurement Act, 2007; the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Act, 2007; the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007; the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption 2007; the United Nations Conventions Against Corruption 2007; and the Freedom of Information Act – should receive vigorous publicity to create awareness of their existence and how they could be put into more efficacious use.
There is no better time than now for a total overhaul of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), to deal with its opacity. As presently constituted, the corporation represents the major source of corruption in the country, a fact that makes it dysfunctional. Perhaps, we should add that lawyers and judges must be made more relevant to the anti-corruption war by making them put national interest above unbridled commitment to the rule of law.
One serious area undermining the anti-corruption war is the opaque approach to defence spending. Available records show that between 2011 and 2015, Nigeria spent N4.62 trillion to prosecute the ongoing terror war. Most often, the deployment of the funds were shrouded in utmost secrecy, a development that is antithetical to probity and accountability. The recent development where the immediate past National Security Adviser to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (retd) and Chief Security Officer to the ex-president, Mr Gordon Obuah, were grilled to give information on security spending by the last administration, does not recommend such unwholesome practices.
These are serious areas that call for review to give fillip to the ongoing war to stem corruption in the country. The time has come for all Nigerians to place the survival of the country above their respective personal interests.
Source:National Mirror
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