CORRUPTION MADE EASY

The government at the centre has too much money to play with, contends Josef Omorotionmwan

Deliberate effort is made to restrict our analysis to modern times. At independence in 1960, Nigeria was a perfect place to be. There was peace everywhere. Discipline flowed from the home to the school, the church, and the workplace.

At home, the virtues of honesty were constantly inculcated in us. This was carried over to the school where the first motto of every pupil was “honesty is the best policy”, which people parroted everywhere, even before they knew what it meant.

At this time, the Zoe concept was unknown. The focus of the church was more on eternity rather than prosperity. You were not required to break the bank to make fat offerings to make it to the first seat in the church.

If you worked for the government, you were closely guided by the STAFF REGULATIONS and the FINANCIAL MEMORANDA not to live above your means. Any deviation from the rule was visited with appropriate sanction and punishment – both within your community and in your workplace. You were closely watched.

No matter how long you might have been a clerical officer, people knew that all you could get was a Bicycle Advance. If you were mistakenly seen in possession of a mobylette – the least motorcycle of the time, you were a suspect of your community and a candidate for jail in the workplace. 

Where did the bottom fall off in all this? We soon entered into a civil war from 1967 to 1970. Everything went awry! Recruits in the army, some of whom had no evidence of having Primary School Leaving Certificates, but who found their way into the juicy section of the army like the Pay and Record Section became millionaires and billionaires overnight. Discipline died and one person could own estates in the world’s capitals and they owned fleets of cars such that they could drive whichever car was appropriate for the colour of the cloth they had on for every occasion.

The ostentatious lifestyle soon spread to every segment of the civil society. Stealing and corruption had become easy.

There was stability; and law and order reigned supreme. A person who was going into the public service knew when he was entering and could tell with relative ease when he would retire barring a major accident or unforeseen disaster. So, he worked steadily towards retirement.

But with the entry of the military into government, a person could go to work and on his way home, he would hear on his car radio that he had been dismissed with immediate effect. Alas, his gallant gamble had ended in the dust!

 Anyone who is waylaid should be the best judge of how to get home. Now that security of tenure was no longer guaranteed, people in the public service began to seek ways of fending for themselves since they did not know when the next Martial Music was going to play and they were gone! That was how humongous stealing gradually began to creep into the public service.

Meanwhile, the federal government has for itself, the glorious title of a pimp. Like any other pimp, the federal government reaps where it did not sow. Let us see how stealing and corruption have since become very easy for this pimp.

In the name of federalism, all revenues collected during the month are kept in a common pool known as the Federation Account. From where it is distributed among members of the federating units at the end of the month. The distribution here is on a formula already agreed on.

That account does not belong to the federal government. At best, the federal government could be the eldest brother in the family of the federating units.

In the pseudo-federalism that we operate, the Federal Government has assumed the role of the keeper of the account. The balance of that account is what the Federal Government says it is through the office of the Accountant General of the Federation, so-called. That which is the accountant general of the federation is indeed the accountant general of the Federal Government.

While other members of the federating unit are struggling to swim a little above water, the federal government always has enough to eat, steal, and throw about. We shall see a few ways in which this happens. Whereas, it makes sense that authorities should build their budgets on all the money available to them. We have dubiously formed the habit of setting a low benchmark on which we base our annual appropriations. Any revenue above the benchmark is kept in what is called the Excess Crude Account — not covered by any appropriation.

The Excess Crude Account has become a veritable source of slush funds for all sots in utter defiance to the constitutional requirement that all revenue should be paid into the Consolidated Revenue Account of the federation.

An unaccountable federal government easily dips its hand into this pool and has some N200 billion to appease the Cattle Rearers Association. Here, the federal government wallows in colossal waste and ostentation while the states and localities struggle in abject poverty.

When it is becoming glaring that the federal government is becoming heavy in the act, the state governors are invited and given some handouts dubiously labelled Federal Assistance. Knowing the source of the dubious handout, some Governors simply pocket the money and look away. That’s stealing made easy.

For whatever reason, the federal government was until recently, sitting on the 13 per cent derivation fund for the oil-producing states. In the dying days of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, the federal government released the money to the concerned states.

Most of the affected Governors pocketed their money and walked away without reporting to anybody. It took Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State to announce publicly that Buhari should be thanked for releasing that money for people to know that any such money was released to each of them. It is all stealing and corruption made easy!

We see the war against corruption of the Buhari administration as a war for more corruption. The federal government was simply recovering money from corrupt politicians and dubiously spending such money on itself when indeed, part of such recovered money was for some states. 

In this era of palliatives, did the federal government not sit down the other day to award each Governor N5 billion in the name of palliatives? Which appropriation bill- main or supplementary, ever captured that revenue source? Why would some Governors not pocket that money and walk away and only announce on radio and television that they have provided free buses for the people when there are no buses? It is all stealing made easy!

Admittedly, we cannot suddenly stop the Federal Government from taking the money that belongs to the whole federation but we can try to reduce the thievery.

We have insisted, perhaps with monotonous regularity, that the system in which the federal government is in the custody of the money that belongs to the entire federation is unacceptable.

There should be two Accountants General— While the federal government should have its own Accountant General, there should be an Accountant General for the Federation who should operate from the General Accounting Office (GAO). That’s the practice in the more advanced democracies.

Omorotionmwan writes from Canada