The Vicious Circle of Corruption

 BY AKIN OSUNTOKUN

Departure Points

(1) The Amalgamation Roots
Conceptually and objectively speaking, all the evidence of a predisposition to endemic corruption looms large in Nigeria today. The sad reality is that there is no silver lining in the horizon, which in itself fuels more corruption as those opportuned to be in position of authority scampers to insure themselves against the promise of a bleak tomorrow. This is why corruption has become cyclical. The roots of the culture of nepotism and corruption lie deep in the foundational amalgamation ideology of robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to say; the legitimisation and prioritisation of the consumption culture of unearned income and the lack of positive correlation between productivity and reward.

Here is the meaning of what I have just said. “As early as 1898, the British considered combining the then-three protectorates to reduce the administrative burden on the British and allow the rich south to effectively subsidise the much less economically prosperous north. (This is what Lord Lugard was referring to in his infamous description of how a marriage between the “rich wife of substance and means” (the south) and the “poor husband” (the north) would lead to a happy life for both. Some have suspected that Lugard was also referring to the political supremacy of the North over the South”
This was the ideology of raw nepotism infused into the bloodstream of Nigeria by the British upon which the existence of Nigeria was predicated. From this raison d’être emerged the entitlement syndrome of the Northern ruling class and their collaborators from the rest of Nigeria. The new age embodiment of this mentality is no other than former President Muhammadu Buhari and his unprecedented nepotism. He would absolve Abacha from the charge of stealing even as he was receiving and taking custody of proceeds of Abacha’s crime. If the Tinubu presidency is having problems with this constituency today it is on account of not adequately yielding to this entitlement syndrome.

(2) The Distortion of Federalism  
The extrapolation from all these misgivings is that Nigeria does not pass the litmus test of being constituted as a nation but if it must be then the irreducible minimum criteria is federalism with substantial devolution of regional autonomy. Recently addressing himself to the problematic ambition of Vice President Atiku Abubakar to seek the presidency of Nigeria again in 2027 Chief Bode George reminded him of a most significant rule of the road. He said “We should not do anything that will destroy our party and the country. In 2027, the concept of Turn-by-Turn Nigeria Limited must be strictly followed. This is the reality of Nigeria”.
The principle of power rotation was conceived to serve the cause of political stability and the national unity of Nigeria.The principle emanated from the lessons learnt from the crisis of the annulment of the 1993 presidential election.The crisis centred on the monopoly of political power by the Northern half of the country. The casus belli entered an acute phase with the refusal to hand over power to the winner of the election, Chief Moshood Abiola, a Yoruba politician from the South West.

The power rotation principle can be construed as ‘tragedy’-it is a response mechanism to political conflict not an optimal strategy. It is a suboptimal compromise in the effort to defuse real and potential situations of conflict and ensure that such situations degenerate into less attractive possibilities’¹. As it is often the case with Nigeria, this utility has morphed into the dysfunction of becoming an instrument of legitimising incompetence and corruption. It has become birds of the same feather with the grossly abused federal character provision. It is a recognition and acceptance of the bane of overcentralisation of power and an escapist deflection from coming to terms with federalism. .

(3) Deregulation
Decades before Nigeria was conceived, the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, ‘saw the deregulation of the economy leading to societal material goals becoming unattainable. This saw people becoming anomic’. To survive on the strength of take home pay is an impossibility for public officials in contemporary Nigeria. There are no officials who are not compelled to seek ways and means of supplementing their income. The rough and ready option is a recourse to abuse of office and corruption in its myriad manifestations.
Any federal permanent secretary who could afford to buy a brand new car today is clearly a corruption suspect. The extent to which democracy is impoverished in Nigeria today is the extent to which the judiciary is corrupt. Remember the sordid revelations unearthed by security officials when they raided the homes of several judges in Abuja in recent memory. I do not know how much a Judge earns in Nigeria but I’m certain that none of them can account for their current networth with their regular income and remuneration.
According to the latest report from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, the average cost of a healthy meal is about N1300. This gives you 117000 per individual in a month which is N47000 costlier than the minimum wage. The highest paid university professor earns N800000 per month. So how does this university don (most likely a family man with school fees paying children) survive without an extra source of income let alone owning a home?

(4) Resource curse syndrome
‘Countries like Venezuela and Nigeria (the companies we keep) are often cited as examples of the resource curse, where despite their wealth in natural resources, they face significant economic and social challenges’. The contemporary manifestation of the resource curse syndrome in Nigeria is what is called the oil subsidy scandal. The curse here is, first and foremost, the inability of this government to hold anyone accountable given the surfeit of evidence. Rather than hold anyone accountable the government is reinforcing the prior scandal with its own collusion. I do not know Mr Mele Kyari but I marvel at the mystery behind his retention. Every performance index keeps on degenerating under his tutelage yet he remains untouchable. One does not need to dislike this government to conclude that they are in cahoots with this man. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.

Of equal significance are the ideologues of the resource curse who are obsessed with consumption culture (enabled by the proceeds of crude oil) over the development ethic.”. Typical of such ideologues was Dr Usman Bugaje who argued that “There are no oil producing states…. the only oil producing state is the Nigerian state itself… Whatever mileage you get in the sea, according to the United Nations Law of the sea, is a lmeasure of the land mass that you have; that is what gives you the mileage into the sea…and the land mass of this country, that gives that long 200 nautical miles or more into the ocean, is because of that 72 per cent of the land mass of this country, which is the North. The investment came from the Nigerian state and the territory belongs to the Nigerian state. What they claim is the off shore oil is actually the oil of the North.”

From the South came the counterattack by Professor Itse Sagay “This is a wake-up call on the people of the oil-bearing region. For instance this is the time to come together and fight intellectually for the anomaly in the uneven allocation of oil blocs in the country. You will observe that because of the long stay of the north in power at the centre, they manipulated the process and cornered these blocs to the disadvantage of the south; today, you have all juicy oil blocs in the hands of the north. Now that Jonathan is there, I would not want to sound being immodest by calling for a revocation of the blocs allocated to the northern businessmen, but from the look of things, they have decided to take the entire South for a ride, so Jonathan should ensure that he corrects this imbalance by allocating more oil blocs to people in the South to make up for the inequity in the sector.”

(5) Lack of Autochthony
Integral to the alienation of Nigerians from Nigeria is the concept of autochthony. “Which usually means the assertion of not just the concept of autonomy, but also the concept that the constitution derives from their own native traditions. The autochthony, or home grown nature of constitutions, give them authenticity and effectiveness” . The lack of autochthony is what is responsible for state-society discontinuity in Nigeria. There is no continuity from a prior Nigerian society to the Nigerian state.
What Nigeria had was a prior assortment of different culturally nationalities like the ibibio, Yoruba, kanuri etc inability to sublimate these identities into Nigeria was what Peter Ekeh called the two publics of Africa, the primordial public versus the civic public in which loyalty to the former invariably trumps loyalty to the latter. It is the conflict between the two that fosters corruption. He illustrates ‘Acts of corruption in public office carry little moral sanction and may well receive great moral approbation from members of one’s primordial public (read ethnic affiliation).

But contrariwise, these forms of corruption are completely absent in the primordial public. Strange is the Nigerian who engages in embezzlement in the performance of his duties to his primordial public-town union. To put your fingers in the till of the government will not unduly burden your conscience and people may well think you are a smart fellow and envy you your opportunities. To steal the funds of the (ethnic) union would offend the public conscience and ostracise you from society.’
The sum of my argument today is that the challenge confronting Nigeria, especially corruption, is a cyclical systemic crisis. In the short term, the solution to this crisis is simple but elusive. It is as simple and elusive as requesting President Bola Tinubu to done the garb of a radical reformer. For instance a President with the mentality of issuing an executive order that within a year all federal government motor vehicles should be sourced from Nigerian car manufacturers. To survive Nigeria needs a shock therapy.

For the mid to the long term perspective a massive constitutional reforms towards the reinstatement of ‘true’ federalism is inevitable. The challenge of this is that no status quo power, including the incumbent president, would want to work for the diminution of the awesome powers of the Nigerian President. By the same logic, the constituency with the strongest vested interest in the status quo would oppose such a political reform. All this looks like committing class suicide. Yet nothing less will do at the stage Nigeria finds itself.