The Pension Probe And The Audacity Of Corruption In Nigeria By Ugochukwu Raymond

A certain story was told of a young
man whose parents were trying to
figure out what his future career
would be, so they decided to give
him a test. They took a twenty-
dollar note, a Bible and a bottle of
whisky and put them on the front
hall table. Then they hid, hoping he
would think they weren’t at home.
The father told the mother, “if he
takes the money he will be a
businessman, if he takes the Bible
he will be a clergyman but if he
takes the bottle of whisky, I’m afraid
our son will be a drunkard.”
So the parents took their place in
the nearby closet and waited
nervously. Peeping through the key
hole, they saw their son drive home.
He saw the note they had left,
saying they’d be home latter. Then,
he took the twenty dollar note,
looked at it against the light, and
slid it in his pocket. After that he
took the Bible, flicked through it,
and took it also. Finally, he grabbed
the bottle, opened it, and took a
gulp to be assured of its quality.
Then he left for his room, carrying
all the three items.
The father slapped his forehead and
said, “Damn, it’s even worse than I
could ever have imagined…” “What
do you mean?” his wife asked. “Our
son is going to be a politician!”
replied the very unhappy father.
From the impression of this young
man’s father about who a politician
is and what he is capable of doing,
there is no doubt that such
knowledge would have been
profoundly enriched and
predetermined by the peculiarity of
the Nigerian experience. For it is
only in Nigeria that politicians – or
better still, managers of the
peoples’ commonwealth – have
become so implacably corrupt that
when presented with the option of
choosing a naira note, a Bible or a
bottle of whisky, they would, in all
probability, cart away all three items
without any qualms.
The ongoing probe by the Nigerian
Senate on the mismanagement of
pension funds is one incident out of
numerous cases which exemplifies
this odious phenomenon. The
leadership newspaper captures it as
follows: “At last count the amount
said to have been stolen amounts to
about N156 billion. Perhaps most
disturbing was the brazen
falsification of documents to
withdraw the pension funds that will
not get to the beneficiaries.”
Illustratively, there was a situation
where the Senate probe committee
heard how officials of the Police
Pension Board falsified documents
to withdraw N24 billion from the
budget office for the payment of
pension that required only N3.5
billion.
The Chairman of the Pension Review
Task Force Team, Maina
Abdulrasheed had, while testifying,
told the Senate probe committee
that the task force had discovered
two major accounts in Lagos where
pension funds for the police was
lodged, each amounting to N21
billion and N24 billion respectively.
He also noted that on daily basis
various sums of money from N200
million to N300 million were being
withdrawn illegally. In what seemed
to be a case of the hunter becoming
the hunted, the Assistant Chief
Accountant, Police Pension Office,
Mr. Toyin Ishola had alleged in his
submission to the Senate panel that
the sum of N240 million was
expended on fictitious data
capturing operation of only 20
pensioners in Atlanta, Georgia by
the Task Force Chairman, Maina
Abdulrasheed, including an illegal
transfer of N21 billion into three
different accounts, one of which was
domiciled in the account of the
younger brother of the Chairman,
Pension Reform Task Team.
One does not require any further
elaboration to prove that Nigeria, as
a social entity, has lost its soul. For
when a society degenerates to the
level where public officials cultivate
sadistic delight in stealing death
benefits of retirees, such officials will
also harbour no reservations about
stealing the buried coffins of dead
bodies.
Corruption in Nigeria has festered
and irredeemably so due in part to
the virtual non-existence of
institutional mechanisms for
ensuring that the machinery of
governance and public
administration are not unduly
distorted or diverted to the
satisfaction of egotistical and
parochial interests. Nigeria’s public
service is saddled with a
bureaucratic arrangement that is
notoriously over-bloated, yet it is
always easy for particular officials or
civil servants to hijack the
paraphernalia of public service and
deploy same in the service of
amoral designs.
It is a blatant indication of the
porosity of the county’s institutions
and the weakness of its statutory
processes for the public officers
indicted in the pension probe to
have found the latitude to flirt with
such stupendous sums of money
without any institutional inhibition.
Even with the hullabaloo being
made by Sanusi’s CBN about the all-
important requirement of
lodgement disclosures in the new
banking reform, it is curious that
debauched public officers could
launder and divert public funds into
private accounts without being
dictated and halted.
In the light of this debilitating
systemic decadence which pervades
the Nigerian space, one would have
expected that the much-taunted
“transformation agenda” of the
incumbent political regime would
have focused intensely and
concretely on strengthening the
various institutions of governance –
including the Civil Service /
Ministries. To all intents and
purposes, it would seem that the
government is more predisposed to
seeking the line of least resistance
than confronting and addressing
the malaise of bureaucratic
inefficiency and porosity immanent
in the system. This temperament is
easily reflected in the government’s
indiscriminate procreation of
multifarious “committees and task
forces” for the purpose of
conducting government business.
The inescapable implication of such
an ad-hoc approach to governance
is that it leads to the unnecessary
duplication of official functions,
wastage of scarce and insufficient
public funds / resources, escalation
of the burdensome cost of
governance, intensification of the
chronic neglect and decadence of
statutory public institutions, as well
as the cultivation of a governance
culture that is prone to nepotism
and corruption, especially, as a
means of creating “jobs for the
boys.”
It is also a matter of serious
contradiction that all incidence of
corruption probes in recent times
have always emanated and
terminated within the chambers of
the Federal Parliament, while the
Presidency and its Executive arm
(which is supposed to be in the
driver’s seat of the anti-corruption
crusade) now relegates itself to the
nominal position of a disinterested
spectator and, thus, maintains a
certain aloofness and Olympian
detachment regarding the vexed
issue of anti-corruption, even while
it continues to trumpet and
pontificate about its zero tolerance
for corruption.
For now, corruption looms large in
Nigeria like a sore thumb; it hangs
threateningly in both public and
private spheres of the country’s life
like the sword of Damocles. Worst,
its social manifestations are as
audacious as its economic
ramifications are ferocious. By
contrast, the “transformation
agenda” which is meant to deliver a
remedial antidote to the malady of
tyrannous corruption is yet to pick
up steam or even find its rhythm
largely because its proponents are
decidedly uncertain about its real
essence and its implications as a
revolutionary concept. And because
its proponents are irredeemably lost
in the confusion of trying to
determine its conceptual essence,
they have also effectively ensured
that its practical realization is
equally lost.

Ugoray2010@yahoo.co.uk