GEJ: How Not To Fight Corruption By SOC Okenwa

Few weeks ago there was a report
online whose caption “The World’s
‘poorest’ President” instantly caught
my attention as I navigated the
global village via the Internet. In it
we were told about a certain
President who should be ‘canonized’
as a saint in a world inhabited by
executive animals, jesters and serial
sinners. According to the report the
President of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, is
doing what no president in history
ever did: donating his official salary
to the down-trodden of his country!
No Jonathanian hypocrisy, no
razzmatazz, no publicity, no
exibitionism: the man of power is
doing it all from his heart! A very
good man indeed!
Elected President in 2009, Mujica
spent the 1960s and 1970s as part
of the Uruguayan guerrilla
movement called Tupamaros — a
leftist armed group inspired by the
Cuban revolution. He was shot six
times and spent 14 years in jail!
Most of his detention was spent in
harsh conditions and isolation, until
he was freed in 1985 when Uruguay
returned to democracy. Living a
remarkable austere (frugal) lifestyle
President Mujica donates about 90%
of his monthly salary, equivalent to
$12,000 (£7,500) to charity.
Only two police officers and a three-
legged dog keep watch outside his
wife’s farm-house residence outside
the capital city Montevideo. His only
personal car is a 1987 Volkswagen
Beetle! According to him: “I’m called
‘the poorest president’, but I don’t
feel poor. Poor people are those who
only work to try to keep an
expensive lifestyle, and always want
more and more….This is a matter of
freedom. If you don’t have many
possessions then you don’t need to
work all your life like a slave to
sustain them, and therefore you
have more time for yourself….I may
appear to be an eccentric old man.
But this is a free choice.”
After reading the striking
compassionate story I was
enveloped with righteous
indignation as I compared and
contrasted it with what is happening
in my home country. Just imagine
how Nigeria would have fared if we
had a President of Mujica’s
patriotism and solidarity with the
poor! You see two things ‘bother’
me here as regards this extra-
ordinary uncommon President: his
salary and his disdain for affluence
and megalomania! The President
earns the equivalent of twelve
thousand dollars monthly and he
graciously uses the bulk of the pay
towards servicing the poor and the
needy in the society! Wonderful!
Mr Mujica would probably ‘die’ of
heart attack if he were to be told
about a big country in West Africa
where presidents make suffering of
the masses a state policy! He would
melt into insomnia when he would
be informed that Nigeria’s leaders
had stolen the people’s money for
generations, graft upon graft, fiscal
scandal upon fiscal scandal running
into billions of dollars without any
one of them ending up in any jail
anywhere or even arrested for
interrogation! He would be forced to
think about the veracity of the black
continent being labelled by
detractors as a dark enclave where
Lucifer must have elected home.
The true statesman would shudder
when he becomes aware that some
pseudo-statesmen in Nigeria like
Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim
Babangida had stolen huge
amounts of money — much more
than the annual GDP of Uruguay!
He would be filled with bitterness
upon getting to know that the late
Gen. Sani Abacha alone stole
billions of dollars that are still being
tracked all around the world today!
He would marvel at our collective
helplessness to ‘cure’ ourselves of
the graft ailment afflicting our
politicians. The graceful President
would definitely feel sorry for
Nigerians if he knows about one
smart crook named James Onanefe
Ibori and his dismantled network of
monumental fraud.
The likes of Jose Mujica are hard to
find under the African sky. With the
exception of a very few good men
like Nelson Mandela and the late
Julius Nyerere Africa has produced
the very worst leaders any sane
country could ever get. In Nigeria
there will never be any Jose Mujica
because of who we are and how we
do things. Even if one manifests
himself he may likely be cut down
by forces hell-bent on maintaining
the disastrous status-quo.
Last Sunday as I woke up in the wee
hours of the night to put finishing
touches to the article that was
bound for publication later in the
day I went online and was greeted
by a mind-boggling news story
culled from a local newspaper (The
Punch). According to the
investigative report under the
Goodluck Jonathan administration
Nigeria has lost a whooping US$31
billion to fraud and corruption! Not
that one was shocked by that
revelation but the sheer amount
involved somewhat knocked me off
my feet for a while! Dazed as it were
and fuming with patriotic rage I had
reached for a glass of whiskey to
knock ‘sense’ back into my faculty
and continue with the literary
exercise.
Thirty one billion dollars stolen in a
space of just two years of the
Jonathan presidency? Holy Jesus!
Just imagine what a billion dollars
would do when channelled towards
the rehabilitation of the death-traps
called federal highwares. Just think
about what one billion dollars can
do to upgrade the ‘mere consulting
clinics’ without qualified doctors and
expired drugs. Just dream of what a
billion dollars would do when
deployed in the education sector to
curb poor quality academic output
and input. Just consider what a
billion dollars can do in the
employment schemes aimed at
engaging the teeming unemployed
youths being ’employed’ and
recruited by Boko Haram and
kidnapping kingpins and PDP
godfathers.
But why is corruption now a way of
life in Nigeria? Why are ‘saints’ very
rare to come by? Why is (almost)
everybody and everything corrupt?
Well, the answers to these posers
are as easy as they can ever be. In a
culture that rewards malfeasance
and honours the rich fool, in a clime
where illicit money is celebrated
without question values are bound
to take flight. Another reason could
be total lack of patriotism. Yes,
patriots are no longer there to be
counted in their millions or
thousands; Nigeria has since
become an ‘orphan’ and everyone is
out to milk her dry. But who cares
about how she fares anyway?
While IBB was reputed to have
institutionalised corruption in
Nigeria what we are witnessing
today must have informed the “I-
deh-kampe” attitude of both IBB
and OBJ — the two worst executive
culprits of corruption in Nigeria. The
‘grab-grab’ syndrome has affected
every sector and almost everybody
is corrupt one way or the other. No
one sane enough would ever elect
to die for a nation whose fortunes
keep plummeting while ‘leaders’,
through their mischievous aides,
regale us with tales of ‘ogogoro’, fish
pepper-soup and cassava bread in
the seat of power!
The decay in major sectors of the
economy, the moral rot in the
political sphere speaks only one
thing to our mind: the endemic
corruption in our country has gotten
worse and if nothing revolutionary is
done quickly then we risk
surrendering our lives to the
panjandrums who, like the drug
cartels in Guinea-Bissau, Brazil and
Mexico, are making governance look
like a class thing or a secret
organisation in which details of
engagements are known only to the
initiated!
President Jonathan’s complacency in
the fight against corruption is
understandable but inexcusable.
Understandable in the sense that he
is not only a weak and uninspiring
leader but he was foisted on the
nation by a corrupt godfather who
was desperate to cover his looting
tracks once out of power. But
inexcusable because the very life of
the nation and millions of her
peoples are daily being rubbished
by the odious effects of high-wire
corruption that has gone out of
control. Inexcusable because GEJ
has no reason whatsover to fail in
this urgent task of booking and
jailing those who, with manifest
impunity, plunder and plunder the
resources under their care and retire
as sacred cows or ‘stakeholders’!
A corruption-compliant leader, we
are told, cannot successfully wage a
war against graft. His best efforts
therefore can be likened to some
modest results obtained through
the constant pressure and criticisms
of anti-corruption crusaders. Flashes
of fire here and there but no smoke,
all bluster and no balls, all hype but
no substance; comedy and drama in
a trivial demonstration of
cluelessness and emptiness! Yet the
grim situational reality on the
ground constitutes enough danger
for the corporate survival of Nigeria
as a country.
The President’s pedigree and inner
instincts do not give him away as
one ready to confront the monster
ravaging the lives of Nigerians;
rather, he appears to be
comfortable apparently partaking in
the corruption bazar. Goodluck
Jonathan’s corruption-fighting
strategies (as defective and languid
as they are) remain in the eyes of
discerning Nigerians a puzzling
study of how not to fight corruption.
How can a government that claims
to be seriously fighting corruption
condone one by sending the
Attorney General of the Federation
and Minister for Justice, Mohammed
Bello Adoke, to file a last minute
motion asking the court trying to
uncover how and why the former
dictator Ibrahim Babangida
embezzled the 12.4 billion dollars oil
windfall to disqualify the claimants
saying they lacked the authority to
question the spending and fraud
associated with the funds? I mean,
so GEJ does not want IBB jailed to
serve as a big example to others?
Or he is mortally afraid of the
consequencies?
That is why we are rooting for
General Muhammadu Buhari, a hard
man whose political antecedents
suggest he is battle-ready to
destroy the elements of corruption
in our national lives. Any President
who wilfully condones or tolerates
corruption in whatever guise must
be corrupt himself! Come 2015
President Jonathan must excuse us
another four years of misery and
mediocrity! While one recognizes
that power has since intoxicated
him and his wife (making wishful
voluntary exit near-impossible) we
think the 4-year ‘good-luck’ (sorry
gridlock) he is currently serving
should be enough worries in our
lives.
Power must therefore change hands
come 2015! The Peoples Democratic
Party ought to be soundly defeated
by the opposition bringing to an
end 16 years of greed, graft and
mediocrity. Nigeria deserves
nothing less as unprecedented
institutional corruption seeks
relentlessly to snuff life out of the
emaciated giant. Nigeria can never
develop with the present half-
hearted anti-corruption policy of hits
and misses, the present
unmitigated assault by forces of
corruption.
SOC Okenwa
soco_abj_2006_rci@hotmail.fr