Are All Nigerians Corrupt?

Nigeria is internationally famous for three things: oil, its Super Eagles football team, and its spectacular government corruption.  However, contrary to popular belief it is quite simply a myth that corruption is perpetrated mostly by the government.  Most Nigerians are paradoxically and simultaneously, accomplices, active participants, victims and agents provocateurs of corruption in their society. 

LEGAL IMPEDIMENTS: Section 308 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution

The first step to understanding corruption in Nigeria is the acknowledgment that corruption is the norm rather than the exception.  Corruption is part of the system and has even been inadvertently sanctioned by the Constitution.  Section 308 of the Constitution shields the President, Vice-President, Governors and Deputy Governors from civil or criminal proceedings, arrest and imprisonment during their term of office.  This Section was intended to prevent frivolous lawsuits from being brought against public officers which might impede their management of their official duties.  However in a country as notoriously corrupt as Nigeria, it has been a legal cloak for embezzlement, and has placed many public officers above the law.  The result has been that several Governors have been able to loot state treasuries at will with no fear of arrest or prosecution.

However, corruption is not the exclusive preserve of the government.  Although most Nigerians condemn corruption as a practice of the “Big Men” and government officials, most of the population are willing accomplices.  There is an inherent hypocrisy among Nigerians about corruption.  Most citizens acknowledge that corruption is an impediment to Nigeria’s economic development and reputation, yet the ordinary Nigerian’s unquenchable thirst for the acquisition of material wealth, possessions, fame and power fuels corruption by others.  Even those that disapprove of corruption by government officials freely admit that they would do the same if they were in government, and they simultaneously participate in practices that are inappropriate.  The fuel industry is an excellent illustrative example of how corruption and dishonesty flows from the top all the way down to the lower rungs of Nigerian society.  The oil industry is rightly or wrongly perceived as the epicentre of government corruption and abuse in Nigeria.  Is the government alone in its abuse of the oil industry?  During fuel strikes and shortages petrol stations have frequently been accused of surreptitiously hoarding fuel in order to deliberately amplify shortages and drive prices even higher.  In other words they exploit and deteriorate the misery of the already hyper-extended fuel consumer.  Malpractice is not limited to petrol station proprietors.  Black market street sellers of fuel in such circumstances are also distrusted by some motorists.  Motorists often accuse them of diluting the petrol they sell with other chemicals.  In the “food chain” of the oil industry, private citizens also dangerously “tap” oil from pipelines in order to sell on the black market.  We should avoid using benign words like “tap” and call the practice what it is: theft.  This theft is carried out with no remorse for the fact that the oil being stolen is a national resource, or any thought of the explosive danger caused by damage to pipelines.  Thousands of lives have been lost in pipeline fires caused by “tapping”.

SOCIETAL PRESSURE

Once an individual lands a government job, (s)he will be inundated with near irresistible requests for ‘assistance’, finance, contracts and material benefits from members of his or her society.  To resist such requests would be to risk being ostracised by their own kinfolk.  The community expects and encourages the selective and disproportionate distribution of the “benefits” of government finances to the relatives and community of the government official.  The African extended family and patronage system ensures that a government official finds it culturally difficult to resist.  If a government official condemns corruption and refuses to use government finances to enrich them self and their community, such an official would be denounced as foolish and would be derided for having nothing to show for their time in government.  Negative comparisons would be drawn with other officials who (corruptly) enriched themselves, and the official would be asked why he was still living in the same one house while his colleagues in government have acquired ostentatious status symbols of their time in government such as cars and expensive houses at home and abroad. The current generation of Nigerians do not desire governments or institutions which seek to inhibit their ability to illegally acquire wealth.  Nigerians have become accustomed to the culture of corruption around them, and are very quick to condemn and dispense with governments that push the elimination of corruption as a major policy platform.  The regime of Major-Generals Buhari and Idiagbon launched a severe and unprecedented anti-corruption campaign for over a year and a half between January 1984 and August 1985.  They tried and imprisoned politicians that embezzled state funds.  Before long, Nigerians were unhappy with the duo.  Disapproval of their anti-corruption campaign was not explicit, but was subtly cotton wooled into ostensibly academic and sober critiques of their “high handed” and “repressive” nature.  Nigerians celebrated when Buhari and Idiagbon were overthrown and replaced by a gap toothed armoured corps General from Minna named Ibrahim Babangida.  Readers should not delude themselves into believing that General Abacha ran the most corrupt regime in Nigeria’s history.  Abacha was the most openly and brazenly corrupt, but before him came his mentor and role model Babangida.  Nigeria’s moral fibre was destroyed under the regime of General Babangida.  That is not to say that corruption was non-existent before him, but under Babangida, corruption was systematised, institutionalised and brought home as a fact of life to the doorstep of every Nigerian.  Babangida allowed Nigerians to see the ugly mirror reflection of their morality.  He recognized many Nigerians for what they are: commodities whose loyalty and soul is on sale to the highest bidder.  Many “pro democracy activists” denounced the corruption that took place under military rulers but were silenced by the financial “settlement” culture that was so pervasive under Generals Babangida and Abacha.   The current anti-corruption efforts of the EFCC and ICPC are derided for being “selective” and for not catching every corrupt individual.  These unsophisticated criticisms are the moral equivalent of a bank robber objecting to his arrest by the police on the grounds that other bank robbers whom the police have not arrested are still on the loose.  The author is of the opinion that most Nigerians should be grateful for this “selective” prosecution by the EFCC because if every corrupt Nigerian adult was arrested: (i) there would not be enough prisons and detention space to hold them, and (ii) a great deal of the workforce would be behind bars.  Nigeria has bred something far more sinister and sophisticated than petty graft and bribery.  The still unaccounted $12 billion dollar gulf war oil windfall, the Okigbo report that has never been acted upon and the absence of public outrage at these events is symbolic of the tacit acceptance of corrupt practices as “The Nigerian Way”.  Corruption in Nigeria is not just an offshoot of collapsed social and governmental institutions, nor is it the result of a hostile economic environment.  The roots go much deeper and are symptomatic of the gradual but residual breakdown of Nigerian societal values and morality.  It is the result of Nigerians’ failure to distinguish right from wrong, and of a nationwide refusal to condemn dishonesty.  Nigerians only condemn corruption when they are not the beneficiaries of it. 

A WAY FORWARD?

Western nations have lower levels of corruption not only because their law enforcement authorities are more zealous.  The psyche of their citizens is different from that of the Nigerian.  The UK and New Zealand are two countries with the lowest levels of official corruption in the world.  The overwhelming majority of citizens in those countries reflexively obey the law as a matter of their nature and inner will.  They do not have to be coerced into obedience.  This is due to the attitudinal and societal rejection of corruption in these countries.  There is a moral consensus in these countries that corruption is degenerative for their society.What can be done for Nigeria?  I propose two approaches that might be a god start.  The first step is the elimination of the systemic procedure which inhibits measures aimed at eliminating corruption.   Section 308 of the Constitution should be amended (not deleted) so that the President, Vice-President, Governors and Deputy Governors should be immune from civil, but not criminal proceedings.  The semantic difference is that such officials would be immune from being sued in vexatious civil litigation (with apologies to Gani Fawehinmi) but would not be immune from investigation, arrest or imprisonment for the commission of crimes (including those involving corrupt practices and financial impropriety).  However such a constitutional amendment is unlikely to occur anytime in the near future.  The prerequisites for a constitutional amendment are formidable.  Constitutional amendments in Nigeria require a two-thirds majority approval vote in the federal Senate and House of Representatives, and further approval by two-thirds of the 36 State House of Assemblies in Nigeria.  To reach such a degree of consensus in a country as large and fractious as Nigeria would be near miraculous.  Other methods are required. Nigeria needs a moral revolution.  That moral revolution cannot be accomplished while the present generation remains.  Many members of the present generation have been so utterly corrupted that they are beyond redemption.  Nigeria cannot and will not progress until they expire.  Hope lies in the young and unborn who have not yet been tainted by the society around them.  By inculcating from a young age, the destructive social effects of corruption, a new more honest generation may emerge in future.  The teaching of values should be compulsorily incorporated into academic syllabi from primary school until the completion of university.  I will not deny that this sounds like a subtle form of indoctrination, but it might be the only way to save Nigeria from itself.  Corruption in Nigeria will be brought down to manageable levels only when a national consensus is reached that corruption is a corrosive impediment, and when it is rejected by the majority of the population.

maxsiollun@yahoo.com 

Ojukwu: Hero or Villain?

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu is a man that inspires conflicting emotions in people.  To some he is a born leader and hero.  To others he is an ambitious man that tried to break up the federation of Nigeria.  Where Ojukwu is concerned, no one is a neutral.  The conflicting opinions on him are consistent with his inconsistent personality and history.  Ojukwu is an educated man that entered a profession that many Nigerians regarded at the time as a profession for the uneducated, a southerner born in the north who fought a three-year-long war against the north, a man who once led an attempt to secede from Nigeria, but later ran for President of Nigeria.

 

A leader must be judged by what benefits or misfortune he has brought to his people.  The question to be asked is: has Ojukwu brought anything positive to the Igbo?  His record is grim.  The “accomplishments Ojukwu  has brought his people are as follows”:

1. Dragging them into a brutal civil war they had no chance of winning, and which resulted in 1 million of them dying.

2. Even when it became clear that his people were starving to death in massive numbers, he continued the war which was doomed from the start.

3. He fled and left his people after the war.

4. The civil war caused his people to be stereotyped as disloyal and led to an unwritten discrimination against them.

It is remarkable that a man who has brought few tangible benefits to his people is so revered by them.  Although Igbo by parentage (his father was the millionaire businessman Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu), Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu was born in Zungeru in the north and attended Nigeria’s most prestigious school Kings College, before later graduating with a degree in History from Lincoln College, Oxford University (where he joined the communist party) in the UK prior to joining the Nigerian army.  Ojukwu was the first university graduate to enlist in the Nigerian army.  Intellectually, Ojukwu  was in a different league to many of his peers.  Joining the army in an era of political crises and increasing officer politicization of the army, Ojukwu found his niche.  During the 1964 federal election crisis, the President and Prime Minister jockeyed for control and loyalty of the army.  In the heat of the crisis some of Ojukwu’s colleagues alleged that he approached them with a plan to overthrow the civilian government and replace it with a military government.  The matter was reported to the army’s then commander Major-General Welby-Everard. 

 

If Ojukwu  harboured political ambitions, he was given a chance to showcase his political acumen when a group of young army majors overthrew the democratic government in January 1966.  Contrary to what has been written in some quarters, Ojukwu  refused to cooperate with the majors – including Major Nzeogwu.  When Nigeria’s first military government emerged, Ojukwu  was appointed the Military Governor of Nigeria’s Eastern Region.  His appointment to be the East’s Military Governor was also ironic as he had spent very little of his life in the East.  Ojukwu  was the most politically active of the four military governors.   By mid-1966, the army was imploding and another army coup was staged by northern soldiers during which hundreds of Igbo soldiers (including General Aguiyi-Ironsi) were killed. 

 

A central plank of this coup was the elimination of Ojukwu.  The ‘pointman’ who was to execute the coup in the Eastern Region was a young Lieutenant named Shehu Musa Yar’Adua (the older brother of Nigeria’s current president).  A  middle-ranking, northern officer (Lt-Colonel Yakubu Gowon) was chosen by northern soldiers to replace Aguiyi-Ironsi, despite the objections of Ojukwu who insisted that the most senior officer Brigadier Ogundipe should succeed Aguiyi-Ironsi.  In the aftermath of the coup, northern soldiers and civilians carried out gruesome pogroms against the Igbo, and tens of thousands of Igbo were murdered.  As decapitated and badly mutilated corpses began arriving back in Ojukwu’s Eastern Region, there was a sense of insecurity and revulsion.  Separatist sentiment increased in the Eastern Region and many Igbo and other easterners began to call for the Eastern Region to secede from the Nigerian federation which could no longer guarantee their safety. 

 

Contrary to what is widely believed, Ojukwu  was actually a moderating voice in a sea of Igbo hawks who wanted immediate secession.  Ojukwu cooperated with Gowon as he (Ojukwu ) was anxious to limit the bloodshed and to protect the lives and property of Igbo still remaining in the north.  He also ordered all northerners resident in the east to leave for their own safety, and brokered a ceasefire deal with almost 1000 northern soldiers in Enugu which allowed the northern soldiers to leave unharmed with their weapons.  However there were limits to Ojukwu’s cooperation with Gowon, and he was still refusing to recognize Gowon as Nigeria’s Head of State.  Ojukwu  defiantly continued to address Gowon as the “the Chief of Staff (Army)” (the post which Gowon occupied before the coup that brought him to power).

 

ABURI - HIS FINEST HOUR

After Nigeria was dragged to the brink of the abyss by two military coups in 1966, and pogroms which followed them, Ojukwu  had refused to attend any meetings of the Supreme Military Council and continually repeated his mantra that “I, as the Military Governor of the east cannot meet anywhere in Nigeria where there are northern troops.”

 

Ojukwu  finally agreed to attend an SMC meeting in the neutral territory of Aburi in Ghana in January 1967.  It was in the writer’s opinion, Ojukwu ’s finest hour.  While the other delegates arrived at Aburi with a simple, but unformulated idea that somehow, Nigeria must stay together, Ojukwu  prepared thoroughly and came armed with notes and secretaries.  In the words of one writer “Ojukwu was the only participant who knew what he wanted, and he secured the signatures of the SMC to documents which would have had the effect of turning Nigeria into little more than a customs union” (Miners - The Nigerian Army). 

 

Some claimed that Ojukwu  took the SMC for a ride by using his superior intelligence to trap the SMC officers into an agreement they did not understand.  Ojukwu was engaged in a constitutional debate by himself against five military officers, and two police officers, yet still got his way.  He can hardly be faulted for outwitting opponents that outnumbered him by seven to one.  Questions might be asked of the other SMC members of greater numerical strength who allowed Ojukwu  to extract such substantial concessions from them.  The agreement was never implemented as each side accused the other of bad faith.  Ojukwu cannot be faulted for the failure to implement the Aburi decisions as it was the federal government that reneged on the agreement. 

 

The federal government attempted to implement the Aburi agreement in diluted form by enacting a modified Constitution (Suspension and Modification) Decree which turned Nigeria into a de facto confederation.  Ojukwu  declined to accept the initial draft and insisted on a full and complete implementation of the accords reached at Aburi.  Nonetheless as the weaker party he could still have showed greater pragmatism to spare further suffering for his people.  At this point Ojukwu’s decision making must be questioned.  Ojukwu would have saved many lives had he shown a greater degree of flexibility by accepting the Decree as it gave him 90% of what he wanted.  In the “winner takes all” mentality that is so symptomatic of Nigerian politics, Ojukwu unrealistically held out for 100% of his demands and in the end, received 0%.  His intransigence placed him and his people in a worse position than they started in.  Rather than turning Nigeria into a confederation (which is what Decree 8 did), Ojukwu ’s intransigence gave the federal government an opportunity to overrun the Eastern Region, carve the country into several states and concentrate massive powers in the central government.  Forty years later many Nigerians now call for the restructuring of Nigeria, and for devolution of power to its regions. 

 

Ojukwu  had a golden opportunity to achieve this over 40 years ago but squandered it.  Had he shown some patience he may have achieved his objectives – albeit at a later date.  The old adage is that “the best comes to those who wait.” Ojukwu  could have taken a leaf from the book of another infant country named Israel.  For several decades Jews fought to be given their own state in what was then British Mandate Palestine.  In 1947, they were granted their state but only on half the land that they wanted.  Realizing that it is best to accept what is achievable today, rather than risk holding out for 100% and getting nothing, Israel’s first leader David Ben-Gurion accepted a state but cleverly did not enunciate the borders of this state – this leaving the door open to agitate for more land at a later date.  Today the “green line” borders of Israel encompass more land than it originally had at independence. 

 

The Biafra Story

When armed confrontation with the federal government was imminent, Ojukwu  knew as a military man that the eastern region had absolutely no chance of victory in a conflict with the federal government.  Yet he declared the secession of the eastern region which he governed, in the knowledge that federal troops would invade immediately after the secession.  Although Ojukwu doubtless possessed outstanding leadership and motivational skills which he used admirably to pull his people solidly behind the war effort, it is uncertain exactly how he possibly believed that the eastern region (armed only with a few elderly World War 2 era rifles) could succeed against an enemy armed with limitless mortars, machine guns, tanks, armoured personnel carriers, trucks and air force jets.  One does not have to be a military strategist to see the folly of this decision.

 

At the time, there was a widely held belief (propagated by Ojukwu  and other Biafran leaders) that defeat for Biafra would be met by mass indiscriminate massacres by the federal government.  If Ojukwu  believed this, then his escape at the end of the war is deplorable.  After over a million Igbo were killed in the senseless war, Ojukwu  fled in the last days of the war when his people were at their lowest ebb, despite repeatedly promising throughout the war that he would never leave his people to the mercy of the federal troops.  If he believed that all his people would be massacred then his flight to a luxurious exile abroad and refusal to stand side by side with them to finish a war he dragged them into, cannot be applauded.  Ojukwu is an iconic leader for his people, but has failed to deliver the aspirations of his people.  The question remains – is Ojukwu  a hero or a disastrous strategist?