Continued from yesterday
They erected flamboyant offices at strategic locations; cast their net into the ocean of vast unemployment and carefully employing both the qualified and unqualified. The qualified was employed to perfect the books, while the unqualified as long as he/she had the face and body was equally employed to be shipped off to the moneybags in government to shop for accounts. Destinies were crashed, lives were destroyed, while many marriages were ended, but it didn’t matter, as long as the accounts kept coming in. Outrageous targets were heaped on hapless graduates who were only too grateful to at least have a job, while the banking sector became an arena of the dirtiest fights between bankers from different banks, fighting ugly over who gets which account or the other. Bank managers and other top bank executives started carrying out vigils in Government Houses, trailing federal allocations going to states, while offering dirty deals to snatch the funds before any other of their colleague shows up. Ladies became the worst victims, as tons of them were unleashed on both the Federal and State Ministries to go after Ministers and Commissioners, quietly encouraging them to use all means possible, both diabolical and fetish, to get the job done and not return without the account. Banks that had no single branch in the city still ordered their members of staff to relocate to hotels in Abuja, from where ‘operation meet your target’, was mindlessly funded.
Banks fought tooth and nail to become the favourite of politicians, donating billions of naira to fund political campaigns, stampeding wedding ceremonies of children senior government functionaries with all manner of mind-blowing gift items, bank-rolling the re-burial ceremonies of the long-dead parents of heads of powerful Agencies of government, all in a bid to get the juiciest accounts. It was a time when it was not unusual to see Bank MDs and CEOs monitoring the itinerary of a President all over the world and breaking protocols to book presidential suites next to the President’s hotel room, all in desperation to corner accounts and even force the opening of new ones.
The system was a total misnomer, where no reasonable banking business was done except the garbage in garbage out of accounts. The matter came to a head under the last government where hundreds of accounts littered the Federal Government. As a matter of fact, it cannot be gainsaid, that if the last administration had attempted it, it would have been resisted and it would have buckled under. Such was it that the account-chasing game became the dirtiest thing in Nigeria’s financial sector and one of the most secretly guarded routes of corruption, which many had thought was an untouchable matter.
A leader does not need to take many steps to show that he is in firm control, all he needs is just one decisive step, and not only will many bad heads roll, there will correspondingly no longer be room for new ones to be formed. Such is the decisive step that Buhari has taken through the Treasury Single Account, and it is unimaginable that this type of commonsense was there all this while. It is a total waste of effort, time and resources, advising, cajoling and persuading men not to steal. No serious-minded country does that. All that is needed as the first step, is to give a mandate that all revenue accruing and expenditure to be incurred, pass through one single channel, whose final vetting and authorisation ends on the President’s table, and let’s see those who will want to commit mass suicide by doing otherwise. The Treasury Single Account (TSA) is a master-stroke policy of the current government and the ingenuity behind it must be widely applauded. It can only take a brilliant head on a sincere and courageous shoulder, to have pulled this off.
The TSA policy is more than simply close down accounts, it is the most potent anti-corruption weapon under any government, given that it is a double-edged sword that would not only cut loose all the fingers of corruption in government, but is also an ingenious policy that will fumigate the banking sector that continues to reek of filth and rot. Where there no longer exist hundreds of clandestine accounts hidden in several banks, it therefore becomes impossible to launder money as there will be no platform to do so. The gain of this policy is unimaginable. A new era will arise where billions of dollars in revenue from major MDAs such as the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Customs, Immigration, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), e.t.c are all moved through in a single file, to a single account, without the usual too many cooks dipping their hands into the broth.
This can then be followed up with an unveiling of this government’s economic blueprint to be marshalled by a minister who has an immediate example to call him to order, tighter laws running alongside stricter regulations, and a more disciplined fiscal and monetary regime. How best can a country prosper, except with this kind of commonsense? And to say that this government has not even started its anti-corruption war? Definitely, the days ahead promises to be interesting. Once again, Mr. President, welcome on board Air Force One.
• Concluded.
• Adegbite is a lecturer in the Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. Solar9ng@yahoo.com.
