50 years of fighting corruption (1966-2016)

“The struggle against corruption in our national landscape is one for the survival of the nation itself. The choice before Nigerians is clear: We either go to war against corruption in all its ramifications, or we shall be consumed by this hydra-headed dragon.” – Father George Ehusani, ‘Sustaining the War against Corruption’ (2005).

DESPITE the promising start made at independence in 1960, the high hopes that the fledgling nation of Nigeria would serve as a bastion of democracy in Africa came to an abrupt halt on January 15, 1966, in a series of coordinated actions in which a group of young army officers wiped out the country’s top political leadership.

The army officers stormed Lagos, the nation’s capital, and seized the federal Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, took him outside the city and executed him by the roadside.

They then dumped his body in a gutter. In Kaduna, the bloodthirsty officers engaged in a gun duel, and eventually succeeded in gunning down the Premier of the Northern Region and Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello. In Ibadan, they killed the Premier of the Western Region, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola. They also took hold of the federal Finance Minister, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, dragged him out of his house and drove him away to be murdered. Many senior army officers were also ruthlessly massacred.

The aim of the young army majors was not just to stage a coup but also to launch a revolution, overthrowing the existing order of things. In a broadcast from Kaduna on January 15, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu spoke in the name of the Supreme Council of the Revolution: “Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in the high and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 per cent; those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers and VIPs of waste; the tribalists, the nepotists; those that make the country look big-for-nothing before the international circles; those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds.”

Successive military government rode on the crest of stamping out corruption in public life as the reason for overthrowing preceding governments. In the end, military dictatorships only succeeded in cementing the structures of graft. 50 years after the Nzeogwu-led revolution, things seem to have gone from bad to worse, partly because of the poorly conceived strategies for waging the war against corruption, and partly because of the failure of successive governments to rein in the demons of impunity. Reverend Father George Ehusani has aptly tagged this wasted period as ‘Years Eaten by the Locust’ in his book by the same title, published in 2002.

Today, corruption continues to hang ominously over Nigeria’s future, threatening her wellbeing and shaking her very foundations. And because we have failed to create a working system in which equitable access to national resources is guaranteed regardless of any form of affiliation, people now fall back on their political, ethnic and religious loyalties, either defensively or offensively, to have their own cut of the national cake. With mind-boggling cases of reckless and massive embezzlement of public funds, it would appear today that we have simply upped the tempo of sleaze and malfeasance.

In his revealing book, Why Nigeria is Not Working (2013), Reverend Father Paul Irikefe argues from the onset that “Nigeria is not cursed; Nigeria is only held down by greed and the inability of her leaders to manage her mineral wealth. This is also a way of saying that Nigeria really works, but for one per cent of the population – former Heads of State who are among the richest in the country, business front men and women and family associates who control access to the oil wealth and lucrative contracts, lawmakers who are the highest paid in the world, governors and their godfathers who manage the distributive power of various states like a private fiefdom.” Irikefe concludes that, “If Nigeria has a structure that is dysfunctional and resistant to change, it is because it is immensely beneficial to the elites.”

I believe that it was this situation that prompted a former Head of State, speaking on “Leadership and Accountability in a Period of Moral Crisis” at the Fourth Annual Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Lecture at Arewa House, Kaduna, on May 15, 1998, to make the following statement with reference to corruption: “Nowhere else in the world can we find a society tolerating the theft of its precious resources in broad daylight with nothing happening to the thieves. A day in the office, as far as the general public is concerned, often means eight hours of converting public resources to private purses. Few societies seem to reward embezzlement with ‘honours’ as does our own.” That former Head of State is Muhammadu Buhari, our current President.

Since his second coming in May 2015, President Buhari has enjoyed mass following in vast swathes of the country. During the presidential election campaign, many Nigerians were bought over by the popular perception of the General’s cerebral disdain for corruption and his widely acclaimed reputation for personal integrity and frugality. Today, tons of newspaper editorials, opinion articles, and news stories, interviews, radio and TV programmes continue to generate mass hysteria around the highly publicised anti-corruption war rhetoric, even as citizen participation in governance has reached an all-time high. Many Nigerians who suspect the strategies for waging the war are patiently waiting to see what harbour the ship berths. However, if there’s one thing that all Nigerians are agreed on, it is that corruption is the killer virus of Nigeria’s progress and prosperity. It therefore needs no restating that if Nigeria does not kill corruption now, corruption will kill Nigeria.
• Ojeifo is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Abuja.