Buhari’s war on corruption : Real or fake (2)

Continued from yesterday

DUMPING the 1999 Constitution is the key to winning the war on corruption. Corruption in Nigeria is at the constitutional heart of the Nigerian system. If anybody really means to defeat corruption, he should first get rid of the 1999 Constitution which is demonstrably the godfather of corruption, and which has entrenched and institutionalised lootocracy, the fountainhead of corruption.  (Please see Chinweizu, “Nigerians and Their Anti-Corruption Charade.”
http://ugowrite.blogspot.com/2015/07/nigerians-and-their-anti-corruption.html
or Chinweizu, Four Frauds That Are Fatal For The 1999 Constitution
http://ugowrite.blogspot.com/2015/07/four-frauds-that-are-fatal-for-1999.html ]

In that “Four Frauds” essay, I examined the 1999 Constitution and showed that:
(a) The 1999 Constitution is the Godfather of corruption, through the immunity clause 308. (1), which protects, and thereby implicitly invites, looting by the highest officials who have brazenly set the terrible example that the rest of society have emulated.
(b) It is a fraud for the Godfather of corruption to give the impression that it is against corruption, and the fraud is compounded when it empowers the State to fight corruption but then surreptitiously discourages it from doing so. That’s double duplicity/double perfidy!
(c) All in all, the 1999 Constitution has been, and remains, a Guarantor of bad governance and the Mother of all evils in Nigeria.
Buhari claims that “corruption in our country . . . constitutes a parallel system”; it should be clear from the foregoing that, contrary to Buhari’s claim, corruption is at the constitutional heart of the system. It is indeed the Nigerian system, not a parallel system to it.  And so long as we have that constitution, nobody can end lootocracy and the corruption that it spawns.

A commitment to get rid of the 1999 Constitution is, therefore, the litmus test of anybody’s seriousness about getting rid of corruption. If he is serious, Buhari can get started by implementing the 2014 Confab report and organising a truly democratic People’s constitution to replace the 1999 Constitution. But of course he won’t do that! Why? He won’t because, entrenching the 1999 Constitution is the most fundamental task on his Caliphate hidden agenda. And Buhari’s Caliphate constituency is already moving to prevent any implementation of the 2014 Confab Report. [Northern leaders move to block implementation of confab report  http://sunnewsonline.com/new/northern-leaders-move-to-block-implementation-of-confab-report/]

And some presidency sources have claimed that Buhari will not implement the Confab Report.
Buhari Will Not Implement Confab Report – Source
https://www.naij.com/494271-buhari-will-not-implement-confab-report-source.html]

If these sources are proved correct, then it means Buhari is not serious about defeating corruption, his hot rhetoric notwithstanding. We’ll have to wait and see what he does.

If he refuses to implement the Confab Report, then, like Obasanjo before him, Buhari will merely use the EFCC, ICPC, etc. and noise-making against corruption to harass and persecute his political enemies, including some Caliphate men, to cheering from his delighted and ignorant dupes.  He is already using it to avenge himself on those who overthrew him in 1985.  He has started with Col. Dasuki, the man who arrested him during the IBB coup. We can expect him to extend his vengeance to David Mark, John Shagaya, Joshua Dogonyaro and the others who made that coup against him, and eventually, when he has consolidated his power, he will go after IBB their leader.

The Nigerian corruption system is a clever mechanism. It is so configured that it continues to covertly serve as the Caliphate’s principal device for plundering Nigeria even while the proclaimed war on corruption distracts the public from its systemic roots in the constitution. The noisy war on corruption is also used to persecute the Caliphate’s enemies, with the Caliphate’s alleged corruption fighters enjoying acclaim for fighting a mysterious and intractable malady. In reality, there is nothing mysterious about corruption in Nigeria. It is bred by the lootocracy that is encouraged and protected by the 1999 Constitution.

People should not be fooled by Buhari’s show of impartiality when he goes after some Caliphate looters. An institution under serious attack will sometimes find it expedient to sacrifice some of its own members, throw its most blatant offenders to the baying dogs, and save itself to continue business as usual. For example, during the Vietnam War, the U.S. army sacrificed platoon leader Lieutenant William Calley for the My Lai massacre of March 1968. He was made a scapegoat and accused of directing the killings, and in 1971 he was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison. As a result, the army’s numerous and contemporaneous massacres in Vietnam were ignored. By making Lt. Calley a scapegoat the U.S. army was even vindicated in the eyes of the duped American public, and was seen as not tolerating atrocities by its soldiers.

It could, therefore, continue with its habit of massacres that are on record from its Indian wars of the 19th century and even earlier. (The books to read are, Understanding Power, by Noam Chomsky, p. 35,  for Lt Calley and My Lai; and  Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown, for the Indian wars.) This is a form of triage: throw overboard a third of the people crowded on a sinking boat so as to keep the boat afloat and save the rest. So we can expect Buhari to sacrifice Nyako, Sule Lamido, and some other blatant Caliphate looters so as to save the looting system itself and also make himself appear an impartial anti-corruption fighter. But don’t be fooled.

To understand why no caliphate politician, let alone Buhari, the current political leader of the Caliphate, will seriously fight corruption by getting rid of its fountainhead, the 1999 Constitution, we must examine the function of corruption in the Caliphate’s mechanism for plundering Nigeria.

The 1999 Constitution and the Caliphate system of plunder and exploitation.
“pre-capitalist agrarian ruling classes in virtually every case depended on what Marx called surplus extraction by extra-economic coercion to reproduce themselves. They therefore owed their ability to take part of the product of the peasants not to their role in production, but to their capacity to organise themselves politically to exert force against them.

In European feudalism, [the] lords’ place in agricultural production, notably via the management of their demesnes, was in general quite limited, and in some places non-existent; but this in no way impeded their ability to dominate and exploit the peasantry, a capacity achieved through their self-organisation into politico-military communities or groups, lordly states on whatever scale.”

[The origins of capitalism-debate in 2004, between Chris Harman & Robert Brenner http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=219 , Accessed Sept 2012]

Like their counterpart in feudal Europe, the feudal Caliphate sarkuna (aristocracy) in Nigeria has used its politico-military organisation to dominate and exploit the economic producers – farmers, oil companies, manufacturers, etc. The Caliphate’s politico-military organisation is the Nigerian state apparatus.
• To be continued tomorrow.
• Chinweizu wrote via Sundoor999@gmail.com