Long before Betta Edu was recruited

First national Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, appears to have forgotten that corruption has crippled the country. And that the reason they came on board as a political party in 2015 was to kill corruption. Yes, they may have done well for themselves and their families in eight and a half years, so they tend to forget the promises they made to the people. However, citizens don’t forget.

Baba Akande, who just celebrated his 85th birthday attempted some dialectics on corruption and why it’s difficult to deal with it. But it was a wasted exercise stripped of truth, simply because the motive was to exculpate political leadership from the embarrassing depth the APC has sunk Nigeria.

It was meant as a prologue to announce his birthday celebration. So, Baba engaged newsmen in a chat. Rather than explain why the ruling party failed to deliver the promises they mouthed in 2015, when they touted a non-existent capacity to defeat corruption, Chief Akande went beating about the bush and blaming ordinary citizens, the victims.

Hear him: “In Nigeria, corruption is not the first thing to fight, otherwise you get perished. The mindset is corrupt. The man who wants prosperity by miracles is corrupt. You want to own a car or house by miracles; you are already a corrupt man. In a country where everybody is corrupt, who is that leader, who will bell the cat? So, you are blaming the leader, but you are corrupt yourself. Go to religious circles, everybody wants comfort without work. The present generation doesn’t want to work. They want to get everything by miracle. Such a community can never be prosperous. No leader can make them prosperous. They will just be blaming government. A country where everybody is corrupt like Nigeria, nobody can solve the problem.”

When a frontline APC leader resorts to such rigmarole over dealing with corruption, then you know the country is in a deep mess and something urgent has to be done for retrieval. For those who may have forgotten, Baba Akande is not just a wannabe political leader, he’s been around. He is a disciplinarian on fiscal matters, brought up in the ascetic tradition patterned by the great Obafemi Awolowo. We’re referring to leaders who considered the people first and made sacrifices that ensured children went to school. In those days, they didn’t need to engage in definitions of how corruption came about. They dealt with it.

Natural progressives didn’t covet what belonged to the people; they used the resources to organise the people. The goal then, was to attain an egalitarian society, one that provides equal rights and opportunities for all. The party system then was a grooming platform to instill discipline across cadres of partisans; and the leader showed uncommon example. The leader’s children went to public schools like other children. The leader didn’t purchase homes in foreign countries. The leader’s children weren’t spoilt brats who display obscene wealth with impunity and luxuriate in high-end opulence that is not accounted for.

That was the humble beginning and, in those days, it was easy to identify, define and deal with corruption. Ordinary citizens didn’t need to steal, because they trusted their leaders. So, what has gone wrong?

In the first place, there is no substance in Baba Akande’s assertion that corruption should not be the first thing a leader must fight. In Nigeria, corruption is the first thing a leader must tackle if he wants to turn the fortunes of the country around. And that was what Chief Akande promised Nigerians when they sold APC to the people. They told Nigerians that if they did not kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria. Corruption has killed Nigeria.

Again, if citizens are pushed to flock religious circles because they are conditioned to trust such places in the hope to assuage government inflicted misery, isn’t that supposed to be food for thought for the ruling party? Rather than mock hapless citizens who are (mis)led to seek fortunes in unscientific circumstances, Baba Akande and APC should first apologise to 140 million Nigerians who were escorted by them into multi-dimensional poverty in just eight years.

The phenomenon Baba lamented did not exist in the days when there were job opportunities and the population was manageable.Worship places grew exponentially after textile companies and manufacturing outfits closed shop and their factories were converted to places of succour and empathy. APC’s eight clueless and planless years have worsened unemployment, making life extremely difficult for young Nigerians, especially those whose parents do not trade in politics.

Let’s even assume there are improprieties at worship places as is often alleged. It is the responsibility of government to deal with it and repair minds that are misfocused on earthly rewards without hard work and ethics. That’s why there’s government to deal with criminality and conscientise the citizenry.

It is also big a lie that this present generation doesn’t want to work. Nigerians love hard work. They do not wait for government. All they ask for is safe and favourable environment to be creative. Nigerian youths have done very well in all sectors. In the creative industry, they are number one in Africa. In ICT, they are among the best. It’s a shame that APC’s profiling of youths is always in the negative.

Former President Buhari was of the same uncritical mindset, that Nigerian youths are lazy. Coming from someone who has been on government payroll since he enlisted in the army as a teenager, till date, it’s most inconsiderate and unfair. But that’s APC for you.

In his August 1, 2023 engagement with Nigerians, President Tinubu also struggled to explain his approach to dealing with corruption. In the address titled ‘After Darkness Comes the Glorious Dawn’, whose focus was to preach why fuel subsidy must go, he claimed subsidy money was “funneled into the deep pockets and lavish bank accounts of a select group of individuals.”

On how to deal with the select group, he lamely said: “This group had amassed so much wealth and power that they became serious threat to fairness of our economy and the integrity of our democratic governance.”

He added: “Thus, the defects in our economy immensely profited a tiny elite, the elite of the elite you might call them. As we move to fight the flaws in the economy, the people who grow rich from them, predictably, will fight back through every means necessary.” Clueless demagoguery.

Since APC formed government, the volume of corruption transacted by political office holders has multiplied. As Nigerians can now testify with Emefielegate, the party was not founded to canvass any noble ideal, but to grab power and access resources. After eight years of Buhari plunder, another set of so-called progressives have taken over. Progressives who cannot fight corruption.

As corrupt as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) turned out to be, they at least knew how to tame corruption. Under President Obasanjo, Nuhu Ribadu’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) brought governors and other big men down. Ribadu was fearless because there was political will to kill corruption. But as soon as APC won elections, Adams Oshiomhole invited hardened looters from other parties to come on board and their sins were forgiven.

Just last week, the EFCC announced it was reopening money laundering cases against 13 former governors and some former ministers. Those listed include two former governors of Ekiti State, Ayo Fayose and Kayode Fayemi; former Zamfara State Governor, Bello Matawalle; former governors of Enugu State, Chimaroke Nnamani and Sullivan Chime; former Governor of Nasarawa State, Abdullahi Adamu and former Governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso. Others are, former Governor of Gombe State, Danjuma Goje; former Governor of Bayelsa State, Timipre Sylva and others.

These are not the tiny elite of the elite group Tinubu attempted to hide behind. Even the tiny elite have their patrons in government. However, Matawalle is serving in this government as Minister of State for Defence. Adamu, a former chieftain of PDP moved his trade to the APC and rose to become national chairman. President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio still has his file with EFCC and a host of others whose antecedents are located in PDP. Under Buhari, their sins were forgotten. Some of the cases are as old as 15, 20 years. It might take another 20 years to secure justice for impoverished citizens.

Long before Betta Edu was recruited, APC had been a cesspool of corruption. Their party has never done anything without corruption. The management of the party is utterly corrupt. Their presidential and governorship primaries are corrupted and sold to highest bidders. Road contracts are awarded multiple times and they remain uncompleted.

The people who peddle hard currencies are political actors who collect monthly allocation from the Federation Account. Their wives and children love to spend dollar, they buy houses and go on holidays all over the world.

The bubble that burst in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management was accidental. It was not designed to fight corruption. The president has tasked a panel to take a holistic view of the Social Investment Programme (SIP), promising there would be no sacred cows. A smart way to douse tension.

Why not allow the EFCC continue the investigations and publish the details of those who picked monies and for what contracts? Nigerians are watching.
Solution: In the African setting, the tag of corruption is a blemish of leprous magnitude, if not worse. It is accompanied by shame and odium. A sense of guilt and shame helps to train and tame the mind.

This APC has lost every sense of shame. That’s what their loathsome banters at book launches and birthdays represent, amid revelation of monumental thievery. But a thousand books cannot repair the damage. Let the Nigerian political party system return to the basis!