Corruption is the abuse of public power for private gain. The dictionary defines it as the dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery. God warned His creature to avoid taking bribe because bribe blinds the officials and subverts the cause of those who are in right (Exodus 23:8). This is the only reason Nigerian leaders are heartless and without compassion. A corrupt judge uses his position to take bribe and subverts the cause of the innocent man in his court. A corrupt legislature collects bribe from the executive and allow the executive to squander money as he likes and will not be investigated thereby failing in their constitutional duty to expose corruption, inefficiency and waste. The executive collects bribe from the contractors and the contractors fail to build the roads they collected money for and there’s nothing the executive can do about it. The legislature instead of questioning the executive for the bad roads Nigerians are suffering from, would rather extort more money from the executive in the name of 100% imported suvs worth N165m each with which they will use to enjoy the bad roads which have become death traps for Nigerians and the circus continues to go round.
This has become the lots of Nigeria with its undesirable leaders. The root of corruption is disobedience to the rule of law. What you compromise to get, you compromise to keep. It starts with a corrupt minister inserting into the budget some phony projects which the minister knows will not be implemented. The legislature knows they are not implementable projects and rather than weeding them out, they demand for the padding of the budget. The executive will ignore the padding because questioning them will entail the legislature throwing away the phony projects. Speaking in practical terms, the present executive branch budgeted about N5b naira for the enjoyment pleasure of the first lady, N15b for the renovation of the Vice-President’s house, N20b for the renovation of the Chief of Staff’s house and so on. The legislature knew that these expenses are phony because the first lady has no constitutional duty that demands or desires appropriation. They know that Prof Osinbajo just left the Vice-President’s house and the place couldn’t have been yearning for any repairs. The Chief of Staff is like a door keeper to the President, sort of a private secretary, and doesn’t deserve to drain the purse of the Federal Republic to the tune of N20b, yet they overlooked. They overlooked because they wanted to inflate the budget by more than N1.2 trillion including a phony contract of building a car park with N6b to shield their N165m suv from being tampered with and accessed by Nigerians whom they have impoverished with their stealing habit. They look at Nigerians as thieves who will rob and kill them if they don’t ride on bullet proof cars.
At the end of the day, the legislature asked the Appropriation Bill to bow and go within days without hitches and the President signed the Bill into Act without a whimper about the additional N1.2 trillion by the legislature. This unfortunate debacle was what laid the foundation for what we are witnessing today at the Ministry of Humanitarian affairs. First the Ministry inserted consultancy services award worth more than N3b. Every Nigerian knows that consultancy contracts, since the exposed audio recorded tape, by one Michael revealed that politicians create phony companies with which they corner most of these so called consultancy services contracts, which actually demands nothing from them other than being used as a strategy to siphon money belonging to Nigerians. The Legislature ignored them. After the passing of the Appropriation Bill into an Act, within months of this regime, the Humanitarian Ministry has already misappropriated more than N50b.
This perfidy was actually exposed when the Director of the Social Investment Programme or can we say Social Corruption Programme, squandered more than she should and this led to her outing. The Minister that outed her broke the first law of corruption and law. When you are corrupt, you must see no evil and hear no evil. And in law you must not go to equity with dirty hands. The Director simply told the world that she had to take N44b to safeguard it for the Minister was bent on taking all of them because, according to her, the Minister had already taken N3b. To collaborate her allegation, the memo by the Minister ordering the payment of about N585m into private account surfaced. So there’s an atom of truth to the allegation. Then the more than N3b consultancy services award appeared where one Minister took more than N428m. Then the allocation of hundreds of thousands of money to the operatives to fly like witches and perch in Kogi State that has no airport appeared. This became too much to bear and the pressure on government to act became deafening. The President suspended her and ordered her investigation.
It appears that it’s not the stealing of money that lands officers of this government in trouble, it’s stealing more than the amount allocated to their level. It looks like the highest level of government in this administration is permitted to steal hundreds of billions, the ministerial level is permitted to steal billions, the directorate level is permitted to steal millions, while the operative level is permitted to steal hundreds of thousands. As proof of this, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs approved N200,000.00 as non-existent flight tickets to non-existent airport from Abuja to Kogi and it appeared as if it’s okay because it appears to be acceptable that the operative’s level has the right to squander hundreds of thousands. The Director of Social Investment Programme ran into trouble when she started stealing billions instead of millions. It looks like this was what miffed the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs because this was an encroachment into her own level of stealing. How can an ordinary director take N44b for herself when I am still operating around N3b? She ill-advisedly tackled her and landed herself into trouble. Next time she must learn from her employers whenever she is dealing with a corrupt subordinate while herself is corrupt. She must find a way to tell her to bow and go after learning of her corruption and must sign her Appropriation Bill into Act without a whimper and then ingeniously strategies to off her mic. This is what is called systemic corruption.
After watching the purported actions by this government in the fight against corruption, I came to realise that Nigerians are really gullible. This is why the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs boasted openly that all the noise Nigerians are making “will come to nothing”. If you read that her tweet, she included the regime of President Tinubu as part of her ring of support against which the empty threats of Nigerians will amount to nothing. Her purported suspension was engineered, not by genuine aspiration of this regime to fight corruption, but in its smartness to assuage the rage of Nigerians against the attitude of the Minister and maybe allow tempers to cool off before letting her go. Nigerians must understand that suspending an officer is no punishment whatsoever. Indeed if you ask any corrupt Nigerian whether to be a Minister for one day and be suspended after making a trillion naira and be allowed to go with the loot as against making only his salary for the four years without being suspended, he will quickly accept the first offer. We had one accountant for the federation who took more than N109b for himself and he was suspended, even prosecuted, and from nowhere, after the agitation had died down, was released and was turbaned a high chief in his village.
Nigerians should stop becoming gullible and start becoming vigilant. If this government is serious in fighting corruption, how come it has not relieved the Minister who took N428m for himself alone in the name of a consultancy service award to his company, while some vulnerable people in four states of Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Lagos, and Ogun were expected to get N585m. Even the N585m was transferred into a private account and may never have gotten to them. When Emefiele, the former Central Bank Governor, who was described as a political enemy to this regime, even before this regime came into existence, was granted bail by the courts, this regime practically refused to honour it for months. Emefiele has won his case against this regime for violating his fundamental right to liberty and the government has been ordered to pay him N100m as damages. This does not exonerate Emefiele from the liability of his crimes but it shows that if this regime is serious in fighting the crimes of the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, it would have been as fierce in fighting it as it was fierce in fighting Emefiele. If this regime wants to prove that it is serious in fighting corruption, let us see convictions of the thieves not unnecessary optics.
The solution is very simple, any government that wants to fight corruption must be ready to uphold the rule of law. It must be willing to obey the laws of the land. This government has been a serial breaker of the law from the illegal declaration of fuel subsidy is gone on May 29, 2023 against the extant law that set the date of the end of subsidy for June 30. This government has embarked on N7 trillion ways and means borrowing from Central Bank against the law that stipulates that this should not be more than 15% of the revenue of the preceding year. Even at that, the government must finish paying the borrowed funds before borrowing a new one. With Buhari’s unpaid borrowed N22 trillion ways and means funds, which Tinubu rightly referred to as a rotten financial system, Tinubu’s government was not even qualified to borrow at all because it has not cleared the backlog but continues to break the law in order to provide corrupt funds for the corrupt boys. A regime that cannot obey the law cannot inspire others to obey it.