President Jonathan, who was speaking during a Presidential Policy Dialogue at the 16th Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, also noted on the issue of corruption that “Every Nigerian is concerned whenever we are branded as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. As a government, we are devising ways and means of tackling the menace of corruption and to bring it to the barest minimum…We believe that the simple solution to corruption in the country lies in building and strengthening institutions that would fight corruption, by giving them a free hand. I can assure you that if we continue doing this, in the next five years, this whole thing about corruption will go down drastically… When people ask me about how we are fighting corruption, I wonder if I’m the policeman whose job it is to fight corruption. But, I guess, the work of the President is to strengthen and equip the policeman and give him a free hand to enable him to do work effectively.”
It needs to be said, that in this our milieu, when political parties don’t even bother coming up with manifestoes anymore, the best we can get by way of manifestoes, are the words that come out of the mouths of our leaders. Those words, ultimately give us insight into the workings of their minds. President Jonathan told us, from the above quotes, what he thinks exactly, about the issues of Sovereign National Conference, and of course, almighty corruption (which I think is really a mental problem afflicting many Nigerians).
If we may quickly consider the issue of corruption as mentioned by the president above, your guess is as good as mine whether Nigeria has been able to tackle the problem at all, according to the Jonathan paradigm. Has Nigeria brought corruption to the ‘barest minimum’? Or have we seen unprecedented, unimaginable corruption in Nigeria, in the last two years? I think that the last two years have been the years of the pirates! Young men and women, a lot of them blue-blooded by Nigerian standards, connived with the government to loot the resources of our unborn children in a manner that suggests that these young men and women, their parents who are powerful men in Nigeria, and the government, have given up on the project. As the unprecedented, unconscionable, and utterly despicably mad looting went on, so also did calls for the dismemberment of Nigeria, along religious and ethnic lines (an unworkable, hare-brained joke, rend the air in a din louder than ever before. One could almost conclude, that those who looted Nigeria are also the ones who sponsored terrorism and sold us a red-herring, keeping us all occupied with fear, hate and everything negative, while they perfected their wonderful plans, under the distinguished leadership of our dear president.
Of course, it is probably no use to consider the pedestrian manner in which our president addresses issues, for example, what does he mean by saying “When people ask me about how we are fighting corruption, I wonder if I’m the policeman whose job it is to fight corruption. But, I guess, the work of the President is to strengthen and equip the policeman and give him a free hand to enable him to do work effectively”? At the level of being a president – even if in an acting position, why would anyone wonder if the president is a policeman? Ha! The president is indeed the chief policeman, and so being asked about corruption should not have baffled the president, because the major cancer afflicting Nigeria today is this mad quest for wealth at the expense of everything else. Usually, the looted monies are taken to foreign countries where they are not accessible after a while. See James Ibori. The president should be reminded that it is not a policeman’s job to fight corruption, but every Nigerian in their little ways. And that the president’s role in that is of prime importance. He therefore does not need to ‘guess’, whether the role of the president is to equip the policeman or give him free hand. Oh my God. What more can one say?
The role of the president in fighting corruption, extends beyond executing the laws manufactured by the National Assembly. Indeed the focus should not be about laws. We have ways too many of them in Nigeria, and this country has been in the vice-grip of lawmakers and lawyers since the return of democracy, and increasingly so. The more laws we make, the more criminal we have become. The president’s role includes LEADING BY EXAMPLE, which Oga failed woefully to do, by refusing to declare his assets, and of course, hiding under what? Yes, hiding under the LAW! Where necessary, the president should throw himself in the fray, and try and expose some corrupt practices that he may be aware of. In the Obasanjo days, there were times he shouted ‘Ole! Ole!, Thief, Thief!’ on some of his ministers. It is alleged he did this to Mr Doyin Okupe (newly minted Minister of Public Affairs), and also the then Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
A president’s role in fighting corruption, therefore is not as fuzzy as Oga makes it sound. In fact it is everything. A president is the only person we have, who can resist internationally-foisted corruption, a situation that demands that he lays down his life, because international corrupters do not joke! We have heard that once a president gets to his position in Nigeria, these powerful guys go visiting (sometimes as ambassadors or as businessmen) and they make it clear that the president should choose between losing his life, or becoming exceedingly rich, by throwing his country under the bus. Perhaps because of the confusion exhibited by Dr Jonathan in the above statement and others, corruption escalated in Nigeria in the last two years, as both local and foreign money-mongers reached out and ripped out the still-beating heart of our poor country. We need a serious salvage mission, with all surgeons’ hands on deck.
But I digress, deliberately because the president released two bombshells on just one occasion – the 16th NESG meeting. Those who are asking about SNC were referred back to their ancestors, when the big man said; “Any talk about a convergence of the different ethnic groups should have taken place after the amalgamation in 1914 by Lord Lugard, and not this time when we are four years away from celebrating our centenary (100 years) as a nation. Now that is something. Yet he won a landslide vote from these same people who want to eat their cakes and have it. More next week.
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