Looters of public funds as new sheriffs in town

Echoes from the National Dialogue on Corruption held last Wednesday at the Presidential Villa under the auspices of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) have started bouncing around the country’s political and social circuits; some muffled and others loud and clear. Needless to state that a deluge of reactions is trailing the exercise, given the weighty contributions from the well-endowed speakers who dwelt on issues they are not only familiar with, but remain passionate about. 

For instance, the recall by the erudite professor of law and Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, of his term as Attorney General of Lagos State remains instructive on the prospects of tackling the country’s present problems over endemic and institutionalised corruption. While referring to corruption as “institutionalised in Nigeria”, Osinbajo, identified a key obstacle to the country’s fight against the syndrome as the system of recruiting judges and other judicial officers, which presently dispenses with proper scrutiny of incumbents. 

He also advocated the need for better welfare for judges and other judicial officers, to facilitate their incorruptibility. Was he also referring to the issue of welfare of the rank and file of the Nigeria Police Force, who are the main plank of the country’s criminal justice system?

In his own contribution, the Chief Justice of the Federation (CJN) Walter Onnoghen identified structural challenges of the nation’s judiciary as well as the culture of impunity in the wider society as targets that must be addressed if the anti-corruption war will succeed. Onnoghen could not have put his views better, given the recent events associated with his constituency the judiciary, and in particular his avoidable, personal obstacle-course to the high office. It is easily recalled that it took a strident, national and trans-border outcry for the country to do the needful, and allow him occupy his deserved position as CJN. 

However, it was the observation by PCAC Chairman, professor of law and human rights activist Itsay Sagay on happenings in at least two national institutions that ruffled feathers. In condemning what he referred to as public apathy towards corruption and lack of fear over its consequences,  he cited the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), as typical agencies that are yet to flow along with the administration’s war on corruption. According to Sagay, even as the NDDC Managing Director was complaining of paucity of funds for developing the restive Niger Delta region, the agency had invested the sum of N560 million just for the purchase of top of the line exotic vehicles for its top guns. What Sagay did not add was that exotic cars require equally befitting exotic residences for their users, which are also ostensibly procurable at an undisclosed price. Afterall, man no be wood and Oga no be stone! 

While the NDDC has faulted Sagay’s claim the NCS is yet to respond as at time of press even as Sagay cited the perpetuation of bribery in the agency’s operations. The fact however remains that Nigerians see these agencies as being in good company with others like the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and virtually all of the country’s over ten thousand public sector agencies operating at federal, state and local tiers of government. 

In that context, corrupt practices have become the norm rather than the exception in the nation’s public life.

In his homily on public apathy towards corruption Sagay was lamenting how an individual would amass wealth that cannot be consumed in ‘ten lifetimes’ without minding the consequences. If his take is in respect of a normal human being, he is correct. However, the breed of looters of the times are not normal human beings, but a special breed of power hungry kleptomaniacs spawned by the unique circumstances of the Nigeria’s warped socio-political milieu where they easily escape punishment for their excesses.

In more sensitive and refined societies, the daily reports of mind-boggling instances of looting of public largesse, featuring public officers who with impunity, steal unimaginably huge stocks of public property, would have led to mass uprisings against them on the basis that they rob the wider society of the good life. If it is not the discovery and recovery of dozens of exotic cars from one ‘new sheriff’ or the other, it would be some property, or huge sums of money stashed away in a farm or construction site or even refuse dump. But trust Nigerians, such escapades are even celebrated as business as usual, with the culprits parading the streets as the ‘new sheriffs in town’.

Ordinarily a sheriff is a public officer to whom is entrusted the responsibility of managing public weal in the community and therefore steps into authority through a publicly accepted process of enthronement. 

The typical sheriff is the policeman. But the ‘new sheriffs in town’ under consideration are not like that. Their ascendancy is contrived through the acquisition, empowerment from and display of mindless stocks of wealth whose source is often not challenged by the public. And given the widespread state of poverty in the society, acquisition of wealth confers instant recognition and even veneration of the wealthy; be such a looter or otherwise, by the less endowed.  

A trademark slogan of President Muhammadu Buhari is that “if Nigerians do not kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria”. Good talk from the President. Yet as facts bear out, for some Nigerians they would rather kill Nigeria, than kill corruption. These are the ’new sheriffs in town’,who benefit from the culture of corruption, having been established through quick and ill-gotten wealth, in positions of strategic advantage whereby they exercise hitherto unreached, unattainable influence in society.  

 It is for good measure that the National Dialogue on Corruption has yielded valuable insights into the current status of the nation’s take on corruption, with a key feature being Osinbajo’s observation that corruption is institutionalised in Nigeria. This scenario has critical implications for the government as it is actually in a power sharing dalliance with other potentates who as both state and non-state actors, limit its control of the society. 

Given his antecedents and present position as Vice President and even Acting President, one good turn which Osinbajo can give Nigerians, is to facilitate the speedy passage and assent of the ‘Whistle Blowers Protection Bill, through whom the country can get even with those that trouble its soul.