It was the great Irish author and critic George Bernard Shaw, who once wrote that “there is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it, but he does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles, he robs you on business principles, he enslaves you on imperial principles”. While some may excuse Shaw’s scathing anti-English comment on the grounds of his Irish roots, it provides a most significant backdrop to a recent innuendo credited to the British Prime Minister David Cameron, at the beginning of the recent most welcome anti-corruption summit: the Global Forum for Asset Recovery held in London.The British leader recently referred to Nigeria and Afghanistan as “fantastically corrupt” nations, in a conversation with the Queen of England, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and other British dignitaries at a ceremony in Buckingham Palace to mark the monarch’s 90th birthday anniversary. The forum which held last week was intended to bring together governments and law enforcement agencies to discuss modalities from returning stolen assets from their safe havens to owner countries.
Apparently trying to lace the seriousness of the event with a comical side, the charismatic Cameron committed what many Nigerians -acting on patriotic principles, would consider a case of verbal hemorrhage from a ‘basket mouth’ (no pun intended).Where was the traditional stiff upper lip of the English persona, one may ask the British prime minister. Needless to state that the comment attracted rave condemnation in the country, with many seeing it as casting a slur on the all -important anti-corruption forum. That was so although briefly, in spite of the twist that many, including the leaders of the two nations mentioned however believe that Cameron was on point. Apparently it was its inconsistency with the Olympian status of the ‘discussants’ that was the issue.
Nevertheless, whoever is aggrieved over the issue may take solace in the fact that Cameron’s jibe ended up with not more ripples than a storm in a typical undersized, English tea cup. For instance it did not offer any change to the business of the forum, which went ahead to score major resolutions and plans for follow-up. Rather interestingly too, it did not attract any correspondingly significant response from the revered British monarch – a global icon of decorum and etiquette. All through her over sixty year reign on the throne, she has neither been associated with any utterance nor expression near Cameron’s bombshell. Even when provoked sometime by the offensive intrusion of her private residence by death-deserving miscreants, her sense of decorum at such times, shone to high heavens. On that note this column joins millions worldwide in the prayer, “God save the Queen”.
However her subdued reaction and that of the British establishment which she personifies was given voice through the editorial comment by ‘The Guardian’ of London, which in essence referred to Cameron’s comment as an instance of “epic hypocrisy”. The newspaper was not making veiled reference to any personal acts of indiscretion by the Prime Minister. It rather referred to the culpability of the UK and the West in the theft of assets from foreign countries and concealment of same in Europe along with other safe havens. In this respect the role of the UK as the modern day ‘Treasure Island’ for stashing away massive stocks of loot much of which is blood money appears in bold relief.
For instance, British records provide that foreign companies owned about 100,000 properties in England and Wales, with more than 44,000 or almost half of these located in London. How many of these are owned by Nigerians is a matter for another day given that owning a property in London constitutes a status symbol in Nigeria. Meanwhile such a situation belies the prevailing economic conditions in the country with the debilitating poverty of its larger population evoking global concern, generating ever newer forms of crimes in the country and leading the Camerons of the world to flaunt the ‘fantastic corruption’, which is much of what they see in the country’s public space.
That is where the response of President Muhamadu Buhari, a participant at the forum, to Cameron’s jibe proves instructive. Buhari simply rode the remark of the British politician as a non-issue, and settled rather for the main business of the day, being recovery of stolen Nigerian assets. Coming to office for the second time as Nigeria’s head of state, and this time with a trove of intimidating credentials, chief of which is the wide spread groundswell of popular support for an all clear war on corruption in the nation’s public space, no play-up of semantics would distract him, as his focus fell on the outcome of the forum. For a man who the cross-section of Nigerians see as the incorruptible man who can turn the country around, it is heartwarming that the forum made his day by turning up with good news featuring assurances of international collaborative action to support Nigeria’s anti-corruption war.
Among the takeaways from the forum is that a follow-up meeting will be held next year, in the United States of America with the support of the United Nations and the World Bank.This is just as the forum has set for itself the goal of accelerating the recovery of stolen assets from a pilot set of countries comprising Nigeria, Ukraine, Sri Lanka and Tunisia. The inclusion of Nigeria in the pilot group vindicates the present administration in its enterprise to combat corruption at both local and international levels.
Yet that process cannot be wished into reality only by the iron cast resolve of President Muhamadu Buhari. It will take a process; one that has to build on the democratic credentials of the country, rudimentary as they may be for now, but hopefully expansible with the adoption of the appropriate protocol that will provide interactive space for all stake holders in a corruption free Nigeria.
When Buhari laments that if Nigerians do not kill corruption, then corruption will kill Nigeria, many apparently are yet to accept the saying as the literal truth. This derives from the various perspectives from which different Nigerians see corruption. Yet while it may be admitted that the foreign perspective of corruption is debilitating given its potential for providing hiding places for stolen wealth, the ultimate solution for the country’s corruption war lies in expanding the threshold of surveillance on corruption prone areas of the public space, through promoting transparency in such terrains.
Nearly a decade after the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act, public sector business is still shrouded in impregnable secrecy and operated on the platform of mindless impunity and sleaze, that is anchored on a visceral aversion to change by incumbents of public office. Meanwhile by the terms of the collaboration that will run the global anti-corruption campaign, the international community will demand the very antithesis of the present state of affairs in the nation’s public service. Such demands will include copious and unrestrained disclosures of details of public business transactions and policy implementation processes.
How the country with its presently compromised state of the public service delivery regime, featuring poor record keeping culture and archaic administrative practices will cope with such external pressures provides food for thought for all who love Buhari and the administration. That is why President Buhari needs to give effect to the immediate reorientation of the nation’s public service towards an information driven disposition.
A starting point is to direct every ministry, department and agency (MDA), of the government to commence the process of mandatory publishing of annual report of its operations. The disclosures from such reports, as marginal as they may be, will provide for an enlargement of the threshold of surveillance and scrutiny of the public service delivery, as well as developments in the agencies of government, and thereby drive rectitude in public service delivery.
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