Killing The Economy To Kill Corruption

By Abraham Ogbodo    

The battle against corruption has become the sole purpose of the Buhari Presidency. It is being prosecuted as if all other things that define good governance shall follow automatically as soon as victory is proclaimed. I can go ahead to suggest that the appointment of ministers in this month of September, which has only 10 days to finish, as early promised, be shelved. It is no longer necessary since the entire business of government has been consolidated into a single effort – war against corruption.

One man or at most one ministry to be called Ministry of War Against Corruption can do the whole job. News that Buhari has branded ministers as noise makers is very encouraging. No serious war anywhere in the world is fought and won with noise makers. In the spirit of the new revelation, a proposal for amendment of the operating constitution to make the appointment of ministers by a sitting president discretionary can be forwarded to the National Assembly for consideration.

I am not even too sure if the NASS itself will fit properly into the new order. The members are even noisier than the ministers. They are rascally and violent too; often using fists like junior school pupils instead of debates to settle issues. They are also very lazy. They work for one week and go on recess for four weeks. This war against corruption is neither for noise makers, rascals nor lay-abouts. All of this considered, we can push for another amendment of the constitution to operate this democracy without the NASS. It sounds alarming but since kings can legitimately kill to survive in a Machiavellian setting, we cannot go wrong if we allow the robust end of achieving a permanently corruption-free Nigeria to push us to disband the useless National Assembly.

With PMB, we have one in a millennium chance to catch all the thieves in Nigeria and change our circumstances. And so, if he asks to shut down the banking system, as he has done, to catch thieves who hide their stolen dollars in domiciliary accounts, he should be obliged. He is working to preserve the life of Nigeria and as we all know, in the rule of life, self preservation comes first. On this note alone, the threat by one self-appointed global regulator called JP Morgan to punish Nigeria on account of Buhari’s approach should be completely ignored.

JP Morgan or whatever it is called is not a very reliable teacher. It teaches nonsense and this has serially got it into trouble with the authorities in Washington DC and to which it has paid billions of dollars as fines. Besides, what does JP Morgan know that our own dear JP Clark or any other JP in Nigeria does not know better? And by the way, who made JP Morgan judge over Nigeria that is presided over by PMB?

The Central Bank as directed by PMB (since there is no finance minister till perhaps September 30) is doing a fantastic job. The point is that when there is too much money in the system and the citizens are behaving like lunatic astronauts, going to the moon to build houses, the thing to do is a serious mop up to precipitate a liquidity squeeze that will instill some sanity. This is what Buhari has done. It is a fundamental micro-economic principle and one does not need a certification by Harvard Business School to understand it. I don’t understand why JP Morgan, which should know better, is nagging over this like a bad house wife.