By Paul Onomuakpokpo
Aside from the tragedy
of the monumental failure of the President Muhammadu Buhari government, there
is also that of the barefacedly audacious attempts to still project him as
glowing in the halo of incorruptibility that some have associated him with. To
his diehard loyalists, it is not Buhari who has betrayed the high ideals of
transparency he has espoused before the public but only those whom he has given
responsibilities who are prevented by their greed from living up to the
expectations of their high offices.
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| *President Buhari |
This is the trajectory we are confronted with
again as the public is scandalised by the heist and remorselessness of the
former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdullahi
Abdulrasheed Maina, and the complicity of high-profile officials of the Buhari
government. In the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Maina
was given the responsibility of bringing reform into the pension system to
break the cycle of pensioners dying broke in their post-service years because
of their inability to access their pensions. But the reformer soon turned away
from his official assignment and became preoccupied with the looting of the
billions that he was supposed to guard against pecuniary predators. Before he
was caught, Maina had already allegedly stolen N100 billion. Maina was not at a
loss as regards how to avail himself of this haul. He launched into a splurge
and this civil servant who was an assistant director before he was made to
manage the pension system became the owner of posh houses and companies in
choice areas of Abuja
It was thought that Maina was still a fugitive from the law until the news
broke that he had returned to the country. Worse, he was not only reinstated in
the civil service, he was promoted to the post of a deputy director in the
Ministry of Interior and reportedly paid all his salary arrears amounting to N22
million for the period he absconded from office and he was a fugitive from
justice. Those who are beholden to their notion of the incorruptibility of
Buhari are busy arguing that it is others who should be blamed for the return
and reabsorption of Maina in the civil service. They want us to blame the
Minister of Interior Abdulrahman Dambazau, Minister of Justice and Attorney
General Abubakar Malami and the Chairman of the Federal Civil Service
Commission, Joan O. Ayo. They also want us to blame the Head of Service, Mrs.
Winifred Oyo-Ita. But she has been able to assert her innocence by revealing
that she in fact opposed the move to recall Maina and she was overruled. No,
the blame should go to Buhari. How can we be convinced that Buhari did not know
about what was happening despite his highly activated anti-corruption apparatus
that could alert him to the corruption of judges in places like Port Harcourt
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| *Maina |
Even if Buhari did not know, he is by no means
exonerated. This is because it means that Dambazau, Malami and others only had
the audacity to commit illegalities because the atmosphere that Buhari has
created in Aso Rock is not hostile to corruption. They understand that Buhari
has so lost the control of his government that his aides do whatever they like.
After all, the Department of State Service (DSS) opposed Buhari’s attempt to
make Ibrahim Magu the substantive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC). Buhari neither sacked the DSS Director-General Lawal Daura
nor did Buhari succeed in making the Senate to reverse its decision not to
confirm Magu based on the DSS report.
Dambazau, Malami and others are also aware
that it is the same prevalent laissez-faire morality in the government that has
made Buhari not to allow the prosecution and sanction of the Secretary to the
Government of the Federation, Lawal Babachir, and the Director-General of the
National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ayo Oke, who have been suspended after
being accused of corruption. The state of affairs in Aso Rock where anything
goes and where the cronies of Buhari are above the law is also shown in the
controversy over the award of $25 billion contracts by the Group Managing
Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Maikanti Baru,
without due process. It was not Baru who was accused that Buhari indicted, but
Ibe Kachikwu who alerted him to the contracts that he disdained and allowed to
be accused of being used by his enemies to traduce his government.
The Maina case is an indication of the many
things that are going wrong with the Buhari government. It alerts us to the
secret recruitment that goes on in the civil service. Without the media, there
was no way Nigerians would have known anything about Maina being recalled,
reinstated and promoted. Therefore, what the media might not have reported is
an unbroken nepotistic recruitment in the civil service perpetrated by the
cronies of Buhari.
While this is going on, the anti-corruption
agencies are looking elsewhere. If the EFCC were really on the case of Maina
why did they not identify his houses which are proceeds of corruption and
confiscate them since? Why did the agency wait until the media exposed the fact
that Maina had been reabsorbed in the civil service before it now sealed off
his houses? After all, has the EFCC not been prosecuting a former Minister of
Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, and confiscating her property in
absentia? Now, the EFCC may be waiting for the media before it reopens the case
of its former Chairman Ibrahim Larmode. Shortly after he was removed as the
chairman of the anti-corruption body, he was accused of a N1 trillion fraud.
But the EFCC did not pursue this case.
Rather, Lamorde has been ensconced in Ikoyi, Lagos
With this recent development, Nigerians wonder
if Buhari still believes that none of his aides is corrupt. But he could still
insist on their innocence since he did due diligence that lasted over six
months before picking them to work with him. However, Buhari can no longer keep
on deluding himself about the lack of corruption of his ministers and others.
And in this case, it is not enough for him to sack Maina. He should deploy his
security agencies to arrest him wherever he has gone to hide and prosecute him.
He should also relieve Dambazau, Malami and others who are complicit in the
case of Maina of their duties and prosecute them.
But more importantly, what is Buhari still
doing in the presidency since he has lost its control? Perhaps, his case would
have been mitigated if the so-called cabal he has relinquished the reins of his
office to were honourable and patriotic and they were willing to do only what
would conduce to the wellbeing of the nation and the citizens. Since neither
Buhari nor his proxies are fit to be in the presidency, the honourable path for
him to take now is to resign and give way to somebody who can restore probity
in governance. Nigerians can no longer tolerate the cocktail of scandals that
assail them from Aso Rock. Nor can they bear being saddled with another four
years of the Buhari misadventure after 2019.
*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is on the Editorial Board of The Guardian
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