The resolution of
three episodes of corruption between 1999 and 2005 in the federal
legislature and the executive arm of government under the presidency of
Olusegun Obasanjo had initially indicated the seeming gravitas of that
administration. But, to be sure, it was not Obasanjo’s persona or the
magnitude of his philosophical swagger that gave fillip to the seriousness
attached to the anti-corruption actions, which fatally extinguished the luminous
epochs of some politicians and public office holders at the time.
The soberness, in
fact, derived from the interplay of the unfortunate tomfoolery in
government and the collective appreciation as well as interrogation by
Nigerians of the universal concepts of good and bad or right and wrong that
defined public perception of governmental interactions in the ecology of the
nation’s prevalent cloak-and-dagger politics. The whiff of that political
correctness had conferred on the administration a false garb of propriety in
official conducts and public finance management.
But, significantly, the general attitude
against felonies at that time has continued to benefit from the narrative of a
nation that has the inherent capacity to reinvent and reorient itself. In fact,
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was yet to be established
when two public office holders caved in under the weight of evidential facts of
felonies to resign from office.*Kemi Adeosun |
The pioneer Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Salisu Buhari, did not have to wait to be removed from office
in 1999 before tendering his resignation on account of forgery and perjury. His
perjured claim that he graduated from Toronto
University in Canada did not
only damage his persona but also eroded the moral high ground on which his
speakership rested. For resigning via a penitence and emotion-laden speech,
Buhari benefited from both government and public empathies. Ordinarily,
he should have been charged to court with perjury and sentenced in accordance,
but the Obasanjo administration allowed him to go and sin no more.
Conversely, in the Senate, members had to forcefully remove the Senate
president, the late Evan(s) Enwerem, after a committee of the Senate had
indicted him for perjury. His official records reportedly bore, at
different times, Evan Enwerem and Evans Enwerem. One of the names was
purportedly impeached for wrongdoing in the United States of America while the
other name was not, but the contention was that he bore the names at different
times. Enwerem’s oppositions in the Senate wanted to know whether their Senate
president was Evan or Evans. In both instances, Obasanjo was the ultimate
loser. He had successfully installed Buhari and Enwerem as speaker and Senate
president respectively in his calculated bid to control and subjugate the
legislature to the supremacy of the presidency. He had waged a proxy war
and ensured that an independent-minded Senator Chuba Okadigbo who replaced
Enwerem was also removed from office through the instrumentality of the
Senator Idris Kuta-led Investigative Committee report on the N55
million-streetlight contract scam in which Okadigbo was indicted for giving
anticipatory approvals.
In 2005, Adolphus Wabara resigned as Senate
president due to his complicity in the N50-million-bribe-for-budget scandal
that rocked the National Assembly. Obasanjo had to address Nigerians on
the issue via a nationwide broadcast. Although the political
undertone of the entire saga had connection with Obasanjo’s ill-fated third
term agenda, it is worth recalling that Wabara toed the path of honour by
resigning from his position of Senate president. Obasanjo also dropped the
Minister of Education, Professor Fabian Osuji, who gave the bribe money, from
his cabinet.
Wabara, along with the others, was
charged to court in continuation of the alleged political plot to keep him out
of the calculations and permutations for the 2007 presidency. There was a
purported report at Obasanjo’s disposal that indicated Wabara was
becoming very popular in the Southeast and could be in a pole position as
southeast’s presidential candidate whereas Obasanjo was planning a tenure
extension beyond 2007 and did not want any strong and credible opposition from
any zone. It is also instructive to point out that Obasanjo’s perceived
insincerity in his anti-corruption fight was writ large. For instance, he
caused his Attorney General and Minister of Justice to enter a nolle prosequi in the multi-million
corruption suit against the then Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Defense,
Mr. Joseph Makanjuola, who was said to be his cousin. These entire sagas,
which were in conflict with what ought to be, confirmed the seeming
anti-corruption actions by Obasanjo as a flash in the pan.
Since then, the fight against corruption has
been more of paying lip service to it until the emergence of President
Muhammadu Buhari. The fight, under him, assumed a little more
seriousness, except that it has been largely characterised as selective. The
opposition politicians have arguably become targets of the fight, thus
discounting the integrity capital of the crusade. Incidentally, the
administration is faced with the scandal of forged National Youth Service Corps
(NYSC) exemption certificate by the Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun. This
came on the heels of the alleged forgery by the Special Assistant to the
President on Prosecution, Mr. Okoi Obono Obla, of his West African School
Certificate (WASC), an allegation over which the presidency has
vacillated. The House of Representatives is, however, investigating it.
Nigerians are waiting to see how the
administration handles the Adeosun felony. The forging of her exemption
certificate, when she was not qualified for exemption in the first place, was
deceitful and criminal.
Whereas, she graduated at 22, she should have
presented herself to the NYSC authorities for mobilisation even if she was over
30 years. Adeosun sidestepped the law and enjoyed the provisional
benefits of that action for nine years or thereabout. Today, she is being haunted
and hunted by the very law that she willfully violated.
But, having been educated and worked for so many years in London, a society
that cherishes and upholds integrity and accountability, it is assumed that
Adeosun must have imbibed these time-tested public service virtues that have
continued to see public officials who run afoul of them resign honourably. In
the circumstance of her pitiable conundrum, she will do well to resign.
That is how to be honourable and as a Yoruba, to be an omoluabi (a well-bred). It should not
matter that others whose hands had been caught previously in the cookie jar of
crimes are despicably sitting tight in their positions. Her resignation
must be voluntary. She does not need President Buhari’s directive to do
so as that would throw up its own problems. The president had been enmeshed in
a secondary school certificate scandal during his 2014 presidential
electioneering. A court case was filed in Abuja against him. The matter, which was
withdrawn from court, has again been listed as a fresh suit before an Osun
State High Court in Osogbo, which recently gave a nod that the National
Assembly should commence his impeachment. I am thus at great pains not to
surmise that there is a deliberate condonation of wrongdoings by the Buhari
administration.
Truth is, Adeosun has lost her moral high
ground to continue to occupy that very important office. A perjurer and
dodger cannot be a fit and proper person for the position of the nation’s
“chancellor of the exchequer”. Facts and figures about the economy and
finance, which have always been sexed up, may consistently suffer
from lack of public credibility and confidence. Like Salisu Buhari,
Adeosun should issue an emotion-laden statement to own up to her felony and
plead penitently for forgiveness. The president should consider pardon
for her sin. She should thereafter proceed on her compulsory one-year service
to the nation in final restitution. Nothing can be more salutary to mitigate
the circumstantial mischief.
*Ojeifo is an Abuja-based journalist.
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