By Olu Fasan
Few things confer greater honour and privilege than being a minister in the government of one’s country. From a wider population, you are one of the select few called upon to run your nation. But a ministerial office is not a source of personal wealth, power or prestige.
Rather, it’s a call to service,
an opportunity to use your talent to advance your nation’s progress and the
wellbeing of its people.
Therefore, it’s an unpardonable betrayal for any minister or officeholder to abuse his or her office and put private gain above public good. Sadly, in Nigeria, private gain triumphs over public good.
The Betta Edu scandal, the
latest of such malfeasance by ministers and other public officers, shows, once
again, that most of those tasked with governing Nigeria lack the ethos of
public service and a commitment to the common good.
They behave with utter arrogance
and impunity, self-convinced that they can get away with anything without
accountability and consequences. That’s the pattern of abuse of power revealed
by what’s now called Edugate!
But let’s be clear: the Betta
Edu saga is a symptom of an acutely deeper malaise: the proneness to official
corruption in Nigeria. Good governance and selfless public service do not
happen by chance; they require deliberate choices.
They are threefold. First,
ministers must have the right skills, competence and experience; second,
ministers must have the right values, a moral compass, underpinned by a strong
public-service ethos; and third, there must be robust institutions, with the
rules, norms and structures, to constrain the behaviour of officeholders.
Unfortunately, none of these critical elements is evident in the governance of
Nigeria.
Take competence and integrity,
which are inextricably linked. If truth must be told, Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s
president, put virtually no premium on competence and integrity when selecting
his ministers. His ministerial appointments were intended to reward personal
relationships, repay political favours and shore up support for his re-election
bid in 2027. Because of those self-interested motivations, he appointed as
ministers many who fail the honesty and integrity tests.
Think about it. In Tinubu’s
cabinet is someone who was linked to General Sani Abacha; in his cabinet are
former governors currently accused by the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission, EFCC, of multi-billion-naira corruption; in his cabinet are sundry
others dogged by various accusations of impropriety and dishonesty. Take Edu
herself. In 2020, the Cross River State chapter of the Nigerian Medical
Association passed a vote of no confidence on her over accusations of
professional misconduct in her handling of the COVID-19 pandemic when she, a
medical doctor, was commissioner for health in the state.
Of course, in Nigeria, the usual riposte is: he or she has not been convicted by any court. But elsewhere, the standard is different. For instance, if a UK Cabinet Minister, who earns about £148,000 per annum, has assets worth several millions of pounds, which are not inheritance, the British public won’t say he or she has not been convicted by a court; rather, they will say: what are the sources of the wealth?
Under the
Nolan Principles of Public Life, no one with questionable characters, even
without a criminal conviction, will be appointed into a UK cabinet or kept in
it, if already appointed. But that’s not the case in Nigeria where countless
people with unexplained and inexplicable wealth are serving ministers and
senior public officials.
So, when the Betta Edu scandal broke, my reaction was: garbage in, garbage out! When a president paid little attention to the values of integrity and honesty in forming his government, scandals such as Edugate are inevitable. And more scandals will emerge during the life of the Tinubu administration. Some praised Tinubu for suspending Edu and halting the so-called National Social Investment Programmes, a cesspool of corruption.
But none of his
fire-fighting actions will move the dial on the endemic and festering official
corruption in Nigeria. As I write, some ministers are probably enriching
themselves, families and friends through massive contract fraud and outright
embezzlement. And nearer the next general elections, some will use public funds
to build war chests for themselves and their party. After all, this is Nigeria!
Which brings us to the institutional element. Serious nations don’t only expect officeholders to behave with honesty and integrity; they also build strong institutions that constrain and influence their behaviour. And one area where strong institutions, with robust controls and safeguards, are particularly needed is the spending of public funds.
The concepts of regularity and propriety are
fundamental to the use of public funds. In the UK, authorisation is separated
from payment: Ministers authorise spending, but they don’t make payments. The
Accounting Officer, who is the permanent secretary, is held to account for
stewardship of his or her ministry’s resources, and, thus, must take personal
responsibility for ensuring probity and ethical standards in the use of funds,
including challenging a minister’s decision.
Sadly, the global best practices do not exist, or are not enforced, in Nigeria. For instance, in the Betta Edu scandal, the minister transferred N585 million of public funds into a private account. She did so despite the Accountant-General of the Federation’s objection, and despite the Financial Regulations, which prohibit payment of public money into a private account.
But the permanent secretary, Abel Enitan,
also failed woefully in his role as the ministry’s accounting officer. Which is
why the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, CISLAC, and Transparency
International (Nigeria) are right to criticise Tinubu for appointing the
permanent secretary to run the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty
Alleviation after Edu’s suspension. An accounting officer who couldn’t
take personal responsibility for ensuring regularity and propriety in the use
of his ministry’s funds is not fit to lead the ministry.
What about conflicts of
interest? Elsewhere, actual or potential conflicts of interest are scrupulously
avoided. But not in Nigeria. Edu reportedly awarded a $438 million contract to
a company owned by Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, the Interior Minister, who is currently
being quizzed by the Code of Conduct Bureau, CCB, over the contract scandal.
Such blatant conflict of interest is only possible in a country where there’s
no integrity in public life.
The truth is: there are
incentives for official corruption in Nigeria. Unless they are systematically
tackled, ministers and other officeholders will always abuse public office for
personal gain. Nigeria has a choice!
*Dr. Fasan is a commentator on public issues
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