Nigeria: When Individuals Are Stronger Than State Institutions

By Adewale Kupoluyi

William Easterly is a Professor of Economics at the New York University, who in a 2006 publication: The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Harm and So Little Good, enunciated that fragile states are plagued by two factors, namely: political identity fragmentation and weak national institutions in their development.

According to him, states with poor institutions have negative effects on growth and public policy implementation.

Relying on this line of argument, what any serious democracy should strive for should be the state whereby institutions are stronger than individuals or persons, no matter how powerful. What usually transpires in the Nigerian public affairs tends to suggest otherwise. 

On Maina, Blame President Buhari

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.

*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 and other parts of the country. Yes, Maina is presumed innocent until he is declared guilty by a competent law court. But he declared himself guilty before the public. Instead of making himself available to the Senate and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to clear himself of the charges of egregious corruption he fled abroad.