The Political Structures Of Corruption

 By M.C. Asuzu

Recently, there have been discussions in this country concerning politicians who have no political structures and those with them, as the veritable determinants of those who will be able to win elections and otherwise. But what keeps coming back to the mind of some of us who are incapable of any partisan political persuasions is this: what structures are the people saying these things thinking of? 

What do political structures by a single politician mean? Is it individual politicians or the group of people who wish to work together under specific political ideologies that develop such political structures? These organisational groups of people are simply called political parties, is it not? So, when politicians are talking of personal political structures (but not those of political parties), it becomes necessary to examine what these people may be having in mind and what it is that they themselves really have done in those regards.

President Buhari’s Triumphalism

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Until last week, it might have been dismissed as delusional to think that President Muhammadu Buhari considers the citizens as people he has conquered. But if the body language of the president has failed to magically make available the dividends of democracy to the citizens, it has at least in recent times reinforced the notion of his seeing himself as a conqueror, and thus a blight on our democratic experience.

*President Buhari 

Here are a people who have been brutalised by decades of misrule and who invested so much hope in the  Buhari’s change mantra. Over a year after waiting for the realisation of the promised change, Buhari has unabashedly disavowed it. Passing the buck, Buhari has rather asked the citizens to make the change a reality.

Yet, Buhari and his party members are the only people who know the breadth and length of the change he envisaged. The citizens did not sit down at a table to arrive at a template of his promised change. At best, the president only revealed snippets of the change: a robust economy that would guarantee full employment and a parity of the naira and the dollar, and as a palliative measure for those who are still jobless,  the payment of a stipend of N5,000.

Buhari’s new mantra of change beginning with the citizens is an expression of his sense of triumphalism. The new mantra brims with the hauteur of a president who has not only impenitently abdicated his responsibility, but who is yet to come to terms with his own failure to grapple with the problems he was elected to solve. The citizens could tolerate the president’s incompetence while hoping that with his seeking the advice of those who should know better, he could still fulfill the people’s expectations. But with a mindset that the citizens have been conquered, the president does not need to attach any importance to such advice. Or why would the president tell the people that change begins with them when he is expected to make good his promise? As far as the president is concerned, he has used the change mantra to gain power and those who are interested in its actualisation are free to torment themselves with that triviality.

But the president may not be wrong after all. From his Olympian height, he can only see the citizens he has conquered. The conquest began with his ministers and other aides who are supposed to advise him on the right decisions to take. We must be reminded that the president did not hide his disdain for his would-be ministers. They were only imposed on him by the constitution. And this was why he considered them as noise makers whose contribution to national development could only be consigned to a marginal space compared to that of civil servants in whom he reposes more confidence.

Fighting Corruption With Double-Standards And Human Rights Abuses

By Femi Aribisala
In just six months, the government’s anti-corruption policy has gone off the rail.  During the election, candidate Buhari made this pledge: “Whoever that is indicted of corruption between 1999 to the time of swearing-in, would be pardoned. I am going to draw a line, anybody who involved himself in corruption after I assume office, will face the music.”

At the time, cynical observers insisted this was designed to reassure corrupt members of his APC party who were campaigning for him that he would not come after them after the election but would let sleeping dogs lie.

But once in office, the president dropped this pledge the same way he and his party have conveniently jettisoned a number of their campaign promises.  Speaking on his official trip to the United States, the president declared he would arrest and prosecute past ministers and other officials who stole Nigeria’s oil and diverted government money into personal accounts.

CNN iReport maintains Buhari’s new position to probe and prosecute his predecessors prompted tete-a-tete among former military rulers.   The outcome of this was the warning that it would not be in the president’s interest to pursue that line of action.  Prince Kassim Afegbua, Babangida’s media adviser, released a statement on behalf of his boss that reads:

“On General Buhari, it is not in IBB’s tradition to take up issues with his colleague former President. But for the purpose of record, we are conversant with General Buhari’s so-called holier-than-thou attitude. He is a one-time Minister of Petroleum and we have good records of his tenure as minister. Secondly, he also presided over the Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF, which records we also have.

“We challenge him to come out with clean hands in those two portfolios he headed. Or, we will help him to expose his records of performance during those periods. Those who live in glass houses do not throw stones. General Buhari should be properly guided.”

Immediately thereafter Femi Adesina, President Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, hastened to declare that the government’s probes would be limited to the Jonathan administration.  He claimed it would be “a waste of time” to go beyond that.

This was the first curious exclusion in the government’s anti-corruption policy: former generals who became heads of state are untouchables.  As a result, the CNN maintained the American government concluded the Nigerian government is not serious about anti-corruption.  American businessmen who bribed Nigerian officials in the Halliburton scandal have been sent to jail in the United States.  However, the more culpable Nigerian politicians who demanded and received the bribes are allowed to go scot-free in Nigeria.

How Long Will President Buhari’s Intoxicant Work?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 
Strange and worrisome as the decision by the Buhari administration to limit its ongoing probe of public officers and institutions to the era of the regime it took over from is, not a few Nigerians are encouraged by the fact that a bold attempt to expose shameless looting of public treasury and allow the law to punish those implicated in the mindless plunder of the country’s resources is indeed happening. At least, it is being drummed into everyone’s consciousness once more that stealing of any kind is a most revolting and self-debasing crime which only the scum and scoundrels of the society are attracted to. It should by no means be witnessed, accommodated or, worse, celebrated and glamorized within the bounds of civilized and decent society as several members of Nigeria’s ruling elite have brazenly done for many years now.

*Buhari

We have heard allegations of witch-hunting and all that, but the pertinent question to ask is: are you guilty of what you are being accused of? Did you loot the amount of money you are being accused of carting away?  In fact, it is most insulting that any person would want to solicit our sympathy after callously stealing what belongs to all of us and impoverishing the majority.

The submission that many of you looted the treasury but only a couple of you are being singled out for investigation is lame, even nauseating and grossly offensive. The point is that you looted public funds and today is your day, so face it! Tomorrow may be the turn of your partners in crime. Let the process just begin. We should, however, not rule out the possibility that along the line, the anti-corruption “war” may eventually get out of hand and grow to overwhelm even its initiators and supervisors and kick-start a far-reaching housecleaning and reclamation process where discrimination may no longer be possible. Already, the signs are embarrassingly showing up everywhere and it remains to be seen how long Buhari would remain comfortable with his current preference of harassing some alleged thieves and hobnobbing with others, even the real godfathers in the business. 

 

But this is not even the main worry. There is a growing concern at several informed quarters now about whether President Muhammadu Buhari is truly sincere about fighting corruption to the ground or is the whole thing not merely another means to some end!