Part I of
“Buhari’s First Hundred Days—An X-Ray”
By Chinweizu
27sept2015
Introduction
Many Nigerians are puzzled by President
Buhari and wonder what his #Change agenda really is. Someone has even gone as
far as to say that “Most people are feeling conned, and it's only morning yet.” Luckily,Buhari’s First Hundred Days now belong to history. So
historians can begin to examine it for clues to Buhari’s actual mission and
agenda as president, and how he will go about implementing it. This essay is my
contribution to that effort.
*Buhari
It is helpful to divide his actions
into two groups:
(A) those he embarked on without public
pressure and, in some cases, in great haste, as if to accomplish them before
Nigerians wake up to what he is
up to;and
(B) those he embarked on only after
public outcry and pressure.
(A) includes his napalming of Akwa Ibom
villagers claiming that he was going after what he called “Oil thieves”; his
sending of Boko Haram detainees to Ekwulobia prison in the Igboland; his claim
that those seeking the breakup of Nigeria are crazies; his determination to
limit his anti-corruption prosecutions to the Jonathan administration; his
directive to make Islamic books mandatory in all secondary schools; his
slowness in appointing his cabinet; his war on corruption; his pattern of
lopsided appointments.
(b) includes his delay in making public
his assets declaration.
Nigerians have protested against most
of these.
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To help those who are confused about
Buhari’s agenda, this series will X-ray his First Hundred days with the aim of
finding clues to his real but hidden agenda.
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This, the Part I of this x-ray series,
shall examine Buhari’s War on Corruption to see why it won’t work, indeed why
it will further entrench corruption and lootocracy; how it is being restricted
to implement the Caliphate hidden agenda; and if it is real or fake.
Buhari’s War on Corruption
The question to be answered here is
this: Is Buhari’s War on Corruption real or fake?
The first thing to note is that, as we
all know, corruption is a worldwide malady. But what most people don’t know is
that the Nigerian brand of corruption is peculiar in two ways. First of all, it
is primarily lootocracy. Whereas corruption is the dishonest exploitation of
power for personal gain—as by a clerk who hides a file until he is bribed; or a
policeman who mounts a checkpoint and extorts money from bus drivers; LOOTOCRACY is the constitutionally approved
and protected looting of the public treasury by officials. It should be noted
that the bribe-taking clerk or policeman is breaking a law, but the governor or
president who empties the treasury into his personal bank account in not
breaking any law. His constitutional immunity is a license to do so.
Secondly, because lootocracy is legal and not prosecutable in Nigeria, it’s
example has promoted rampant and brazen corruption throughout the society. This
makes lootocracy the fountainhead of corruption.
In his Inaugural address, Buhari listed
Corruption among the enormous challenges which he promised to tackle
immediately and head on:
“At
home we face enormous challenges. Insecurity, pervasive corruption, . . . are the immediate concerns. We are
going to tackle them head on. Nigerians will not regret that they have
entrusted national responsibility to us.”
And he has also just told us that:
“corruption in
our country is so endemic that it constitutes a parallel system. It is the
primary reason for poor policy choices, waste and of course bare-faced theft of
public resources.”
While further
clarifying his administration’s commitment to the war against corruption, the
President said “our fight against corruption is not just a moral battle for
virtue and righteousness in our land, it is a fight for the soul and substance
of our nation.”
Giving an
insight into the way corruption destroys the nation, the President told the
Second Plenary of the Conference that “it is the main reason why a potentially
prosperous country struggles to feed itself and provide jobs for millions.”
In the same
way, the President posited that “the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the
infant, maternal mortality statistics, the hundreds of thousands of annual
deaths from preventable diseases are traceable to the greed and corruption of a
few. This is why we must see it as an existential threat, if we don’t kill it,
it will kill us.”
--Corruption is cause
of poverty in Nigeria
–Buhari
Despite all that rhetoric, we must ask:
How serious is Buhari’s war on corruption? What are the chances that it will
reduce, let alone kill, corruption? What is the likelihood that it is just a
foxy PR gimmick that will further entrench corruption by leaving its
fountainhead, lootocracy, in place?
I must first draw attention to how a
war on corruption can paradoxically obscure and protect a corruption system.
