Buhari, Stop This Charade Of War Against Corruption, Please!

By Okey Ndibe

President Muhammadu Buhari should admit, today, not tomorrow, that his so-called war against corruption is unserious, tiresome, illegitimate, hypocritical, and a waste of Nigerians’ time. Right away, he ought to end the charade that claims to be a war. And then he should seek the best help he can find to focus on Nigeria’s grave economic and political crises.

*Buhari 

Last week, the Nigerian Senate, citing the damning content of a security report, declined to confirm Ibrahim Magu as the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The senators would not divulge the details of the security report. However, the online publication, Premium Times, stated that it had obtained the report. According to the medium, the report accused Mr. Magu of fraternising with persons who are targets of corruption investigations; of flying first class on a trip to Saudi Arabia, despite a presidential directive that public officials must fly economy; of illicit possession of sensitive documents, and of living in a house whose rent was allegedly paid by a businessman who was in the EFCC’s radar.

In other words, the Department of State Security (which authored the report on Mr. Magu) accused the country’s anti-corruption czar of being an enabler of corruption, a man embedded with the virulently corrupt.

I don’t know whether any or all of these allegations are true. At the time of my writing, several days after the Senate’s refusal to confirm Mr. Magu, President Buhari had said zilch on the issue. That presidential silence symptomises a disease that afflicts the Buhari administration, a tendency to respond to the most everyday issue after maximal delay.

Juxtapose the presidential silence against the alacrity of Premium Times, and you begin to see how luckless Nigeria is in this Presidency. In revealing the content of the DSS report, the website also disclosed that its independent investigation exposed the falsity of the allegations against Mr. Magu.

After a dismal run with the Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan administrations, the governance of Nigeria is yet again, with Buhari, debilitated, marred by paralysis, inertia, and confusion. And if media reports are credible, there is a deep schism in the ranks of Mr. Buhari’s closest associates.

For months, the media had reported that elements within Team Buhari were working to remove Mr. Magu from the EFCC, or else to scuttle his confirmation. Those reports suggested that the anti-Magu coalition was bent on sabotaging Mr. Magu’s investigation and prosecution of the corrupt, inept and often laughable as that process had become.

Buhari And The Savaging Of The Poor

By Okey Ndibe

Before the 2015 presidential election, Candidate Muhammadu Buhari essentially advertised himself as a magician. Even though oil prices were tumbling, Mr. Buhari promised to pay N5,000 a month to unemployed youth, make the country more secure, fix the perennial electric power crisis, root out corruption, strengthen the naira against the dollar and reduce the price per litre of fuel.

*Buhari 

Once elected, Mr. Buhari began a serial retreat from his promises. Nigeria’s hapless youth have received no cash.  Boko Haram may have been weakened in the northeast, but heavily armed herdsmen have maimed and killed and ramped up Nigeria’s violence quotient. And – thanks to the administration’s hectoring tone and strong-arm tactics – the southeast and oil-rich Niger Delta have become highly volatile. Power outages are as bad as ever, and arguably worse.

The war against corruption has targeted some well-known persons, among them Senate President, Bukola Saraki, former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, and the spokesman of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh. Even so, the war appears imperiled in several ways.

One is Mr. Buhari’s failure to devise a fresh, innovative approach to combating corruption. The cases currently in court are making plodding progress – and are likely to drag on. Given the sheer number of suspects out there, the lesson is that the prosecutorial route is not particularly promising.

Besides, as I suggested shortly after his inauguration, Mr. Buhari is mired in an ethical bind: As some of the financiers of his campaign are perceived as plunderers of public funds.

More troubling still is that the president has paid scant attention to ways of plugging the loopholes that permit public officials and their cohorts to loot funds. What we have, then, is a policy of patching a system that demands an overhaul.