The problem of fighting corruption in a post-colony
The fight against corruption is the buzz word in Nigeria today. All one needed to gain legitimacy or recognition of the people is to support the government’s fight against corruption. This is understandable. Nigeria has been hard-done by corruption. It is said that corruption is at the root cause of our national malaise. This inspired the sing-song of the current administration that “if Nigeria does not kill corruption, then corruption will kill Nigeria”.
But we have been here before. The most recent one began with Obasanjo’s inauguration on May 29, 1999 when he solemnly swore to tackle the hydra-headed monster that is corruption in Nigeria. He proceeded to set up two whole anti-corruption commissions and the entire country was seized by the Frenzy of the “war against corruption” throughout his tenure between 1999 and 2007. We were all witnesses to how the ‘war’ panned out and eventually fizzled out and how corruption, instead of being defeated, actually grew and even became more brazen and more cancerous than it had ever been.
Not a few Nigerians, including the President, believe that Nigeria could ever develop with corruption still prevalent in our polity. That view is erroneous. Like I argued elsewhere, the phenomenal growth of South East Asian countries where the economy and corruption grew phenomenally and in tandem has put a lie to the Western-inspired theory that corruption is positively correlated with poor economic performances. Rapid and phenomenal economic growth could and indeed did coexist with rapid and phenomenal corruption as the cases of Indonesia under Suharto and China after Chairman Mao show. In those countries, corruption served as a grease to lubricate inefficient government bureaucratic machines.
That said, we must still realise that corruption does have disastrous consequences for post-colonies like Nigeria where weak or even non-existent institutions have given way to clannish and invidious system of governance where personal rule and clientelism reigns supreme. In such systems, there are no rules or institutions to restrain officials. The poor are usually hard hit. In such systems, corruption reduces public revenue and increases public expenditures. It distorts markets, reduces investments in critical infrastructure, creates monopolies that makes goods and services more expensive, and put off foreign investors. It distorts public choices in favour of the wealthy and powerful, and reduces the state’s ability to provide a social safety net. It disempowers the poor beyond the generally received notion of failure of governance and pinches the pockets of the poor in favour of the rich
What then have been the strategies adopted by such polities to fight their strain of poverty-inducing corruption? The usual strategies have been to create anti-corruption institutions and to go on media offensive against perceived corrupt officials. For instance, former President Obasanjo, in 2005, commandeered prime-time media to make a national broadcast indicting the former Senate President and Minister of Education – Adolphus Wabara and Fabian Osuji – respectively of corruption. While Obasanjo was been hailed for his tough stance against corruption, it later emerged that the broadcast was a mere publicity stunt to gain international acceptability and reprieve from Nigerians international creditors. The broadcast deliberately coincided with the presence of many international dignitaries including heads of states of commonwealth countries in Nigeria for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting that was hosted by Nigeria in 2005. No wonder that the courts wasted no time in throwing the cases instituted against the indicted officials away when it went for trial.
Nigerians will also not forget how the former President turned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission – the most potent anti-corruption agency he created – into an attack dog against his political opponents and or those who fell out with him. The story is usually the same in most African and developing countries that had attempted to fight corruption. Besides, even when a particular administration is really serious in fighting the scourge of corruption, sooner a later, a pharaoh that does not know Joseph comes and reverses all the gains.
The most potent weapon for fighting corruption, but which is hardly ever employed in weak states, is the building of strong institutions of restraints. Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah made the point on October 1st 2015 at the Platform at the Covenant Christian Centre that even if the worst (and most corrupt) Nigerian President ever were to be made the President of the United States and he succeeds in governing for 20 years, he may be unable to steal $50, 000 during the period. Conversely, if the most upright American President were to be made president in Nigeria, even if for a year, he may be tempted by the avenues of corruption and may get his hands soiled by corruption. The point he was making was the absence of institutions of restraints to prevent and restrain officials from engaging in corruption.
It may be easier to create agencies to fight corruption. It may be easier to launch a media campaign against perceived corrupt officials or even make scapegoat of some, but such actions never get a country anywhere. They are just mere tokenisms that fizzle out with time. What helps a society to effectively tackle and prevent corruption is the presence of strong institutions of restraints. The sooner Nigeria starts building such institutions, the better for us.
Christopher Akor