Beyond the anti-corruption hullabaloo
In the past couple of weeks prominent members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), including governors elected on the party’s platform, have continued to inundate the Nigerian public with sordid tales of humongous looting of the treasury and other corrupt practices perpetrated under the Goodluck Jonathan administration. Some of these self-appointed spokespersons have even gone to the extent of bandying figures.
Specifically, Adams Oshiomhole, the governor of Edo State, “who seems to be the purveyor of the secret information of where the stolen funds are located and indeed on who the thieves are”, announced to Nigerians that senior officials of the United States Department of State revealed to him that one minister who served in the last administration has $6 billion in his account from stolen oil. Oshiomhole was on President Muhammadu Buhari’s entourage during the president’s visit to the United States.
As a responsible corporate citizen, this newspaper is totally against corrupt practices in all its ramifications. As such, we are in total support of whistle-blowing.
We are, however, worried that the way and manner of it all is causing a whole lot of distraction. In saner climes, past officials of government suspected of wrongdoing would have been invited for questioning and, if found culpable, made to face the full wrath of the law, rather than have some self-righteous fellows make unsubstantiated allegations that smack of calculated attempts to tarnish image.
On this note, we agree with an analyst who advised that “people like Oshiomhole should face governance and leave EFCC and other security agencies to follow up on corrupt officials. If they have information from America or Russia or from anywhere concerning where our looted funds are, they should pass their information to the relevant anti-crime agencies”.
Furthermore, we state categorically that war against corruption cannot substitute for good governance. Prior to May when President Buhari came to power, the economy was in tatters. Three months down the line, all the economic indices have continued to worsen. GDP growth for Q2 2015 was 2.34 percent, from about 6.54 percent a year earlier, according to recent data released by the National Bureau of Statistics. “Inflation has increased, almost going back to double digit; the exchange rate has worsened, despite a well-advertised promise to vastly improve the rate, and bank interest rates have increased. GDP is on a precipitous slope and what is worse, the non-oil GDP which has shown consistent growth in the last five years has begun to decline and in the Q2 report, it declined faster than oil GDP. Industrial production declined by 3.31 percent, manufacturing declined by 3.38 percent, while mining and quarrying declined by 6.62 percent.”
While the new government cannot be entirely blamed for this trend, we believe it is time to re-focus on the economy. This demands concrete actions, like implementing a coherent and well thought-through bundle of economic policies, not mere populist sloganeering or vague statements on how the new administration wishes to grow or improve the economy. Investors, foreign and local, are still waiting for a sense of economic direction.