Buhari’s assets declaration

Recently, Nigerians were taken aback when President Muhammadu Buhari along with his vice, Yemi Osinbajo, publicly declared their assets which  revealed that the president , a former head of state and one-time minister of petroleum, had only N30 million, an equivalent of $150,000 or £100,000 in his personal bank account.

This action has not only exposed Buhari as the poorest president in Sub-Saharan Africa, but has also elevated the moral ground on which he stands in his crusade against corruption and its perpetrators just as it has increased his current rating as a man who has come to equity with clean hands. The president further declared that he had five homes and two mud houses as well as farms, an orchard and a ranch with 270 heads of cattle, 25 sheep, five horses and a variety of birds, shares in three firms, two undeveloped plots of land and two cars bought from his savings.

Osinbajo, who is relatively wealthier, said he had $1.4 million (£900,000) in his bank accounts plus a four-bedroom residence, three-bedroom flat, two-bedroom flat and a two-bedroom mortgaged property in Bedford, UK.

We congratulate the president for the bold and exemplary step he has taken and also commend him for his integrity and choice of austere life even when he could choose to live in opulence which is the characteristic feature and nature of former and serving public officers in Nigeria.

The popular US publication, Washington Post, has declared President Buhari the poorest president in Africa, noting that by the standards of sub-Saharan African leaders, with only $150,000 savings in his bank account, “Buhari is dirt-poor”.  We cannot agree more. What the president has done, in spite of its imperfections, is a big challenge to other African leaders, most especially Nigerian state governors and other public office holders many of whom have larger- than-life size image garnered from impoverishing their respective areas of jurisdiction.

We are, therefore, calling on all state governors, the Distinguished Senators of the Federal Republic, the Honourable Members of the House of Representatives, local government chairmen and the councillors to follow the good examples of Mr President and the Vice President. We consider this call urgent and necessary because it is a major weapon that can be wielded in the battle against corruption which has brought the country to its knees— neither dying nor growing. It is pertinent for us to point out, however, that going forward, the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), should endeavour to do a thorough job with this assets declaration, and should be seen to be doing it well.

The Buhari and Osinbajo’s declaration pose more questions than those they claim to have answered. Like most Nigerian, we are still at a loss as per what could be the value of the properties the two leaders have told the world that they have.

We know, and we believe this is also public knowledge, that standard practice was not followed in this exercise because nobody knows the features, location and value of Osinbajo’s four-bedroom residence or Buhari’s five homes and 270 heads of cattle.

Taken for granted that this practice is still ‘new’and largely resisted in this part of the world, we nonetheless urge CCB to up its game in subsequent exercises by involving estate surveyors and valuers who, with their professional competence, should come in, after the bureau has received and verified the declaration from the public officers, to complete the cycle by valuating the assets and making same public.