Why corruption thrives in Nigeria

Against the whirlwind of accusations and media trial of supposedly corrupt individuals by the government and even the Presidential Advisory Committee on Corruption whose job it is to produce policy documents detailing the multi-dimensional nature of corruption, factors giving rise to it and why it is so pervasive in Nigeria, Chris Akor of BusinessDay has undertaken to show in this feature, why corruption thrives so much in Nigeria.

When, in September, 2005, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha – the self-styled Governor General of the Ijaw nation – was arrested in London over alleged money laundering activities, the immediate response of his Ijaw kinsmen was to threaten a possible reprisal attack on personnel and oil facilities of British interests if their governor general was not released with immediate effect. When eventually, Alamieyeigha jumped or was allowed to jump bail and escaped to Nigeria dressed as a woman, he was welcomed back to the state by a jubilant crowd as a ‘hero’ of the Ijaw nation. No member of the Ijaw National Congress or anyone has anything negative to say about him despite the glaring fact that he was caught with the states’ embezzled money in the UK.

After President Obasanjo forcefully masterminded his impeachment and his eventual trial and conviction on charges of corruption and embezzlement of public funds, he continues to be regarded as a champion of the Ijaw nation, and was eventually granted state pardon by his then deputy who later became president, Goodluck Jonathan.

Similarly, in April 2010, when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission wanted to arrest James Ibori, former governor of Delta State for crimes of corruption, fraud and money laundering, his Urhobo kinsmen quickly rallied round him in support. In fact, he escaped to his hometown in Oghara, where youths barricaded the community and successfully prevented the EFCC from having access to the community to arrest the embattled former governor. The same Urhobo people organised his escape to Dubai in the United Arabs Emirate, where he was subsequently arrested and extradited to the United Kingdom and was convicted and jailed for money laundering and fraud.

These are just two examples out of hundreds of cases of kinsmen rallying to defend their ‘sons and daughters’ being tried for corruption cases in Nigeria.

There appears to be two different kinds of morality guiding the conduct of public officials in Nigeria.

A Nigerian Professor of Political Sociology, Peter Ekeh, in his seminal work “Colonialism and the two publics in Africa: A theoretical statement” in 1975 provided a unique explanation of how corruption gained a foothold and became pervasive in Nigeria. For him, corruption is traceable to the way colonial structures and institutions were forceful and unilateral engrafted unto African traditional institutions. This imposition inevitably led to the bifurcation of the states into two realms with distinct moralities. The first is a public realm represented by the colonial state and the second, a primordial realm represented by kinship, village, local community, or in modern times, the ethnic group. Largely as a result of the activities of the local petit bourgeoisie who sought to replace the colonial personnel, the two ‘publics’ were kept separate and distinct. The colonial state came to be seen as an ‘amoral’ entity bereft of any moral obligation and which can be plundered at will, while the ‘primordial/native’ realm was seen as a reservoir of ‘moral’ obligations, an entity which the individual must work to preserve and benefit.

What, for Ekeh, is the most outstanding characteristic of African politics is that the same political actors simultaneously operate in the primordial and the civic publics.

Hence, the state or ‘civic public’ becomes for the actors a thing to be plundered, despoiled, raped, and desecrated and the proceeds used for the good of the primordial public. This attitude ultimately legitimises official corruption. In fact, with time, it became the norm and even ordinary people expected state officials to take as much as possible from the public coffers for themselves and their local communities. Little wonder federal and state appointments as seen as opportunities for ethnic and primordial groups to get their cut out of the “Nigerian Cake”.

It was the late Sunday Michael Afolabi, Former Internal Affairs Minister who publicly excoriated his former colleague, late Bola Ige, for trying to restrain the food owner when he was only invited to “come and eat”. The more current phrase in use to refer to this tendency is “Turn by Turn Nigeria Limited.” In explaining this phrase, Ahmed Kurfi, as quoted by Akin Osuntokun said: “this arrangement provides opportunity for various groups in the exercise of real power in the governance of the country, unlike the present dispensation whereby the vice-president/deputy governor has little or no power: and act as a “spare tire” for his boss and can hardly dish out patronage for the people he represents in government’’. It is in that regard that even current supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari are aghast at his recent appointments which points to a tendency towards provincialism, which has been the tradition in Nigeria since the first republic. Farooq Kperogi, an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Citizen Media at Kennesaw State University in the United States and a passionate supporter of President Buhari recently in a facebook post summed up the disappointment thus: “A president who ran for election on the mantra of change can’t continue the tradition of invidiously clannish appointments and expect to continue to enjoy national goodwill”.

The poet and storyteller, Chinua Achebe, in his novel “No Longer at Ease” also demonstrated this theory with the story of Obi Okonkwo, whose town union sponsored him to England to study and on his return, expected him to get a government job, use his position to help his kinsmen and women, and ultimately the union. Such pressures led the otherwise honest Obi into taking bribes and when he was eventually caught, his town’s union, even though not pleased with his actions since joining the civil service, rallied to defend him because he is one of their own and they did not see anything wrong with him taking small bribes when others take huge bribes.

While it is seen as normal to steal from the public coffers, it is deemed unacceptable to steal from the primordial group’s coffers. Primordial groups ensure that their members make it to state institutions so that the group can subsequently benefit. But no member of the primordial group is to steal from the group. That will be a taboo. And if a member of the primordial group is caught s/he will be defended with all the resources of the group.

Another key reason why corruption thrives in Nigeria is the absence or weakness of key institutions of restraints. A better way to appreciate this point is to visualise the possibility of the President of the United States engaging in corruption without being caught or the fate that awaits any such President if he is caught. It is the presence of such strong institutions of restraints that makes it more likely for presidents of the United States to serve without engaging in corruption. The entire machinery of government in the United States is such that it is difficult to abuse the system and get away with it easily. In 1974, President Richard Nixon had to resign to avoid being impeached when he was implicated in the burglary of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in the Watergate building in Washington. In the same light, President Clinton avoided impeachment by a hair’s breadth after he was found out to have lied under oath over his affairs with a Whitehouse intern – Miss Monica Lewinsky.

Juxtapose this with what happens in Nigeria and many African countries. Presidents and leaders are always at liberty to circumvent the law, engage in blatant corruption with no threat to their offices. In Nigeria, former Presidents since 1999 have been alleged to be involved in series of corrupt practices and yet at no time were they at danger of being called to account or impeached. Former President Obasanjo, forinstance, was implicated in the Halliburton bribery scandal and was accused of being behind the bribing of lawmakers to illegally amend the constitution toallow him run for a third time. Despite these, nothing was done by way of holding him to account. This is despite the presence of a number of ‘anti-corruption’ agencies who are saddled with the responsibilities of investigating and prosecuting corrupt practices in the country. In practice, the anti-corruption agencies and other institutions of checks and balances exists at the mercy of the “strongman or strongmen” in Nigeria and Africa and are more often used as attack dogs against political opponents.

There is nothing in the personal lives or training of the leaders of developed countries that makes them substantially better or less corrupt than say, Nigerian leaders. The difference, as it were, is the presence of strong institutions of restraints in the former and their absence or weakness in the latter. The saying that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” holds true. So long as a strong man or men have the capacity to compromise or bend state institutions to do their will, so long will that system remain susceptible to corruption. It is in that light that President Obama, in his median trip to Africa in Accra, Ghana, called for the building of strong institutions and not strongmen.

Another reason why corruption thrives so much in the country has to do with the abysmal wages/remuneration and living conditions of public officials/civil servants. There is just no way we can eliminate corruption in the country when public servants/officials do not earn wages that could guarantee them a dignifying existence. Regardless of the sophistication of the institutions of restraints, public servants that struggle to make ends meet due to their poor remuneration will always be vulnerable to corruption. A perfect example is the Nigerian Police Force. A feature on Saturday Punch of August 1, carried a vivid report of the squalid and sub-human conditions in which men of the Nigerian police live. The headline of the report, which was a question asked by one of the disillusioned policemen captured the point succinctly: “we live like rats, yet Nigerians want us to be their friends”.

Across the country, policemen live in terrible sub-human conditions and scramble for existence daily. Their salaries and emoluments are pitiable with some earning as low as N22, 000 (less than $100) a month. The mere sight of a police barracks in Nigeria fills one with revulsion and pity for the people who live in such buildings. In most of these barracks, the roofs of the quarters have given way and the concretes and some parts of the building are collapsing daily and endangering the lives of the occupants. The report came replete with pictures of some of the barracks in Lagos. The mere sight of the pictures is enough to make decent human beings throw up. What is more, in most cases, a family of six or eight people are crammed into a single room.

But that is even where accommodation is available. In some states, only the Commissioner of Police and some very few officers have decent accommodation. Others live in the barracks that looks like pens for housing domestic animals. Others sleep in offices or halls of police stations or in abandoned vehicles. Yet, these are the policemen Nigerians gleefully wished to be professional in their conduct, eschew corruption and collection of unofficial tolls on the road and perform their constitutional role of securing the nation. What an irony!

It is a fact that civil and public servants in Nigeria are grossly underpaid and cannot live a dignify life in a society without mortgages and houses have to be rented or bought at usually exorbitant prices – which are clearly above the legitimate means of even senior public servants. Also, no one really hopes to give his/her children good education by sending them to public schools. Public education has collapsed and the charges of good private schools are beyond the legitimate earnings of most public officials. An analyst captured it better:

And with retirement looming, the worker becomes more desperate, more dogged and more corrupt as he prepares for that great uncertainty (retirement) because the government or anyone else won’t look after him. He has to build a home for himself, buy another car or two, perhaps support graduate kids who don’t have jobs, etc.

While some commentators may choose to include other factors like lack of openness and transparency, ineffective political processes, tribalism, ethnicity and nepotism, culture of acceptance of corruption by the Nigerian public, and the nature of funding of political and electioneering campaigns etc, we consider them as derivable from the factors highlighted above. The challenge for the regime and indeed, for all Nigerians, is to find ways to create a sense of loyalty to the nation instead of the ethnic or primordial group, build strong institutions, and effectively remunerate and take care of public personnel. Only then can the real fight against corruption begin.