Buhari deserves credit for fighting corruption – Aremu
Fatai Aremu is an associate professor of Political Science and senior lecturer at the University of Ilorin. In this interview with SIKIRAT SHEHU, he examines how democracy has fared in Nigeria in the past 17 years, President Buhari’s anti-graft war, among others. Excerpts:
There are different shades of opinions and perceptions about President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-graft crusade; what’s your view?
Looking at it from where we are coming from, there was a lot of impunity in the past, whereby a group of people took public funds into their personal pockets; accountability was just thrown overboard. If we had continued that way, we were sure of failure down the line. The coming of the Buhari administration brought up two key issues. One, coming out as a leader and saying, “Look, I am not going to be corrupt and I am going to fight corruption.” That body language is already sending a very huge signal.
The second one is, “I will not be corrupt as a leader, I will not do anything that is even close to that and if you then indulge in corruption and I catch you, I will not spare you.” For the first time, we have a government that came out clearly not only fighting corruption, but walking the talk as far as corruption is concerned. They are leaving nobody in doubt. Let me tell you, if anybody is in doubt of what Buhari is doing when it comes to corruption, they should just do a counter-factual analysis. Which politician will have the courage and ability to hold the military to account – top military officials, chief of army staff, chief of naval staff, and chief of defence staff? Who, except Buhari, has the courage and capacity to lock them up? The military never want to subject themselves to any form of control, let alone investigating them over corrupt practices. For him to stand up and say no and lock them up, I cannot imagine any other person being able to do that successfully.
So, we need to give him a lot of credit. Many countries around the world that are holding elections after Buhari are already imbibing this ‘change agenda’. I have been monitoring Philippines, Guinea, and some other countries. Apart from their campaigns, you see many of them with Buhari’s language, words and concepts through their expressions. They campaign under the banner of anti-corruption, banner of change, and even some contestants placed Buhari’s poster alongside theirs. That will tell us that we have to commend him.
Buhari is fighting corruption, no doubt, but the question is, are the institutions saddled with the responsibility of fighting corruption effective enough?
While we appreciate where he is coming from, we still have to put more efforts because we have sunk so deep and to get out of this completely, it has to be done gradually. Most of the anti-graft crusades are not systematic and institutional, but everything revolves round the personality of the president. Are the two institutions – EFCC and ICPC – strong enough to be able to take stand on their own such that they are able to naturally trigger action when he is no longer there? Is the corruption war going to be sustainable in the long term? Are there institutional mechanisms that will make it endure? Are we building those things when it comes to effective anti-corruption crusade?
When it comes to fighting corruption, there are four key things, namely, detection, investigation, prevention, and process. For instance, when it occurs, how can you detect it and after detection, are there effective mechanisms to investigate, process and as well prevent it? In each of this, I am not sure whether we have been able to build these institutions to detect or prevent easily, automatically and to be able to investigate. Particularly, the process of investigating corruption is complicated because most of corruption cases are perpetrated by people that are highly knowledgeable and they perfect their documents and keep the money outside the country with legal system and jurisprudence that are different from ours. We do not have competent hands with ability to investigate the crimes and cost of transnational nature may be much more complicated.
However, the process of prosecution is also problematic. You know people have been saying that no conviction has been secured. Even the president himself became frustrated along the line; he was saying, what is the judiciary doing? That speaks to a particular issue that the institution lacks mechanism to address those issues. Therefore, there is need for them to concentrate on steps to be taken to either rebuild existing institutions or smash them and build new ones.
How will you assess Nigeria’s democracy experience in the past 17 years?
Two things have to be looked into before assessing democracy. We look at it in two dimensions, that is, procedural content of democracy and the substantive component of democracy. By procedural component we mean those symbols, processes that are usually associated with democracy. These are periodic elections, parliamentary process of making the law, basic fundamental rights of choice to participate in politics, organize yourself and so many things like that. If we assess our democracy along that line, we have to give ourselves above average because we have organized series of elections and in 2015, for the first time we were able to experience a peaceful transition of power from one political party to another. That power alternation is a critical juncture in the evolution of democratic consolidation to the extent that we were able to move.
At the procedural level, we can say we have moved. Looking at it from substantive component, we can then begin to ask critical questions: what is the content of democracy? To what extent have the aspirations of the people that democracy would improve their lives, standard of living, basic human rights they enjoy, among others? With critical observation, the rights we enjoy are only limited to the civic component, right to vote and be voted for, but the social and economic rights that would form part and parcel of the substantive component of democracy are not there. In other words, the people have the right to gainful employment; this is supposed to be a human right, to have good jobs, because without that, you cannot have human dignity and once your dignity is violated as a human being, the right becomes empty.
So, when it comes to social and economic rights, I will say that we have not done so well in that regard; we still have a long way to go. Thus, considering democracy in Nigeria for the past 17 years, we are not there yet. It is still an ongoing process, though; we have to know that democracy worldwide is still an evolving process.
What is your message to politicians and Nigerians generally on what to do sustain democracy and cement Nigeria’s independence?
Politicians, the people have to know that it is not business as usual. We cannot continue the way we have been doing, we have to change. Everybody in our own little corner needs to change because change has come to stay; thus, we have to support the government with everything that we can because for the first time, we are seeing a government that is actually showing a lot of sincerity and putting people’s interest first in everything they do. Politicians and people must support the Buhari-led administration so that we can move this country forward.
SIKIRAT SHEHU