Nigeria can’t fight graft with lax rules on gifts

Nigerians are not congenitally corrupt. No Nigerian was born with a natural tendency to be corrupt. Yet, corruption is endemic in this country. Transparency International regularly ranks Nigeria among the world’s most corrupt countries. A former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, once described Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt”. Even President Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo have frequently lamented the level of corruption in the country. But if Nigerians were not born with corruption in their DNA, why is corruption so rife among the political elite and public officers? Well, the answer is the system. Corruption is universal, but what makes a country more corrupt or less is the nature and effectiveness of its anti-corruption mechanism. Sadly, Nigeria’s system feeds rather than prevents corruption.

In their fascinating book, “Freakonomics”, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, argue that incentives are the cornerstone of modern life. “An incentive”, they posit, “is a bullet, a lever, a key, an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation”. And there are no more powerful incentives to change human behaviour than institutions. Douglas North, an institutional economist and Nobel Prize winner, made an important distinction between “formal” and “informal” institutions: the former are rules and laws; the latter include customs, traditions and taboos. Both constitute the incentive structure in any society.

Several years ago, the British Telegraph newspaper published a story about African students who were jumping the queue for buses. This prompted a councillor to call for foreign students to be given a basic grounding in British manners. As the councillor put it, “I would not have thought queuing was a too difficult concept to grasp”. Now, are the British genetically more courteous than Africans? No. But behaving orderly in public places is not something that the “systems” in many African countries incentive, whereas in the UK, such behaviours are regarded as basic manners. In truth, most people, regardless of their nationality, would behave within the constraints of formal and informal institutions, but when such constraints are not in place, all bets are off!

Another useful concept here is rational choice. The Nobel Prize economist Gary Becker applied this to his analysis of crime, which includes corruption. Becker argues that all criminals, including corrupt politicians and public officers, make decisions about whether to commit a crime on the basis of cost-benefit calculations. They calculate the expected costs of the crime, that is, the probabilities of being caught, convicted and jailed or heavily fined. They also calculate the expected benefits, i.e. the probabilities of getting away with the crime and enjoying, say, the stolen money. If the expected costs of the crime are less than expected benefits, it will be committed; if the costs are higher than the benefits, it will not!

So, what is my point? Well, it is that, in Nigeria, corruption is not the problem, but the system that incentivises and condones it. If the system acts as a powerful countervailing force, corruption would be reduced significantly, if not eradicated. But the anti-corruption mechanism in Nigeria lacks intrinsic or instrumental value. What with the extremely weak asset declaration system that has become a joke, with the protracted case against the Senate President, Bukola Saraki. What about the ethnicisation of the fight against corruption, whereby most Nigerians would defend corrupt politicians or public officers from their ethnic group? And what about the politicisation of the anti-graft war by the Buhari government itself?

As a military head of state in 1984/85, Buhari treated all politicians alike, whatever their political parties, and jailed politicians from all the parties for alleged corruption. No party was spared, even those that did not control power at the centre. But 30 years later, as a politician and civilian president, Buhari seems to regard only politicians from the opposition PDP as corrupt, while those from his party, APC, are not. What’s more, the APC has become a refuge, a safe haven, for PDP members who are either accused of corruption or standing trials. The message, of course, is that if you are in PDP you are corrupt, but once you join APC you are a “progressive” and beyond reproach. All of this exposes the hypocrisy and weakness of Nigeria’s war against corruption.

There is, however, a major catalyst for corruption that is hardly discussed: gifts to public officers. Over the past few months, several cases have proved conclusively that gifts to public officials are a powerful source of corruption in Nigeria. First, the former first lady, Patience Jonathan, claimed that about $32m found in her different bank accounts were “gifts from friends and well-wishers”. Then, the former managing director of NNPC, Andrew Yakubu, allegedly claimed that the $9.8m cash seized from his house were gifts, and even demanded the money be returned to him! And, recently, a judge, Justice Adeniyi Ademola, who is facing trial for alleged corruption, received a “gift” of N500,000 from a lawyer representing President Buhari in his “missing certificate” case before the judge.

Gifts, of course, have a deceptive innocence. They are rooted in customs and traditions, but also widely associated with corruption. The UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) recognises the acceptance of gifts by public officials as a factor fuelling corruption. As a result, gifts to public officials are tightly regulated in most countries. Indeed, most countries, such as the US and China, have local regulations that limit the value of gifts that a public official can receive, while it is commonplace to require any gift having more than a nominal value of between $10 and $50 to be declared in a gifts and hospitality register. Indeed, many private companies maintain gifts and hospitality registers to protect themselves from allegations of bribery and improper behaviour.

But Nigeria has very weak rules on public officers receiving gifts. Section 3 of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution allows a public officer to receive “personal gifts or benefits from relatives or personal friends to such extent and on such occasions as are recognised by custom”. No country with endemic corruption like Nigeria, and that is serious about fighting graft, would have such a nebulous provision on gifts to public officers. What does “to such extent” mean? How much does it cover? $1m, $5m? Who determines what is “recognised by custom”? Is customary law the arbiter? What about “personal friends”? For instance, should a lawyer appearing in a case before a judge give a “gift” to that judge as a “personal friend”?

Of course, when the lawyer in question, Kola Awodein SAN and Buhari’s spokesman, Femi Adesina, defended the “gift”, as being in the spirit of “longstanding friendship”, “as our customs well recognises and demands”, they could technically rely on the get-out provision of the Fifth Schedule. But every lawyer should avoid even the appearance of impropriety, and not hide behind technicalities. No lawyer will give such a gift to a judge in the UK or US, whatever the relationship. And no public officer would receive $9.8m as gifts, as Yakubu allegedly claimed, without declaring them, and naming the donors.

But, let’s face it, the wider issue is that, despite the moral outrage and righteous indignation often expressed by Nigerian leaders, there is no credible commitment to tackling corruption. Until there is a rigorous system of asset declaration and disclosure, scrupulously enforced, until the rules on gifts to public officers are tightened, and until there is an effective system of wealth monitoring, including the introduction of Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs), Nigeria will be fighting a losing battle against corruption!

Olu Fasan