Kennedy Emetulu

Perhaps, a little explanation is in order.

The first part of this piece was published a little over a month ago. I cannot now say I deliberately set out to present this second and concluding part this late, but somehow circumstances conspired to make it so. Nonetheless, I find the intervening time useful, because it's brought to the fore in very practical ways the issue we are discussing and somehow does show this need for advocating a Citizens' Covenant more. Indeed, it is to our benefit that corruption and the fight against it has been big news within this period. For instance, the United Nations Anti-Corruption Treaty is now in place, to be opened for signatories from the second week of December in Merida, Mexico. And, whether by design or coincidence (which really matters not), Obasanjo was the only president and national leader who went out during this period, nationally and internationally, to speak on corruption. It is crucial for us to follow these events and analyse them in the context of what they portend in our search for a Citizens' Covenant.

Obasanjo spoke in Berlin at a Transparency International Lecture, titled, "Nigeria: From Pond of Corruption to Island of Integrity". In the process, he committed Nigeria to the following:

(1) making the oil companies declare the costs they incur to do business in Nigeria by committing the country to the "Publish-What-You-Pay" and "Publish-What-You-Earn-Initiative" - so far, the oil companies operating in Nigeria have been falling over each other to publicly welcome this initiative;

(2) creating a separate Public Procurement Commission to "streamline purchases, cut waste, eliminate duplication, and bring sanity into business transactions" - this is to ensure that government business is run transparently and is backed by law ;

(3) strengthening the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), with the latter now to be subject to an independent civil society oversight for the purpose of checking impunity and "heavy-handed behaviour" in violation of people's rights, and

(4) signing the United Nation Treaty Against Corruption immediately it opens for signatories in Merida, Mexico in December.

All the above, as far as most people are concerned is good news. No one doubts that our President can talk the talk; the problem is in his walking the walk - that is leading a government that shows in character and performance that it understands its responsibilities where the issue of corruption is concerned.

Typically, Obasanjo had gone to Berlin and in what effectively amounted to spreading the blame challenged the TI to create more Corruption Indexes, such as Corruption Encouraging Index and Corruption Reduction Index along with the existing Corruption Perception Index. Obasanjo believes this would give a more holistic picture of the problem. Yet, I couldn't help noting that at least it is well known that the TI publishes the International Bribe Payers Index which is permanently dominated by companies from the developed countries. I think that in itself serves the purpose of a Corruption Encouraging Index already, especially as it is also rated on country-by-country basis, just like the Corruption Perception Index.

As for the idea of Reduction Index, I don't know what purpose that would serve being that reduction in any particular case is relative. Besides, one would have thought that the changing positions of particular countries yearly in the Corruption Perception Index would also be some invariable indication of whether or not the problem is being reduced in the country concerned. Personally, on a philosophical and idealistic level, I think "reduction" as a language should not be encouraged; even the president in this same speech proclaimed our task as one of pursuing "a zero-corruption tolerant world". With such a vision, one can argue that idea of a "Reduction Index" paradoxically sounds much more like accommodation on this kind of issue. Though, the president may have genuine intentions in wanting the international community to reward those who are reducing the menace in their jurisdictions, one must conceive of reward in the effect such is having in the polity and in the lives of the people concerned. International recognition or not, the reward would already be obvious in the good governance conditions that would accrue to that society. Therefore, if the international community can welcome such as a good model and reward it with recognition, international aid and investments and so on and so forth, all well and good; but first, every leadership must do this for itself and the people it leads.

The president actually went on in that lecture to talk about how he's winning the corruption battle. Now, who does not know that he's losing this battle big time? Nigeria's case is beyond perception; it is the reality which confronts Nigerians and the world everyday. No amount of comparisons with others will peel anything away from the fact that it is the singular most debilitating ailment in the Nigerian public service. The Corruption Perception Index, for which Nigeria almost topped the pile, bar one, "ranks countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians". We merit where we are by perception, and if we are to really lift the lid off the real thing, the stench is even worse!

Yes, the president is right to draw attention to the fact that companies and organizations from Germany, China and France have been found to encourage and participate in corruption in Nigeria, but the focus must be on the fact that these companies/ multinationals find a fertile ground for such practice. Besides, the fact that today we cannot genuinely guarantee that such is no longer the case also weakens our position considerably. Obasanjo understandably was speaking from the perspective of a leader of a Third World country under attack from the sharks that are Western corporations and a whole lot of other external agencies doing business in Africa, so challenging TI to broaden its perspective is always right; yet we mustn't lose sight of the primary contention, which is how much we have used the available anti-corruption infrastructure, nationally and internationally, to fight the disease and how much of a success we're making of it. It is important for the Nigerian administration to go beyond these eternal textual battles. There's no way to sugar-coat this truth, which is, we are doing very little to discourage corruption in the way we run the administration of our country at all levels; it's no dispute, the evidence is everywhere, it is already institutionalized in the public psyche beyond the reach of any busybody spin-doctor. In fact, the whole idea of the Citizens' Covenant is borne out of the presumption that the Ears of Government are dead to any measure to control the disease. Corruption is the life and soul of the establishment Nigeria runs today. We know how much the Nigerian government officials at all levels take away from national wealth through corruption; if we don't know it in exact amounts we, at least, feel it in our lives. It's there.

Obasanjo has not lived up to his words, or, perhaps more appropriately, has been alone in this campaign. Yet, the fact is, he's leading a government that is, to all attestation, wallowing in the disease. In the lecture, he sought to push the blame on the other arms of government - the legislature and judiciary and attempted to launder the idea that the executive has been steadfast and that Nigerians are only raising issues with the other two. But is this true? The truth is Nigerians think of his executive (including their de facto appendages, in the circumstance, the legislature and judiciary) as the Fountain of Corruption! A just-released 2001 Federal Ministry of Finance-sponsored report on corruption actually rates the police as the most corrupt public institution, closely followed by the "NEPA, political parties, local government, national and state assemblies, courts, customs and down to the base of the table where state budgetary authority concludes the ranking" in a survey comprising 28 public departments and institutions (see, Alabi Williams' report in The Guardian On Sunday, November 30, 2003). This is an executive-sponsored report whose released findings indicate that two executive institutions, the police and NEPA are top of the infamous pack! So, what does the president mean when he contends that the feeling is that the judiciary and legislature "are not matching the enthusiasm of the executive in the anti-corruption campaign"? Any discerning observer can see that every arm of government is equally indicted! Yes, the president is awake, but he now needs to smell the coffee!

Right now as we speak, there are stinking corruption cases making the rounds. Such incidences of corruption are infinite as we've come to 'accept', and, at this moment, amongst such incidences of corruption in high places (with their greasy details already in the public domain) to which Nigerians are currently glued are the Nigeria Ports Authority sackings and scandals, the uncovered fraud at the Federal Inland Revenue, the case of El Rufai versus the Senators, the Akanbi graft case, the shady petroleum deals, the oil companies' tax fraud, the NNPC probe that is not happening, the multi-million dollars contract scam in Aladja Steel, the COJA contracts, etc. It is perhaps to signal how seriously it's taking this battle that the government released a draft white paper on the 2001 Justice Obiora Nwazota Judicial Commission of Inquiry to investigate the management of the Nigeria Airways from 1983 to 1999. But even that one has raised more questions than answers. Of course, the mandate of the Inquiry was to look between 1983 and 1999, but we all know it took more than sixteen years to fold up the Nigerian Airways!

Nonetheless, this Airways white paper has brought to the fore crucial questions also about how the Obasanjo administration handles the affairs of the airline. We know that the government is always quick to say this corruption culture did not start with this government and that it is this government that is showing political will to tackle it for the first time; nonetheless, this government must be judged by the way it has handled the affairs of the corporation too since its inception. That is only fair. To this end, Obasanjo and Mrs Chikwe must take responsibility for some of the things that happened in their time pertaining to Nigerian Airways. Even before the Nwazota Inquiry, the Obasanjo government received the Report of the Jonah Jang Panel of 1999 a few months after inauguration. The Report indicted ALL 12 past chief executives of the Nigeria Airways for "gross mismanagement and stealing". So, it is fair to say that Obasanjo was very aware of the problem on assumption of office. The Nwazota Inquiry merely confirms Jonah Jang and could even be said to have left out quite a few names!

Now, by August last year Senator Idris Kuta, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Aviation, was calling on Mrs Chikwe's Aviation ministry to explain why it sold 49% of the airline to leasing company Airwing Aerospace. Even though the deal later fell through, the whole thing was done without parliamentary approval, neither was the Bureau of Public Enterprises consulted. In fact, this led to a big face-off between El Rufai, then of BPE and Mrs Chikwe; with the president practically flying in to issue a 'shut-up' injunction on El Rufai. Some say the disagreement arose because Chikwe thwarted an attempt by the vice-president, Abubakar Atiku, to take over the airline; others say it was one of the things Obasanjo had to sacrifice in his face off with the legislature over impeachment or no impeachment. But whatever the truth about motives, all that was done was done in clear contravention of due process. And the President presided over it. As we speak, the government is in the process of liquidating the airline and creating a new national airline - again, doing this without the knowledge of the National Council on Privatization (NCP) and without the blessing of the legislature.

The fact is this, we cannot probe Airways piecemeal and then close shop and start afresh. Let's get the full picture, because at the end of the day what a report of this nature portends is the possibility of an incumbent administration using the failings of previous ones to selectively haunt individuals, but not necessarily to bring them to book. Worse still, this government overlooks its own failings and curiously expects that people would accept that such attitude addresses the problem of corruption and, if not, look the other way. If the government is serious that its just-released "Code of Corporate Governance in Nigeria" is for public companies, let it begin to apply it now to the case of the Nigerian Airways, covering also the Obasanjo period.  

Meanwhile, another contagion in the credibility deficit is slowly but surely building up. For some time now, the PUNCH Newspapers have silently but professionally fought out a hide-and-seek,-search-and-destroy encounter with the government. This is on the small matter of the 1994 Okigbo Panel Report on the 'Gulf War Oil Windfall'. When the PUNCH made the request for the Report, the Office of the Secretary of the Federal Government of Nigeria sweetly introduced us to the scary idea of such a Panel Report being missing! Curiously, Ufot Ekaette, our own dear Secretary to the Federal Government of Nigeria was the Secretary of the 1994 Okigbo Panel! This is not fairytale; this is fact. The PUNCH wrote Obasanjo and pointed out the fact that from available information, there ought to be a copy at least at the Presidency; the president excused his administration of the whole thing on the grounds that they came in after this Report, but nonetheless, promised to FIND the Report and make it available.

So, there we are, nationally and internationally in the war against corruption; but then what does one make of it all? How do all these events relate to our search for a Citizens' Covenant and how do they affect the final strategies that we the people are to adopt?

Indeed, what one would expect from a government with the political will and conviction to fight corruption is to do that fighting first within itself, and then use the new image to gain credibility with the people in order to clean the rest of society. That must be the vision. What successive administrations in Nigeria have failed to realize, or if they realize, ignore, is the fact that you cannot gain any legitimacy with Nigerians without first purging yourself. In the case of Nigeria, it is even obvious that there's a lot of goodwill and encouragement coming from the international community. This is what we see with the opportunities given our president to address the issue in that lecture for instance, or with the Swiss promise to release some $618 million dollars of our stolen wealth in their possession, the Jersey payment of $149 million dollars to the Federal Government and the arrest, detention and planned repatriation of the Abacha front-man, Abubakar Atiku Bagudu from the United States.

But the issue has always been how this government manages such national and international goodwill. For instance, after the Swiss had reportedly handed over tomes of documentation to our government on the Abacha heist, it was a bewildered nation that woke up one morning to be told by their president that he was entering a deal with the Abachas - a deal that would see them walk away unscathed with millions of dollars! In the end, Nigeria got the wrong end of the stick; the Abacha boy did not sign nor pay! What better way to encourage corruption than to let it be known from the highest quarters that depending on who you are, you can actually get to keep huge parts of the loot you've stolen through official negotiation, with agreements and obligations you need not keep? Besides, even this Bagudu affair is gradually being mired in further controversy as latest reports indicate that Nigeria never ever made an extradition request for the man, in spite of the very central role he's played in siphoning money abroad for the Abachas. According to a report by Laolu Akande for The Guardian On Sunday (November 30, 2003), the United States authorities are actually acting at the request of Jersey, and from all indications even the planned extradition is no longer definite. At the very least, what this indicates is the fact that others are actually bending over backwards in certain cases to help us on the issue; but as usual, we are the ones exhibiting questionable motives at every turn. Why did Nigeria not make an extradition request for this man whose name has always been mentioned far more than any other alongside the Abachas in countless court documents and reports around the world? 

Where personal agendas rule and sacred cows have to be 'protected', what you get is a total betrayal of the people amidst countless miscarriages of justice and abandonment of due process and the rule of law, as is the case right now in Nigeria. The corruption issues on the ground right now in our nation and the international coalition taking shape offer Obasanjo another opportunity to cleanse the Aegean Stable. But can he? Maybe he can't, because he's from the stable himself, but then that means Nigerians themselves must act! That is the vision of a Citizens' Covenant. It is what citizen-to-citizen can do to bring this madness to a halt. In the face of official inaction against and indeed collusion with corruption, the burden of fighting against the disease (a necessary burden, I dare say) falls on the citizens. A Citizens' Covenant is about knowledge, organization and conviction to actualize. It is a process the people must learn and master. More importantly, they must believe it. 

The first thing is to know the law and to ensure that every citizen is aware of exactly what the law says with regard to official corruption. Ignorance of the law is no excuse and it certainly doesn't help the cause of social advancement to do nothing about removing those huge pockets of ignorance that abound. It goes without saying that the rapacious and thieving elite would never make education or the business of spreading awareness an actionable policy or give it the priority it deserves, even where we are likely to hear them pay lip service to it in meaningless official speeches. It is not enough that the law is in the statute book somewhere; it is imperative that people get to know that it is there and that proactive awareness campaigns are conducted to bring such knowledge to every citizen, no matter their educational status. In a society where the distinction between gift and graft is becoming more blurred by the day - for political, cultural and economic reasons, etc - only the law will serve to point out where the dividing line is. I call this project domestication of the law of corruption. The analogy is one of the chicken, goats, pigs, sheep, cattle generally kept at home by our people, especially in the rural areas. Every Nigerian must be consciously TAUGHT, by every available means necessary, the laws that govern official corruption in his/her country. We must domesticate these laws, that is make them part of the things every citizen must know.

To accomplish this task of domesticating international and national anti-corruption laws, I am advocating for human rights and civil liberties groups to begin a process of liaising with one another to fashion out a simple strategy of involving every strata of society in publicizing and advertising these laws as a first step. I have in mind such tactics as publishing a list and summaries of sections of the anti-corruption laws, for instance, those of the Criminal and Penal Codes, Code of Conduct Bureau, Public Complaints Commission, ICPC Act or EFCC's, etc, on the cover of children's exercise books, at the bus-stops, develop them into little fliers to be permanently on schools' notice boards around the country, encourage the arts to produce plays and popular dramas to sell the message and ensure that all these are translated into different languages and means to effectively communicate with all sections of society. Campaigns can be initiated to have companies and institutions make public declarations of this within their premises, whether in forms of permanent posters, notices or plaques and also to consider ways in which its advertisement can be incorporated into their products. I suppose most citizens would want to know those companies that sign up to the Citizens' Covenant against corruption.

Such a campaign also should simplify explanations of the steps ordinary citizens can take if confronted by the crime of corruption. It should be noted that while we do not look to public officials to support these moves, it is possible that individuals in public service, who feel as strongly about the issue as the people need to be encouraged to join the effort. The point we are making at this early beginning of the domestication of the international and national anti-corruption laws is to first spread the awareness of what these laws are in every nook and cranny of our nation and amongst all strata of society. Until they are aware and ready, the people can't take the fight to the public sector.

So, what I'm proposing is first a tool, which is the law as it is; secondly, how citizens can use that tool effectively in the circumstances we've found ourselves to create and build that solidarity to see this yield result. This of course requires some organizational means and it is in this latter regard that I think it is important for civil society groups to get organized and to liaise with each other, at home and abroad, in order to share perspectives on the problem. People must begin to make it their business to fight against corruption wherever it rears its head. For instance, such interaction could be in the form of lobbying the Nigerian Bar Association to establish a Corruption Report Unit in all of their state branches with a national coordinating office, which would be open for members of the public to make reports of official corruption of any kind. At these units, preliminary evidence will be reviewed and a determination would be made whether to pursue prosecution. It will be the duty of the body to liaise with government lawyers, police, the ICPC, EFCC and any of those bodies charged with prosecuting such crimes and make legal arrangements for the protection of the informants, if need be. And, along the line, private prosecutions should be encouraged along with other social actions against the disease - actions that will make it terribly unprofitable psychologically and materially for people to engage in official corruption. The point here simply is to carry along other members of civil society and professional groups concerned enough about the problem.

The NBA is very important in this fight, because to win this fight the foremost group of professional advocates must be onside. And when I speak of lobby, I do not mean it in the sleazy sense; it's more like the NBA having to convince itself now that it has a role to play in our search for a popular solution to the problem of corruption. What we are doing is to challenge them. How as a professional group of learned persons have they substantively contributed to the fight against corruption? Are they happy with the state of affairs today? Isn't there something more they can do? Such other professional groups, like Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Nigerian Society of Engineers, Advertising Practitioners Association of Nigeria, the Nigerian Medical Association, Nigerian Institute of Architects, etc must find their roles too. Workers organizations like the NLC, the Nigeria Civil Service Union, Trade Union Congress, etc must all be on board and, of course, the students' bodies must remain the vital channels to the true leaders of tomorrow. This is the only way we can ever have a chance of spreading the awareness at all levels.

Then the next institution the people would turn their mind to would be the judiciary. Why, because the judiciary is the 'weakest' line of defence for the thieving establishment. It follows that if there are no crooked advocates, there would be less crooked judges; so, once the NBA is on board, the courts will return to their traditional duty of interpreting the law. Even the establishment will be wary of being found to be influencing judges at that stage because the people would have become so sensitized that the government will have to raise its game; and the more it does that, the more the people will ask for more until the disease becomes foreign to the Nigerian public service. That is just a goal; but, at least, people must first begin to make the move. The people must focus on the lowest and middle-level judiciary first. The idea is to return some independence to the judiciary by cutting off the connection between it and official interference and influence from the executive. It is obvious that not every member of the bench is in the payroll of executive lawbreakers and more obvious that magistrates and lower High Court judges are not likely to be since they are not usually in position to influence controversial government actions whether at the centre or state level. But they do influence on the local level. And if our fight against corruption is to make sense, we must take control of the local level. The cases that come before these judges and magistrates at these levels would really set the national tone.

Finally, let me end this by saying a few more words on international efforts at fighting corruption and how such efforts are likely to complement the people's efforts through the Citizens' Covenant in very crucial ways. It is important for Nigerians to realize that ordinary everyday people have championed the fight against corruption elsewhere and that such landmark achievements as the UN Anti-Corruption Treaty, the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, the OECD and the Council of Europe's anti-corruption laws, etc have come about because of the great work members of civil society everywhere have done. It is time for Nigerians, at home and abroad, to begin to look at this kind of activism and contribute their own quota.

In this regard, special mention must be made of the International Anti-Corruption Conferences whose biennial conferences began in Washington in 1983 and which by the time of the 8th International Anti-Corruption Conference in Lima, Peru in September 1997 had solidly started to fashion a broad strategy against corruption. The Lima Declaration proposed actions on international, regional, national and local levels to fight the disease, including proposals to make prevention and prosecution more effective. By the time of the 9th International Anti-Corruption Conference in Durban two years later, when about 1600 participants from 135 countries had the opportunity to review and assess the progress they've made since Lima, it was obvious that the issue of corruption needs now to take a much more central stage than before, especially with the effects being witnessed in developing countries. The 1999 Durban Commitment To Effective Action Against Corruption not only restated the principles of Lima, but recognized in its Statement the leadership role Nigeria and South Africa must play in the African continent in the fight against the disease. Such conferences, along with The Global Forums On Fighting Corruption, the Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development, the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development and the work of Transparency International amongst others led finally to the United Nations Anti-Corruption Treaty.

The importance of that Treaty for us cannot be over-emphasized. The idea of a Citizens' Covenant is like swimming against the tide and in order to be successful, we need all the support and help we can get from international actions and legislations against corruption. For one, the Treaty makes it more difficult now for corrupt officials to store their loot abroad as there are clear provisions for such loot to be returned to the owner-countries, including provisions for stronger cooperation between countries for prevention and detection of such corrupt proceeds. Against the background of the fact that the issue of repatriation of corrupt money from developed countries had remained unresolved, even as late as at the Second Global Forum in 2001, that the negotiators were able to include such a provision finally in the treaty is a quantum leap. It shows that finally the developed countries now recognize how serious this problem is for developing countries and the need to use an extra-jurisdictional law as the UN treaty to cut out unnecessary bureaucracy and double-standards. But, of course, how such monies are spent would still largely depend on the nature of government in place. It is therefore the duty of citizens to demand accountability and monitor such repatriations. Other provisions relating to the funding of political parties, electronic methods for investigation and asset recovery, law enforcement and criminal justice are areas that would provide us with the right principles to pursue in enforcing or reviewing our domestic laws. In fact, one of such is our immunity laws, which recently was a source of concern to the EFCC. This treaty clearly prohibits statutes of limitation, which means anyone can be tried anytime for corruption. If immunity laws prevent prosecution while in office; out of office, such laws will not protect you as the charges are not time-barred.

It is gratifying to hear Obasanjo announce that Nigeria is "in the leadership of the Anti-Corruption Convention in the UN", but doesn't that stand the risk of ringing hollow in the face of the reality at home? While this is a call for a citizens' action against corruption, one would hope that the Obasanjo-led government finally wakes up to its responsibilities immediately and make things easier for everyone by tackling this disease head-on. Otherwise, the people will have to champion the fight and let the chips fall wherever.