Anybody who thinks that, under
Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution, any government, party or president can eradicate
corruption is like a man who expects a worm to give birth to a lion, or who
wants to go to heaven but doesn’t want to die.
If Nigerians are at all serious in
their endless noisemaking against corruption, they must, as a first step, get
rid of their 1999 Constitution. Anybody who is claiming he can end corruption
but who isn’t campaigning to get rid of the 1999 Constitution is a fraud.
But Nigerians are not serious. First of
all, they love what they call corruption, they became addicted to it right from
the 1950s. They want to loot and squander, that’s why they don’t really want
corruption tackled. Secondly, they love their noisemaking against it. If
“corruption” was eliminated, they would lose their favorite topic for
complaining. In this matter of denouncing corruption, Nigerians are like a rich
hypochondriac who is addicted to his symptoms and to the attention he gets
because of his condition, and doesn’t want it cured. He refuses to go for the
diagnostic tests that can determine the cause of his symptoms so it can be
treated. Instead he keeps going from one quack doctor to another, each of whom
claims to have the magic cure for his condition. Of course all that each wants
is to get at his money and take his share and run. So each denounces his
predecessor and gets his chance until the next quack doctor displaces him, and
he leaves the patient uncured and even worse, and the hypochondriac is happy
that his symptoms are still with him.
Which coup maker in the past 50 years
hasn’t claimed he has come to get rid of corruption only to get even more
corrupt than those he threw out? Which presidential candidate hasn’t claimed
the same intention and ability only to fail when he got into office? Why has
that been so? There are three main reasons why that has been so since 1999:
*Nigeria's Rulers:
Past and Present
First of all, Nigerian politics is just
a system of organized crime. As I pointed out in 2010 in myBusiness Day column, “Black
colonialists: the root of the trouble with Africa (9)”:
We need to recognize
that when the objective or activity of a formal organized association is a
crime, the association is a crime syndicate or mafia; its activity is
racketeering or organized crime; its members are mobsters/gangsters. Since the
crime of looting the treasury is now the primary objective in Nigerian
politics, by these standard definitions, the 50 odd registered political
parties in Nigeria are mafias or crime syndicates racketeering to loot public
funds; their members are nothing but mobsters. Incidentally, if the
RICO Act of the USA were to be enforced in Nigeria, every member of every
registered political party, from OBJ down, and every member of the bureaucracy,
would be serving long jail terms for racketeering: engaging in criminal activity as a structured group. In fact,
Nigerian politics is just organized crime, with the assassinations—gangland
slayings—that go with that. As a result the Nigerian political lexicon is full
of misnomers:
Corruption = euphemism for
looting/plundering the public treasury;
Politics = misnomer for organized
crime/ racketeering to loot the treasury;
Political party = misnomer for a crime
syndicate/mafia organized to loot the treasury;
Politician = misnomer for mobster, a
member of a crime syndicate.
And the funny thing is that what, in
the USA would be prosecuted as racketeering or organized crime, in Nigeria is
hailed as “our nascent democracy”. That was published in 2010.
Secondly, the 1999 Constitution has
entrenched and institutionalized lootocracy. The constitution, by its so-called
security vote together with its immunity clause for the top office holders,
effectively invites them to loot with impunity. And what the top officers of
the state do, their subordinates emulate.
As I pointed out during the National Dialogue, in The
Guardian of 06 November 2013, in my piece “Four reasons to
scrap 1999 Constitution”, the 1999 Constitution is the godfather of
corruption, through the immunity clause 308 which protects, and thereby
implicitly invites, looting by the highest officials who have brazenly set the
terrible example that the rest of society have emulated. However, it
ostentatiously declares in Section 15. (5) that ‘The State shall abolish all
corrupt practices and abuse of power’, thus giving the false impression that it
is for fighting corruption. But it then surreptitiously annuls Section 15(5) by
its ouster clause (See fraud No.4). It is a fraud for the godfather of
corruption to give the impression that it is against corruption, and the fraud
is compounded when it empowers the state to fight corruption but then
surreptitiously discourages it from doing so. That’s double duplicity!
Because of this fraud, which makes non
justiciable its provision that “The State shall abolish all corrupt practices
and abuse of power”, nobody, so long as we have that constitution, can end
lootocracy.
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Thirdly, that fraud aside, the cost of
seeking office under the system created by the 1999 Constitution is so
high that only looters or those sponsored by and beholden to looters
(godfathers) can seek election to any public office at any level—LGA, state, or
federal . And Nigerians expect them to end looting when they are elected! You
got to be out of your mind or just fooling yourself.
Given that the Constitution has
entrenched and institutionalized lootocracy by these devices, if a
president--who is sworn to uphold the constitution--attempts to fight
lootocracy, he would be breaking his oath of office.
The fact of life is that Nigerians live
by “corruption”, they grow rich by “corruption”, or aspire to do so whenever
they get the opportunity. At donation time, they celebrate the looters who
donate to their cause. And, contradictorily, they can’t do without the pleasure
of complaining about “corruption”. That daily ritual is part of their daily
entertainment. For these reasons, in Nigeria, any anti-corruption talk is
either a joke or a scam.
As far as the political charade is
concerned, anybody who wants to get into office and loot the State knows that
the way to excite and dupe the people is to pose as an anti-corruption fighter.
But when he gets there, as he already knows, he can’t do anything about it
because the constitution has entrenched and given protection to “corruption”.
The tragedy is that even those who want
a True Federalism Constitution, TFC, didn’t do enough, especially during the
National Dialogue, to make the 1999 Constitution the main issue in the public
mind. So, “corruption” continues to obsess the public, and regardless of who
Jega’s INEC proclaims the winner, the lootocracy is safe, and the looting will
go on, and on and on, and so too the clamor against “corruption”, until
Nigerians get tired of the charade and face the reality that the 1999
Constitution must be removed as the first step if lootcracy is to be tamed.
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Nigerians have showed no interest in a
diagnosis of their so-called corruption problem and so have no clue as to its
cure. Now again in2015 we have the same old charade. Everybody is shouting
against corruption. But no candidate, whether Jonathan or Buhari or anybody
else; and no party, whether PDP or APC or whatever else, can end “corruption”
in Nigeria under the 1999 Constitution.
Now, people who want to go to heaven
but don’t want to die, usually get trapped in hell on earth. And that is where
Nigerians have trapped themselves, in their hell on earth of a country. If they
want to get out of their hell, they must first get rid of the 1999 Constitution
by any means necessary.
*26 January 2015
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