The optimistic,
overconfident Nigerian who offered me a “no shaking yes” to both questions was
only able to do so because he successfully outed me as I tried to remain
incognito and maintain a low profile at the hotel pool in Lagos. Retreating
incognito to a joint to assess matters about the polity.
This time in the holiday season of
2016, I was alone in a secluded corner of the poolside, trying not to look like
me. I didn’t want the burden of public recognition which often ruins my
attempts at privacy in Nigeria.
It was evening and my niche
on the poolside terrace was poorly-lit, increasing my chances of an
uninterrupted time to unwind alone. On the table, in front of me, a
half-finished big bottle of Orijin was trying unsuccessfully to help a bowl of
nkwobi down my throat. I thought that the bottle was doing a poor job of
accompaniment and blamed myself for believing that only one bottle could
successfully accomplish the task of helping the nkwobi to its final resting
place in my gut.
I decided that the
unsuccessful bottle would need help from at least two more bottles to guarantee
the nkwobi’s funeral. I was about to order the reinforcement when I heard
shrieks of excitement at the other end of the pool.
“Abi my eyes dey deceive
me? No be I dey see yonder so?” My cover was blown. He was
yelling in excitement, talking to everybody and nobody in particular, pointing
at me. “Ah, it’s Prof o. I can’t believe this! Waiter, waiter, oya, bring my
things, I am going to join Prof.”
By now he had reached my
table, grabbed my hands in a ferocious handshake. I stood up and gave him a
bear hug and we sat down to a familiar story: of how he had been reading me for
over a decade; of how he had always prayed that he would meet me; of how much
he admires the work we do; of the need for us to ignore naysayers and
detractors; of Nigeria.
I listened with rapt
attention, interjecting as appropriate to agree with him, keeping everything in
a Pidgin laced with contemporary Nigerianisms and ijinle slangs.
“Ah, Prof, I can’t believe
you still talk like this after so many years abroad. This is what I’ve been
saying. You are not like some of our yeye people who will spend two months
abroad and go begin dey yarn fone through the nose.”
Then he appeared to notice
what was on the table for the first time. “Ah, Prof, no be nkwobi you dey
whack here so? And Orijin? Prof, you sef dey follow us quaff Orijin? Waiter!!!
Waiter!!! Oya, bring more nkwobi for Prof and two bottles of Orijin.”
I protested vehemently and
insisted I should be the one ordering him peppersoup and drinks. I was taking a
dangerous gambit. Given Nigeria’s abysmal economic downturn, especially the
economic doldrums supervised by President Buhari, the cultural schema of
refusing hospitality and offering to pay for it, expecting the initiator of
that social contract to insist on paying, no longer works.
Luckily for my pocket, he
stood his ground and insisted on paying for the orders. At this point, I
confessed that I was about adding two bottles of Orijin to the tally when he
recognized and hailed me.
We returned to Nigeriana.
Like every Nigerian I know, he’s had it with Nigeria. Like every Nigerian I
know, he is fed up with the Nigerian tragedy. He gives the standard speech: the
failures of Nigeria; the trauma that is Nigeria; the self-inflicted wounds; the
avoidable tragedies; and, of course, corruption.
Like every Nigerian, he
knows about or had heard stories of corruption that are much worse than the
worstcase scenario you know. Whatever you think you have heard about Nigeria’s
corruption is always child’s play compared to what every other Nigerian has
seen or heard.
If you go to town with the
story of a Governor who just stole 20 billion naira, the first Nigerian you
encounter has only just read somewhere that a Minister stole 20 trillion naira.
Thus it was that my new friend dismissed every story I had to tell with,
“shior, Prof, na dat one you dey call corruption? Dat one no be corruption now.
Prof, you never hear say…” And he would regale me with the latest dizzying
figures of heists by members of Nigeria’s political leadership.
And he moaned. And he
lamented. Things took an interesting turn here. He said he had identified
Nigeria’s problem: wickedness and greed. Corruption, he stated, is attributable
to the unquenchable greed and wickedness of Nigerians. If only every Nigerian
was like him, he continued, corruption would become a thing of the past.
Nigeria, he concluded, will overcome corruption when those who are content with
the deserved fruits of their labour outnumber the wicked and the greedy.
He returned again and again
to the theme of his own righteousness. What Nigeria needs are more people like
himself. That is why he admires my writing. That is why my Facebook Wall is a
daily ritual for him. That is why he is in awe of Omoyele Sowore and Sahara
Reporters. On and on he went.
I was intrigued by the
thesis of his righteousness - the basis of his assurance that Nigeria can
survive and overcome corruption. I realized that he still hadn’t even properly
introduced himself. We had hugged and exchanged banter. He had ordered me
nkwobi and two bottles of Orijin. He was by all accounts now part of my socius
yet I still had no idea who he was. I love Africa! I deftly nudged the
conversation in the direction of his identity.
As it turns out, he was
with one of the numerous uniformed corps which litter Nigeria’s land borders.
To enter Nigeria through any of her land borders – but most especially Seme –
is to encounter a maze of uniforms processing you through an extremely long
pipeline of corruption. Immigration passes you on to Customs who passes you on
to NDLEA who passes you on to SON who passes you on to the Police who passes
you on to the Army who passes you on to FRSC who passes you on to LASTMA.
Repeat process several times till you get to Lagos.
It is absolutely possible
for immigration to check you for drugs while NDLEA tries to see if your
passport is stamped. It is possible for FRSC to check you for smuggling while
Customs tries to determine whether you are speeding.
My interlocutor works for
one of Nigeria’s uniformed border nightmares. What he sees there daily is the
basis of his exceptional righteousness. With considerable pain in his eyes, he
told me stories of wickedness and greed; of the terrible things allowed into
Nigeria daily after bribery – expired drugs, expired tires, and all sorts of
goods long past expiry date.
“Prof, people do this
because they want to own ten jeeps and five mansions in Lekki and another five
mansions in Maitama. You will allow somebody to smuggle tires that expired five
years ago. You will allow somebody to smuggle drugs that expired five years
ago. I don’t understand it. Prof, look at me, I have only two houses in this
Lagos. We live in a duplex in Magodo. Then we have another house that we rent
out. I have two jeeps and my wife drives a Venza. That is it. We are satisfied.
Even God does not like ojukokoro."
He continued: "Left to
me, anything that is more than one year past expiry date will never enter, but
how can you say that to all our rotten Ogas at the top? They are the greedy
ones. They are the wicked ones. So many times, I have risked my neck and job
trying to say that we should not allow certain categories of goods that are
more than two years past expiry date to be smuggled into the country but nobody
listens.”
By this time, my mind had
overcome the effect of alcohol and was now quite alert. Before me was sitting
the summation of Nigeria’s unsolvable dilemma of corruption. Such are the
layers and the encrustations that it is no longer possible for a morality of
zero corruption to be the basis of national self-imagining.
Thus, the righteous
Nigerian is not the Nigerian who is not corrupt but one who still has a
sufficient moral clarity to be alarmed by and be resentful of any corruption
superior to his. Given this dynamic, overcoming corruption, in the
understanding of way too many of our citizens, means minimizing and bringing it
down to one’s level of rationalized individual corruption.
One major reason which
accounts for the intractable nature of corruption in Nigeria is that we pay
scant attention to its rationality in our national experience. Why is the sort
of individual corruption described above rational?
I am talking about the
rational, considerate, and compassionate corruption which allows drugs and
tires only one or two years past expiration to be smuggled into Nigeria, unlike
the wicked corruption which allows products up to five years past expiration to
be smuggled. I am talking about the corruption which is content with accepting
just enough bribes at the border to be able to afford a standard Western middle
class life – one residential house, one rental property, two or three cars – as
opposed to the wicked and unacceptable corruption which must have twenty
mansions and twenty jeeps scattered between Lagos and Abuja.
What provides the
rationality and legitimacy of the first kind of small-scale individual
corruption in our national experience? It would be a simplistic mistake to
attribute it singularly to Nigeria’s ontological unfairness. It is true that
Nigeria is ontologically unfair by which I mean that there is no conceivable
way to survive on an honest wage. In this case, corruption is the singular
means of survival. Once your nose supplies your share of the oxygen required
for life, only corruption can sustain it in your body to keep you alive.
Does this ontological
unfairness account for the rationality of corruption? It explains but does not account
for it. What accounts for it is the death of symbolism in Nigeria’s national
life – starting with its centres of power.
The sort of corruption
which is rational can only be made irrational in the life of a nation and
people when it confronts symbolism. If Nigeria had any chance to effectively
confront the rationality of corruption, it was with the potential symbolism of
President Buhari when he was elected.
A few symbolic steps,
never-before-seen in Nigeria’s orbit of power were required of him. No Nigerian
in power has ever accounted for or retired campaign funds. Retirement of his
funds – I am not even sure that many of our citizens understand what it means
to retire campaign funds because it has never been part of their civic
experience – would have been a first in our history.
It would have meant a
thorough auditing of his campaign fund raising and expenses with the attendant
transparency of Nigerians knowing who funded the campaign. It would have meant
a return of whatever was left to the party treasury to fund future campaigns.
It would have implied other things that we need not go into here. Beyond
campaign funds, beyond the Presidential fleet that he has immorally and
amorally refused to reduce, we do not need to go into President Buhari’s
extensive library of failed symbolism and failure to launch. His hostility to
symbolism has had tragic consequences by not only undoing his anti-corruption
war but also enhancing the rationality of corruption.
One such consequence is the
way in which the work of the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption
(PACAC) is failing to eventuate in any drastic systemic changes. You cannot do
better than Professors Itse Sagay and Bolaji Owasanoye. They are among
Nigeria’s very best. And they and their colleagues are deploying unmatchable
genius and innovation to provide a thoroughgoing national canvass for fighting
corruption.
I was privileged to attend
one of their brainstorming sessions in Abuja in the summer of 2016. It was a
rich session, with so many brilliant ideas flying across the room.
However, I did warn the
committee that the most brilliant idea, the most solid willpower on their part,
still depends entirely on the willingness of the President to facilitate their
work with symbolism. Without symbolic acts from the President, it will be
impossible to reverse the rationality of corruption. For instance, a Director
from the Federal Ministry of Information, who represented Lai Mohammed at the
meeting, opined that to successfully combat corruption, the media must help the
nation’s anti-corruption war with investigative journalism!
I couldn’t believe my ears.
I reminded the Director that in our recent memory, Sahara Reporters, Premium
Times and the defunct NEXT Newspapers – not to mention The Cable – all built
their reputation almost exclusively on investigative journalism in the arena of
corruption. Tolu Ogunlesi was in the room and I mentioned him as one of those
rendered jobless when NEXT folded up due to a combination of factors ranging from
poor management to hostility to its relentless investigative exposes into
corruption under Goodluck Jonathan. President Jonathan even went on air to
declare that newspaper an enemy.
What President Buhari
lacks, I opined, is not help from investigative news media. Rather, it is the
will to shift the paradigm with symbolic acts. President Jonathan greeted every
investigative scoop into corruption around him with his trade mark, “I don’t
give a damn”. President Buhari’s handling of the plethora of investigative
scoops on the festering corruption of his lieutenants even makes the response
of his predecessor sound like a responsible answer.
At least his predecessor
said he didn’t give a damn. Sahara Reporters has been screaming about the fetid
and mammoth corruption of Abba Kyari, Dambazzau, Buratai and a host of other
Buhari lieutenants and the President’s answer has been something like silence
is the best answer for a fool. Who is going to buy into PACAC’s splendid work
when, at every turn, the President who empanelled them pulls the rug from under
their feet and shreds it with his poverty of symbolism?
This lack of symbolism,
this lack of change, has other consequences. When the incumbent fails to supply
the symbolism needed to unravel the rational bases of the corruption of the
moment, the corruption of the past begins to acquire its own logic of
rationality in the hands of witting and unwitting revisionists.
You would have noticed by
now that Dasuki has lost its capacity to shock – despite the daily revelations
which have continued to drip. You would have noticed that despite the
admissions of the key players in the Jonathan corruption industry – Diezani,
Fayose, FFK, and the military officers facing trial – a space of rationality
has been carved out to defend and make meaning of that plunder. I even recently
read a “brilliant” expose saying that anybody who believes the Diezani heist
figures must be sick.
Past corruption builds its
rationality on the symbolic poverty of the incumbent. Those who betray the
present do the most damage because they enable a rationality in which the past
begins to appear to be not as bad as people had thought. And in the hands of
brilliant revisionists and masters of discursive sleights of hand, the past can
become really attractive.
This revisionist imperative
is what is going on when you read essays stating, “Jonathan never did; or
Jonathan never said; or Jonathan never promised…” Don’t worry. If you dig into
the archives, you will discover that Jonathan did or said or promised precisely
what the author is denying. Buhari’s failures and betrayals of the people’s
trust are the enablers of the revisionist impulse through which past corruption
acquires rationality.
This is not limited to the
Buhari-Jonathan dynamic. Just as President Buhari’s tragic failure has opened a
window of rationality for the behemoth corruption supervised by Jonathan,
Jonathan’s own failures also provided the window through which former President
Obasanjo’s empire of corruption acquired rationality.
Because Jonathan failed on
the symbolism front during his own time, President Obasanjo who spent $16
billion on darkness, supervised Halliburton and Siemens, spent billions trying
to buy NASS for his third term gamble, and exited Aso Rock as one of Africa’s
richest men, is today strutting around the country chastising Jonathan and
Buhari and giving lectures on corruption.
From the foregoing, it
should be obvious that fighting corruption is but one small step of a huge
journey. Addressing the modes of its acquisition of rationality is a more
significant step. This acquisition of rationality is a function of the supply
of symbolism – or lack thereof – by the incumbent.
President Buhari is again
in London on a medical safari at public expense. His staff also jaunt to London
for toothache at public expense. Given this reality, how am I supposed to deny
a righteous Nigerian the rationality of his own individual corruption at a
poolside in Lagos? I have no moral basis to do this because there is no
symbolism from the top.
But I have a pragmatic
basis to appeal to the righteous Nigerian to resist the temptation of using the
symbolic failures of the buccaneers in the 1% as the rationalising alibi for
his own individual corruption. President Buhari and members of the political
class have no stake in Nigeria. Your Pastors and Imams have no stake in
Nigeria. Their children are not in Nigeria. The bulk of their property is
scattered from Dubai to New York via London.
When unbridled corruption
sinks Nigeria, there will be no democracy of consequences. The tragedy will be
borne exclusively by the 99%, not the 1%. The Yoruba say that when the sky
falls, it is everybody’s burden. That does not apply to Nigeria’s liabilities.
Those who stole billions and trillions will disappear overseas with their
children.
You, stealing crumbs to
survive and using the mega-corruption of the one percenters to rationalize your
own individual corruption, have no place to go. The consequences of Nigeria’s
unraveling will be borne by you and your children. It therefore behoves you to
identify with any of the nascent values movements in the country.
The build-up towards 2019
is not singularly about politics. Beyond politics, there are energies being
mobilized towards a renaissance of values by those who look at the bigger
picture beyond 2019 and understand that the practice of democracy every four
years will always be consumed by the rationality of corruption until we fight
and win other wars on other fronts – notably the values front.
By Pius Adesanmi
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