President Buhari will
like his administration to be remembered as the administration that finally
stopped corruption in Nigeria. He is deep into the third year of his government
and where is his much publicized corruption war? Is he winning or losing this fight?
Mr. Obafemi Awolowo, the
former minister of finance under President Gowon was quoted as saying that if
two trees fall in the forest, one on top of the other; that the one on top
needed to be cut up and removed before getting to the one below. Mr. Awolowo
was speaking of the fight against corruption in the 70’s when the military was
supposed to correct the civilian government’s corruption while military
corruption was raging. Of course nobody paid attention to the sage. In the end
neither the former civilian corruption, nor the then recent military corruption
was put to an end. Perhaps because the military was trying to remove the tree
below before getting to the one on top.
Another finance minister
Mrs. Kemi Adeosun either heard of the sage’s advice or dreamed it up herself
and said, that fighting corruption before fixing the system would come to
nothing. Let’s see how PMB’s corruption fight is going.
So far we have been told
that billions of dollars of corrupt money has been recovered. Nobody knows
exactly how much. Nobody knows from whom the recovery was made. Nobody knows
what the recovered money has been used for or where it is banked. One can only
conclude that either no money was recovered or that the money recovered from
Peter has been looted by Paul. The system was not/and is not being fixed. I
pity Mrs. Kemi Adeosun. If Awo with all his charisma and stature was ignored
those of us who thought that Kemi was up to something had/have exaggerated
expectations.
Meanwhile corruption
under PMB is raging much more furiously than even under GEJ or OBJ. We have the
$21 billion case that seems to have been successfully hidden; NNPC
contracts; Dambazzauscandal, we have Maina scandal that would soon be
contained and many, many others such as millions of money all in strong
currencies discovered in an empty house and untraceable.
PMB’s corruption war: quo
vadis?
The short answer is
nowhere. It is all smoke and no fire. No “big man” is in jail after trial; no
“big woman’s” name has been soiled because a large loot was recovered from her.
What we have so far is wild accusations and trial in the media which go on for
a couple of weeks and then dies. Then as PMB’s administration tried to do in
Maina’s case the accused surfaces in a new and bigger role to continue where he
had stopped.
One way for corrupt
officials to avoid prosecution is to declare membership in All Progressive
Alliance (APC). All the suspected hoodlums in PDP are now leaders in APC and
have received ministerial appointments, chairmanships of parastatal, or board
memberships in large corporations with unlimited financial allowances. Smarter
ones have been rewarded with oil blocks. The tree on top has been left alone
and efforts are being made to remove the one below. Awo is nowhere to try to
offer his counsel anymore. And the weak Mrs. Adeosun belongs, like Mrs. Buhari,
in the kitchen and in the bedroom where she provides food and comfort to her
husband. She is not in this administration where she is the token woman.
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