Most Nigerians accept that President Muhammadu Buhari has all it takes to conduct a campaign against corruption in Nigeria. Their misgiving is that the President has not made it a point of duty to get his friends, his party, his cabinet and advisers and his associates to support him.
|The President holds at least three crucial positions of authority in Nigeria. He is the President of the Federal Republic by virtue of which he leads the government. He is also the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces, he packs a punch as the spear and armour of the nation. He is also the leader of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), which holds the greatest number of seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives. His most important position is probably the unwritten title of ‘father of the nation.’ Yet the most compelling title he possesses is “moral leader” of the nation.
If President Buhari cannot successfully wage a war on corruption, it is doubtful who else can. Friends and foes concede to him a level of integrity that goes beyond the general level. This is why the damning figures published last week by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) should be a wakeup call not only for the President but also his party, associates and supporters. The National Corruption Report is probably the first of its kind. In addition to having the imprimatur of the NBS, it was prepared in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The report noted that 82.3 million bribes were paid within the one year period covered by the report, which tallies with the one year of the Buhari administration. The bribes when analysed came to be an average of one bribe per every adult per year. The bribes amounted to about N400 billion or the equivalent of $4.6 billion.
The average sum of bribes paid was put at approximately N5,300 or in dollar terms $61.. It also discovered that 92 per cent of the bribes were paid in cash and were initiated by public officials and 70 per cent were paid before any service was rendered. “With such a large portion of public officials initiating bribes, which are paid up front, it seems that many public officials show little hesitation in asking for a kickback to carry out their duty and that bribery is an established part of the administrative procedure in Nigeria.”
“Police officers are also among the three types of public officials to whom bribes are paid most frequently in Nigeria At the same time the average bribe paid to police officers is somewhat below the average bribe size…The judiciary officials collect the second highest amount of bribes, prosecutors, closely followed by judges and magistrates. Other public officials with a high risk of bribery, according to the report, are car registration/driving licence officers (28.5 per cent); tax and customs officers (27.3 per cent); and traffic management officials (25.5 per cent); public utilities officers (22.4 per cent); and land registry officers (20.9 per cent).”
The NBS deserves congratulation for the report. Nigerians should hope that it should become an annual report, which would contain further breakdowns of the bribes and other kinds of illegal payments to racketeers and gangs, which could not be accommodated in the current report. NBS has done the country a favour. It is beginning to develop some data on which the government should base its actions and initiatives. Above all, its figures are completely believable. Never mind the denials of the Police, which are expected but must be discountenanced. The vociferous denial from the judiciary is to be expected. It is in the nature of Nigerians to deny, deny, and deny until the figures catch up with them. The bribes to judges are assessed in millions of Naira, the report concerning the judiciary sounds about right.
Now these bribes can be stopped if the President takes the issue seriously, invests some effort, and enlists Nigerians in the cause. It does him little credit that the war on corruption is a three-man fight of President Buhari, Vice-president Yemi Osinbajo and Senator Shehu Sani. These are the three eminent Nigerians on whom the country can completely trust because they had the courage and the sincerity to declare their assets publicly. Nigerians would hold President Buhari wholly responsible if the fight against corruption fails because they think he has not put in enough effort in the struggle.
How can it be that only three men in government could declare their assets publicly? The question is: where are the ministers in the president’s cabinet, could he not even persuade them to declare their assets publicly? The conventional test of the leader is: look at your back. Why is no one following Buhari and his vice-president except the virtuous Shehu Sani? Should Nigerians conclude, therefore, that the president is unable to persuade even members of his cabinet to follow his example? Why should Nigerians follow a leader who could not even persuade members of his own cabinet? Or his own party members?
Where are the APC ideologues? How are they going to explain their utter opposition to the fight against corruption? The greatest opposition against the fight is from the APC leaders in the Senate and the House of Representatives. How is the APC going to claim any distinction from the defeated Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) when in 2019 the APC wants to be re-elected? As things stand now, Nigerians do not see any difference between those two parties in any practical way. On the contrary what they see is a grand conspiracy to loot the country.
A journalist who said the police were persecuting him was reported last week in the papers to have paid the police a N71,000 bribe for his bail. This, after months of Police campaigns that ‘bail is free.’ If bail is truly free, the Police should set up an independent outfit outside police control where anyone who paid money for bail could lodge a complaint. It should be a good faith unit to reassure the public. Bribery can end in the acquisition of driving licence if it can be obtained within a deadline. Bribery would be reduced if the Customs service enables customers to pay online. Road traffic bribes might be reduced if the seizure of drivers’ licences and motor vehicle documentation is outlawed and replaced by citations. The report made no mention of the Nigerian Immigration Service where a steady bribery racket goes on over Nigerian passports. Unless there is a deadline, bribery will continue. Bribery and corruption surrounds the Nigerian firmament the way air envelops the earth and unless leaders put the required effort to counter it, Nigerians would continue to read reports like last week’s as a way of life.