by Dr Baba j Adamu
I
Contact
I
Sept 1, 2015
Corruption in Nigeria
Nigeria,
the largest economy in Africa with over 170million people
and huge oil reserves is still marred with poverty, bad governance and issue of
Credibility due to
widespread corruption.
Nigerians have come to believe that their
government not only condones corruption, but facilitates it.
But the most appalling part of widespread corruption in
Nigeria is the fact that it is no longer limited to
politicians or the public servants; it has become very
common amongst almost every section of the society at every
level both in public and private sectors. It is not only
prevalent amongst the rich but also prevalent amongst the
poor. The fact is that large numbers of Nigerians are now
involved in corrupt practices in one way or the other,
either due to greed, dishonesty, indiscipline or due to the
so called get-rich-quick syndrome.
Corruption can be classified as:
1.
Grand
Corruption
– Where policy makers and public officers in high positions,
in the process of making decisions of significant economic
value, routinely demand bribes or kickbacks for ensuring
that tenders or contracts are awarded to specific
contractors. These occur at financial, political and
administrative centres of power, like total lack of
transparency in the handling of Nigeria’s oil resources or
exactly how much oil income flows into the national coffers.
This is the most dangerous and covert type of corruption.
2.
Political Corruption –
Like the grand corruption, the
use of powers by government officials for illegitimate
private gain in contract awards or allocation. This form of
corruption is also associated with the electoral process to
perpetuate voting irregularities, nepotism and cronyism,
rule of a few, influence peddling, graft, and embezzlement;
paying journalists for favourable coverage of candidates and
parties, influencing voters by the distribution of money,
food or coercion through
kidnapping, murder, violence, etc.
3.
Administrative Corruption –
Bribing of
persons of higher authorities, immigration or
custom officers, police officers, Judges, clerks, nurses,
etc. For example: give money and a blind person can get a
driving license fast and easy.
A bribe demanded by a police officer, bribes
in hospital, courts for a
favourable ruling from a Judge
and other Government offices everywhere for
any kind of facilitation.
4.
Business Corruption -
As a means to accelerate business processes.
In essence, bureaucracy is bypassed in a collusion, in which
both parties co-operate willingly to enter into a
transaction, for example, transactions involving award of
contracts, deal fixing, fiscal concessions, bribery, tax
evasion and accounting irregularities, insider trading,
money laundering, rulings in favour of a party either at the
expense of someone else or by depriving the agency of
revenues from penalties imposed on transgressions, etc.
5.
Professional Corruption
–
Duplicating medicines,
adulteration
of spices and lifesaving medicines including food-stuff such
as milk,
duplicating import and hygienic items, fixing of matches
(games). Service corruption like providing internet
bandwidth of 500Meg instead of 1G or insurance fraud etc.
6.
Petty
Corruption
- Practiced on a smaller scale where a public office is used
for private benefit in the course of delivering a service.
Usually involves relatively small amounts of money,
including bribery (grease money or speed payments). The
public servant abuses his/her position by accepting a
benefit for what is a routine transaction or approval. The
direct victim of this abuse of power is the citizen.
7.
Common Trader Corruption –
Selling of adulterated milk, kerosene and petrol, fake or
expired medicine, putting rotten and smaller tomatoes,
potatoes etc., in the bottom basket while big and nice ones
on top to sell to unsuspecting customers, etc.
8.
Institutional Corruption
- A similar problem of corruption arises in any institution
that depends on financial support from people who have
interests that may conflict with the primary purpose of the
institution. Forced extractions in the form of bribes for
rendering certain services or granting permissions, even of
a routine nature, taking advantage of the plight in which
the supplicant finds himself.
9.
Chaotic Corruption
– A system where there is no clarity regarding whom to bribe
and how much payment should be offered. Or where someone
will come and tell you about a sick mother and demand some
money, a kind of organized fraud to make someone pay money
for whatever reason, etc. There are bribes or gifts as a
product of the tradition under which people have been
brought to keep in good humour with the authority with the
mandate to grant a permission; at times the purpose may not
be to obtain a favour but to simply remain in the good books
of the person carrying the authority to take a decision.
Manifestations of Corruption in Nigeria
As can be deducted from above, corruption,
which can be defined as the abuse of entrusted-power for
private-gain, has manifested itself in every sphere of human
activity in Nigeria such that in every endeavour: economic,
social, political, etc., corruption has become even the
determining factor in the relationship between the people
involved; and thus made Nigeria a corrupt nation.
Nigerians are very good at talking about how
bad the Nigerian economy is due to corruption, the issue of
insecurity and terror activities; the down of Naira etc.,
without tangible solutions. But as long as we do not
transform our words into action, nothing will change. We
often blame government, politicians and other people but
hardly take any responsibility to improve ourselves. We talk
about the corruption, unethical behaviours, crimes, etc.,
but hardly take any action to promote honesty, integrity,
and ethics or to eliminate corruption. Obviously, good and
effective leadership is indispensable to any anti-corruption
crusade. Leadership encompasses various dimensions,
including, political, organizational, professional and
administrative. But the right kind of Leadership is in
place, the next step is for every citizen to do his or her
part. Each and every person has a duty and responsibility to
towards addressing the menace. Therefore, knowing the
process is crucial to addressing it.
Political corruption in particular starts
with siphoning away huge amount of money from the country’s
treasury by public officials, at all levels of government to
various foreign accounts as a result of their selfish
interest. This is partly done through contracts awards and
inflating the cost of the contracts with the consent of both
contractors and public officials of various offices. Little
or no regards were given on the viability of such projects
and little or no effort is being made to monitor and
supervise its completion. In some cases some government
officials like governors have become so crude in corruption
that government funds are deposited in personal Saving
Accounts which accrue interests not to the government but to
the person.
STRATEGIES TO
TACKLE CORRUPTION
The first factor is initial willingness of
the Government to accept the method of change. Corruption is
not easy to mitigate or better still, eradicate. But it can
be done. Obviously the logical effort to tackle corruption
in Nigeria must start with sanitizing the oil industry,
because of its all-pervading effects on other sectors of the
national economy. Bribes paid either to extract favours or
to ensure a level playing field, in keeping with the
traditions of the department involved are relatively
difficult to detect but relatively easy to address by
enlisting sizeable support for reform. It would be
relatively easier to garner support against corruption
involving award of contracts, deal fixing, fiscal
concessions, rulings in favour or forced payments. While
other forms of correction can also be systematically
eliminated through War Against Corruption (WAC) initiative.
This meaningless cancer could be uprooted systematically
through the proposed solutions below.
The three standard methods to tackling
corruption as follows:
1)
Credible Officers
- Since corruption emanates from the top, it can be checked
by putting honest people in position of authority. This
statement, however, begs the obvious question where
Nigerians of integrity can be found. Through merit based
recruitment and reducing the opportunities for indulging in
corrupt practices; by reducing the incentives for public
office, through deregulation and decentralisation of the
economy. All political appointments should be based on merit
and significantly leaner, putting professionally-competent
and well-paid bureaucracy (technocrats) in strategic places
and made to disclose their wealth. Substantial salary
revisions should be able to attract the more educated and
enterprising young men and women into the public sector.
However, their entry into the public domain is more likely
to improve productivity and efficiency, a commodity also in
desperately short supply in the public sector, though its
impact on the level of corruption is likely to be marginal,
without strong accountability mechanism. This call for
introduction of transparency, the practice of exercising
discretionary powers frequently and with impunity, without
fear of accountability, will be automatically curtailed. A
beginning in this direction will have to be made by first
reforming the economy just like in China, and at the same
time reforming the political process. This is to identify
areas where control of corruption will be relatively easiest
and the gains will be higher, especially in economic and
political terms. Some of the obvious proposals in this
regard would be the following: Detection, Sanctions and
Restitutions.
2)
War Against Corruption (WAC) –
WAC strategic method of implementation can,
in its most basic outline be summarized as three basic
methods: Detection, Sanctions and Restitutions.
i.
Detection
– First, identification, selection; training, education and
mobilization of a new group of just 360 WAC Specialists
(10 person from each of the 36 States and must represent the
whole tribes of the country). They should be trained and
educated on a variety of anti-corruption initiatives
(disclosure, monitoring, reporting), detection and
prevention necessary for all aspects of anti-corruption
initiatives. Even though they are the only group, they will
be told that there are groups like them all over the country
being trained at the same time. Even media will be such
informed. They will have single channel of communication and
reporting taking advantage of ICT, and will swear to
secrecy. Some of them may already be working in MDAs while
some could come from the general public. They would be
trained such that all they have to do is to report any
corrupt activity they see. They would told that a co-worker,
a contractor even a friend may have been planted to watch
their action, so their response/action will be monitored on
an ongoing bases. They should focus on one of the government
institution one after the other on a block basis.
ii.
Sanctions
- Secondly, a second group of 360 WAC
Monitoring & Evaluation
are to be created and
allowed to supplement the efforts of the previous group, and
create new support mechanisms, none of which should
interfere with the efforts of the first specialists but only
check them. As should be clear, two-hungers strategy should
be designed as a supplementary strategy (the groups are
aware of their existence but unaware of each other). As
such, it should enhance (rather than conflict with) most of
the plans. In sending out this new force of curtailment of
corruption, we prepare them into a life and death battle
equipped with government support and into most restrictive
government institutions, either giving them an appointment
(at all levels) to watch what goes on, appearing as
soliciting for contracts, or just as ordinary citizen
seeking for some information etc. Clearly, God’s grace is
sufficient to pursue the radical reform. But the government
also need to be good stewards. To this end it must maximize
the effectiveness of the WAC Teams by massive media campaign
in spreading even a trivial disclosure of an act of
corruption and quickly give appropriate sanctions and
systematically relegate or discharge the perpetrators. As
with any battle, the outcome will be influenced by a number
of factors. We shall eventually reach a stage where even if
one is offered a bribe, he may think the one offering is an
agent so will decline. Even the one offering will fear to
offer as the one being offered may be an agent. Contractors
will be scared to even make an offer, and high-placed
officers will be afraid to demand bribe or diversion of
funds as the contractor may be an agent. Sanity will
gradually start coming back to everywhere. Results-based
management (RBM) will sustain the strategy too much to
present in this write-up. But to help develop an
understanding of the overall strategy, there is the need to
see it within a broader context of RBM in the following: a
philosophy, practice, management strategy, management
information system, and the guiding force to planning and
implementation. Example, why is it that an American will
stop at a road cross-section Red Light in the night when no
cars are coming from each end and nobody around? Simple, for
fear someone (Police) or something (CCTV Camera) is watching
him. Or give and take bribe, because you can go to jail by
offering or taking bribe to provide public service.
iii.
Restitutions
- Corruption is an instrument of economic criminality, it
interferes with economic growth, generates inequities and
erodes government credibility and the efficient functioning
of state institutions. Corruption increases the cost of
business through the price of illicit payments, it generates
economic distortion in the public
sector by
diverting public investment into capital projects where
bribes and kickbacks are
more plentiful and has primarily taken the form of rent
extraction with
the resulting financial
capital moved
overseas rather than invested at home. Therefore any form of
its prevention by a person or company should be followed by
incentives such as compensations.
3.
Legal Instruments
- Since certain legal instruments are already in place to
enable unfettered corruption detection, arraignment and
conviction like the established Independent Corrupt
Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as well as
the Code of Conduct Bureau and its Tribunal is a laudable
start on the war against corruption. The other job of
sensitizing the nation on the WAC Strategy should be carried
out by all media but most especially by the National
Orientation Agency (NOA) as well as the Federal and State
Ministries of Information. This could take the form of well
tested public enlightenment techniques such as the use of
hand bills, public posters, print media adverts and Radio
and TV jingles. At the same time, the citizenry must be made
aware of the stiff penalties that await those to be found
engaged in corrupt practices at all levels. The NOA should
expand its “Due the Right” campaign to include War Against
Indiscipline (WAI), because lack of discipline is what has
led to widespread corruption at all levels. World
Anti-Corruption Day, 9 December, marks the UN Convention
Against Corruption signed in 2003 - the first global
anti-corruption agreement. It is hereby recommended that
government should start planning now to launce WAC
Initiatives on Dec 9, 2015.
Finally I would like us to remember that, we
Nigerians face great challenges. On the surface, there are
communities that would prefer to separate, rather than share
a country. There is a strong minority that fears
marginalization and its distinctive culture overwhelmed.
There is unfair struggle for power. There is a rich resource
base, and a sense of great potential waiting to be realized,
and serious disparities exist among the regions. The once
“great Nigeria’ appears to be drifting further apart. Yet, I
have not seen a single issue of substance that is
insurmountable. Though some will disagree with me, but the
fact remains that I have seen NONE whatsoever. I have been
privileged to look at the Nigerian public and private life
from outside (spent over 22 years abroad) from across Europe
up to North America, and having come back home, been into
most part of Nigeria where I met, talked and listened to
thousands of Nigerians from across the board. Throughout
that experience, I have not met one single person who
proclaims that there are irreconcilable differences in
Nigeria. There are, of course, different views about the
appropriate power of the government, or the appropriate role
of the government, or this right and those rights, or Senate
this and that, President this and that or a thousand other
important issues. Even those that advocate for separation
eventually say that we have more to benefit from working
together under one Nigeria. In my judgement, many of these
issues, such as those mentioned above, and the issue of
national reconciliation are urgent and cannot simply be
ignored. They are real issues, and by God not unsolvable.
None of this issue is so fundamental that it should cause a
country to fail; particularly a country that, by any
objective standard, deserves the best for it has the best.
Nor does the sum of those differences warrant breaking up
the country that has so much in common, so much to gain from
our differences
Successful countries today, were those whose
citizens, at one time or the other, under strong leadership,
rose above personal, sectional, political or religious
differences and worked together to build a viable nation in
order to guarantee the welfare of its citizens. It is on
this note that I believe with the present spirit of change
and young spirited Nigerians at home and from the Diaspora
and their commitment to a better Nigeria, and
anti-corruption crusade of President Muhammadu Buhari, that
we shall succeed where others have failed and Nigeria will
again rise up to its prominence, the one true Great Nigeria.