Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance Jide Ojo ii Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance ISBN NO: 978-978-975-620-9 @ Jide Ojo 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. First published 2019 For enquiries: [email protected] Printed by Legacy Company/Publishing & Multimedia Co. Ltd. For: Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) iii Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance Preface T his book, “Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance” is one of the project activities I am implementing under the Anticorruption and Accountability Project being coordinated by the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) Kano, with funding support from MacArthur Foundation, Nigeria. There is no gainsaying that opacity in governance promotes corruption and as such all means must be explored towards achieving greater transparency to promote good governance. While legal means, such as arrests and the prosecution of corrupt leaders may be pursued as means of deterrence, civic engagement and education, through informed commentary, news analysis and sensitisation of the public also play key roles in the fight against corruption and bad governance. Hence, this book is my modest contribution to the public discourse on how to find lasting solutions to the nagging challenges of corruption and the lack of accountability in our politics, elections and governance. This volume is my third book. The first, published in 2010 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of my media advocacy, was entitled, “Nigeria, My Nigeria: Perspectives from 1990 – 2010.” The second, published in 2016, goes by the title of, “A Nation in Tow: Essays on Governance and Leadership in Nigeria.” Although this is a compilation of selected articles already published in some Nigerian national newspapers from 2015 to date, these 60 carefully selected articles are in tune with the thematic focus of the project, under which the publication is being funded – issues of anti-corruption and accountability. iv Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance This book contains seven chapters. Chapter One is on ‘Anticorruption’, Chapter Two focuses on ‘Politics’, Chapter Three is on ‘Election’, while Chapter Four dwells on the ‘Governance’. Chapter Five is on ‘Economy’, Chapter Six focuses on ‘Education’, while the last, Chapter Seven, is on ‘Labour’. As earlier mentioned, there is a common thread which runs through all the selected articles that have made it into this book, which is that they speak directly or indirectly to anti-corruption and accountability issues. This book, supported by MacArthur Foundation, will be in soft and print copies and will be distributed globally for free. Print copies will be sent to government agencies, tertiary institutions, public libraries, and would also be shared among members of the public. For feedback, tweet at me @jideojong or email me at [email protected] Jide Ojo May 2019 v Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance Dedication vi Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance Table of Contents Preface …………………………………………….….……..……iii Dedication…………………….…………………………………….v Table of Contents…………………………………………….…..…vi Foreward………………………………………..……….…………vii Acknowledgements…………………….….…………...........……..xi About the Author……………………………………..……….….xiii CHAPTER ONE The Anti-corruption Struggle…………..…………………………..1 CHAPTER TWO Politics……………………………………………….….…...…….30 CHAPTER THREE Election………………………………………………………..…..56 CHAPTER FOUR Governance………………………………………………..…...…107 CHAPTER FIVE Economy………………………………………………….…..…..156 CHAPTER SIX Education…………………………...…………………………….192 CHAPTER SEVEN Labour…………………………………………………..….……208 vii Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance Foreward T here is a consensus among Nigerians that corruption is a major problem. In fact, President Buhari puts it well when he averred that we have to kill corruption or else it will kill the country. It has indeed, been killing the country, and not just metaphorically. Resources that should go into social services or that can finance infrastructure development to transform the economy and the country are looted by government officials (politicians and civil servants) and private sector actors. Social services such as education and healthcare have been compromised. Institutions that should help punish corruption such as the judiciary, the police and other law enforcement agencies are themselves mired in corruption. In this context, corruption has been normalized and institutionalized such that when in the few exceptional cases public officials perform with probity, they are seen as abnormal, threat to the functioning of the system. At best they are subjected to derision but often they suffer, including in some cases, paying with their dear life. In this situation, writers and journalists have very important duty to perform for the good of the country. First, they need to amplify the voices demanding for accountability, transparency and combating corruption. Second, they should contribute in enabling citizens’ structures and processes for holding public officials accountable. But the voice of the citizens is not only feeble but also incoherent as they cannot make head or tail about the narrative of the corruption they hear. For journalists therefore to amplify their voices, they have to also help in creating the voice. This they can do by demystifying corruption and make it more real in its impact on the lives of ordinary people. viii Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance Most narrative about exposing corruption appears too abstract for the people to comprehend and make sense of. What they keep hearing are that billions are looted from the national or state treasury. For example, how does an ordinary person make sense of the statement “The nation is being saved N24.7bn monthly with the full implementation of the TSA” or “The elimination of ‘ghost workers’ has saved the nation N120bn”? Ok, N120bn had been saved, but how does this impact directly to problems that the ordinary persons suffer? Ordinary people don’t even know where these treasuries are. Corruption as figure means nothing because they cannot make sense of what these stupendous amounts of money can do to their lives or even connect with their lived experience nor do these exposés speak to their existential realities. A more nuanced and useful thing to do is to explain corruption in terms of the everyday life reality of the ordinary people. How does he or her connect corruption to the grinding poverty that has made him or her a subhuman? How can corruption be explained as the cause of the lack of shelter for his or her family? How is it that they toil day and night yet are unable to afford a decent living? Why it is that they cannot afford modern healthcare services when they or their children are sick? Why is it that they cannot afford to train their children? How come the schools their children attend and the hospital they patronize are ramshackle, not worthy of their names? Corruption is not just stealing stupendous millions of public funds: it is the daily harassment and extortion that police met out to citizens on the road. It is the inability of poor people to get justice in our courts even when everyone knows the truth. It is the insidious force that makes life brutish for the poor: they are not safe in their homes nor on the roads. It manifests in the scandalous high maternal and infant mortality rates in the country that leave poor people helpless as they see their loved ones dying for what should otherwise be a common treatable ailments such as meningitis, cholera or malaria. We need to get the ordinary citizens to make the connection between corruption and their lives. This is the voice that I hear as I ix Overcoming Nigeria’s Challenges of Corruption and Opacity in Governance read the articles in this collection by Jide Ojo. His tales about corruption are not about foreign bank accounts or mind bogging loots by some unaccountable leadership that has reduced ordinary people to life of penury and destitution. It is the lack of dignity that citizens have. It is this type of contextual reading of corruption that will denormalize it and make ordinary people to see their misery as a consequence of corruption. It is this kind of reading and interpretation of corruption that will turn the struggle against corruption into a mass movement that it needs to take away from the fight as solely that of the government but that of all citizens, a requirement for a successful campaign to win the battle. Ojo’s narrative is simple, accessible but rooted in logic, rule of law and situated in a context that is framed by an overarching concern about the weakness of our democracy. A great deal of attention is therefore also devoted to examining the instances of corruption in the institutions of our democracy, how corruption manifests in them and the consequences of corruption in the dysfunctional nature they have taken. Election is a key process in a democracy and once the process is corrupt, you end up with leaders who are unaccountable and corrupt. One clear instance of manifestation of corruption in the electoral process is vote-buying or vote trading as the writer captures it here. Voters living under extreme poor conditions are exploited on Election Day with gifts of soap, condiments, souvenirs or few wads of Naira for them to vote a particular candidate or party. That is corruption. He picked on several institutions, including the political parties, the electoral commission and discusses how money is becoming the reference point in their operations.