BRIBERY SCANDALS AND THE NIGERIAN NATION
Sep 14th, 2008 by admin
THE bribery and corruption going on in Nigeria has reached such grave proportions that continued pussyfooting on this subject will ultimately damage the country irretrievably. The situation is so bad that if the current government does nothing else but pursue and prosecute the many paper criminals in our midst, it would have earned full marks for itself. The monumental thieving going on at practically all levels of government in Nigeria fully qualifies for a national emergency to be declared.
Nuhu Ribadu, the former head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) told the nation that as many as 31 former governors out of 36 have a case to answer on corruption. Only a small fraction of this number has been prosecuted so far and of the prosecutions none has been diligently pursued. It has been a case of so much commotion and so few results.
The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) scandal involving former President Obasanjo and his deputy Atiku Abubakar which nearly derailed the awful 2007 general election has almost been forgotten. The Siemens and Wilbros scandals involving 10 million Euros and $6 million respectively in kickbacks to government officials is gradually fading into oblivion. Former Communications Ministers, a serving Senator and dozens of government officials identified by name and amount of bribe received have not been prosecuted; neither have their NNPC and Shell collaborators.
The case of Siemens is particularly galling. President Yar’Adua vowed to get to the bottom of the scandal. He sent his officials to Houston in the United States of America to obtain more actionable information. Then in a display of righteous indignation, government blacklisted Siemens. It beggars belief that a few months later the same government that blacklisted Siemens awarded a multimillion Naira energy contract to the German firm.
As if this was not shocking enough, from the United States of America, another disturbing report has revealed that for nearly a decade a former executive of Global Engineering and Construction Services, Albert Stanley, has been bribing Nigerian officials in order to obtain NLNG contracts. He has pleaded guilty in a US court in Houston, Texas that he paid $182 million in bribes to top office holders from the executive branch of government during the time of General Sani Abacha, his successor General Abdulsalami Abubakar and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.
For violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of the United States of America, Mr. Stanley now faces a jail term of nearly ten years in prison in addition to a fine of $500,000. It is to be regretted that Mr. Stanley was able to penetrate the highest levels of the Nigerian government, and held meetings with officials who even told him where to drop the money.
The identities of the bribe takers have not been divulged. But it is not beyond the capacity of the Nigerian government, if it has the political will to do so, to obtain all the facts as they pertain to those Nigerians on the take and to initiate appropriate action.
It is instructive that in societies where the rule of law is practised, no violator of their laws is allowed to go scot-free. By contrast in our country where the rule of law is breached, the Nigerian component of these bribe scandals is painfully ignored. This attitude must be sending a signal to the outside world that in Nigeria, bribery and corruption are a way of life and that we are not serious about the rule of law.
The United Nations has estimated that between 1960 and 1999, Nigeria lost $400 billion stashed in foreign bank accounts by corrupt Nigerians. Amnesty International has consistently ranked Nigeria as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Against the logic of our resource endowment and developmental potential, Nigeria has remained one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world with three quarters of our population currently scraping a miserable living on less than a dollar a day. As a result of repeated policy failures, Nigerians have no access to electricity or water and now cannot afford to eat well. We have become a nation where nothing works because the few that have access to our national patrimony have commandeered our collective wealth and left the rest of us stranded and traumatised.
Our leaders appear not to know that Nigerians are a proud people and that we are being demeaned on a daily basis by their conduct and the inability of our supine institutions to punish offenders. Nigeria ranks low in almost every human developmental index, but we excel in corruption. The Nigerian passport is now a badge of dishonour at the world’s airports where Nigerians are treated with calumny and disdain. When will Nigerians be rescued from an undeserved international reproach brought about by the actions of a horde of corrupt persons in our midst?
President Yar’Adua has included the fight against corruption in his seven-point agenda. Many observers fear that his war on corruption is losing steam. But the president must be told that the greatest impediment to our country’s development is corruption, and unless and until this systemic cancer is exorcised from our society, our people will continue to wallow in poverty and misery in the midst of plenty.
REUBEN ABATI