USA Africa Dialogue Series - Dezianigate and Nigeria’s battle against corruption

Dezianigate and Nigeria's battle against corruption

KAYODE KETEFE

The media, Nigerian and foreign alike, recently sparkled with electrifying and ground-shaking new of the arrest in London of Nigeria's former Minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Deziani Alison-Maduekwe over allegations of attempted money-laundering. If the Sun of London's report is anything to go by, the money the former minister was allegedly attempting to launder was a whopping 13 billion pounds, repeat 13 billion pounds! That is about 3.9 trillion naira!
Reports from credible source had it that Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA) had obtained court permission last Monday to temporarily seize 27,000 pounds of the alleged funds.
Now, while not holding myself out as pre-judging the merit or otherwise of this allegation since caution should be exercised to allow the law to take its cause, nonetheless, on the face of it, there could be no denying something very sinister must have taken place.
Top class public officials of foreign nations, whether present or former, are not just arrested in the developed world just for the fun of it. It should be taken for granted that authorities over there would have done their homework and there must be some kind of prima facie evidence suggesting financial impropriety or aberration of law before the UK law enforcement agents pounced.
No matter the way we look at it, this development constitutes yet another devastating embarrassment to Nigeria with the image of the country taking yet another bashing. Nigeria is seen as a land where corruption thrives and nothing else works! Many potential investors have by-passed Nigeria in preference to countries that have far less potential for high return on investment but where corruption is less severe.
On the home front, the responses to the news of Deziani' ordeal have ranged from incredulity (especially in relation to amount allegedly involved) to outrage (with many people angrily demanding she should be prosecuted and jailed!) to sheer sarcasm, as evinced in a statement made by a friend upon hearing the news –"Whatever a man can do, a woman can do better"
Be that as it may, it is an unfortunate fact that anytime there is a widely reported case of enormous fraud, bribery or money laundering involving a public figure, whether or not the allegation is true, the embers of corruption glowing all over the land would be further fanned as people become more disillusioned. Corruption has percolated every strand of our national life.
In sport, politics, social life, and even religious circles, no matter where you look, fat maggots of corruption are wriggling with euphoria in a putrefying rot called Nigerian system.
It is everywhere; officials of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, through creative billing, slam bills on you that are not reflective of your actual power consumption; the same bills may be re-doctored if you are ready to "settle" the officials. Many traffic wardens on the streets shamelessly sell the "right" to ply one-way roads to impatient motorists and thus contribute to traffic anarchy.
You go to the markets, you are shortchanged by conmen in the name of merchants.
Many religious leaders are simply spiritual highway men who artfully and "piously" milk their followers and dispossess them of earthly resources upon the promises of heavenly ones.
Not a few members of the executive and legislature are neck deep in corruption, while the sacred judiciary is not totally immune.
Many people have accepted this state of affairs as a way of life and would simply resort to ripping off others to offset their own exploitation! The society seems to have settled into some sort of negative equilibrium.
Yet, there are many good Nigerians, who are honest, hardworking, upright and lovers of virtues; but these are daily being disenchanted by the system; they have become endangered species in the reality of the prevailing culture. Even moral enthusiasts who have managed to be aloof from the bug of corruption are still daily in great danger of contagion.
A number of suggestions have been offered over the years for confronting Nigeria's problem of corruption. These range from enhanced and severe punishment for corrupt people; comprehensive institutionalisation of foolproof checks and control system, to divestment of the executives of the power to directly award contracts.
Many past governments had shouted to high heavens on their resolve to fight corruption and emancipate the nation. But there had always been ostensible want of synch between what is being preached and practiced.
The link between poverty, deprivation and dysfunctional systems has been well documented by the sociologists and political scientists.
Each time certain fund is announced to be missing from the nation's coffers to the consternation of the suffering masses, corruption seed once again sprouts and blossoms into a vegetation of magnificent foliage.
To me the best way for us to start the fight against graft is to get things right from the top. Nigerian leaders must lead by example for the country to work. Elitist profligacy or corruption in the full glare of famished populace breeds distrust, apathy, anger and its concomitant social tension.

Ketefe may be followed on twitter @Ketesco




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