By Ikeddy Isiguzo
THERE are two disturbing challenges with corruption in Nigeria – it is not going away soon; it does not go round. With neither a desire to stop corruption nor a system to enable it to get to everyone, corruption in Nigeria has assumed more discriminatory tendencies than the Constitution envisaged.
Nigerians are learning to live with corruption. Like our politics that is democratic, but never democratised, corruption has newer dimensions that would ensure that not many Nigerians would benefit from the nation’s resources. No sections have been spared.
Imagine that the same set of people have been in governments since 1999? Some of them were in governments decades earlier. They successfully dragged the corruption of those analogue eras into this century and digitalised it.
The Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, and acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, are currently under investigation alleged corruption. NDDC sectionalised corruption that flies on the wheels of entitlement. NDDC belongs to some people. In it they have their share of Nigeria. They respond to our intrusions by claiming that those before them did worse. Why are we disturbing them?
Minister of Nigeria Delta Affairs Obong Godswill Akpabio as been canting and recanting. NDDC raises more questions than public and private massaging of corruption can answer.
Some of the questions are –
Are there some whose alleged corruption cannot be investigated? It was at the same baying National Assembly that Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq said she would feed school children in their homes during the COVID-19 lockdown. Of course, the President in his 13 April 2020 broadcast had ordered her to feed the children.
The undisclosed budget for the programme runs into billions of Naira. She has not been investigated. The National Assembly does not know if the success of the programme has set examples for others to imitate. Nigerians have been denied the opportunity to praise the Minister because we do not know what she spent, how she spent it, and more importantly, how in a matter of months she had the data of where our children live.
Does the Kaduna Refinery generating losses of billions of Naira without earning any revenue not call for an investigation? Its case could provide more comic relief than NDDC spending N81.5 billion in seven months.
NDDC is everything Nigerian. Its operations scream with the ironies that underline the serial failure of governments in the management of institutions they create, presumably with the common good.
The looting of public resources is real. Will everybody get a chance to loot before oil and gas resources finish?
NDDC, like most public institution, is on an unrelenting mission to loot public funds. How does an expenditure of N85 million to attend a graduation ceremony in the United Kingdom improve lives in the Niger Delta? Some would argue that the beneficiaries were mostly from the Niger Delta. More frighteningly, there was no graduation ceremony in April because of the global lockdown. The money was still shared among 14 officials.
How many Nigerians ever knew about Pointers? NDDC created jobs for these youths whose skill sets include knowledge of locations of (abandoned) NDDC projects, good relations with host communities of (abandoned) projects, and ability to lead NDDC monitoring officials to the sites. NDDC paid Pointers N450 million in seven months. It was unclear whether the amount indicated the high number of “pointed” contracts or the high wages of the Pointers. Another NDDC landmark is it cannot locate sites of contracts it awarded unless through paid Pointers.
The flagging and disconcerted anti-corruption fights are proofs that we are in the post-corruption era in Nigeria. The period in question does not mean that Nigeria is corruption free. The leaders of the anti-corruption campaign excuse their abysmal failings by reminding us that there is corruption in every country. We should be so consoled.
What is left is to draw up modalities for ensuring that corruption goes round since it appears accepted enough that its intensity no longer provokes protests either in the leaders or the led. Every allegation of corruption gives way under weightier looting of Nigeria.
Ordinary Nigerians are just wondering when it would be their turn to loot as corruption seems the only way to survive in a country bristling with pride in its unsurpassed potential to chop its future.
