A probe for all By Paul Onomuakpokpo

buhari

NO magical  prescience  is  needed  to  arrive at  the fact  that  in  the next four years,  Muhammadu Buhari’s success as  the nation’s president would be determined  to a large extent by how much he fights corruption.

At  the last general elections, many Nigerians who voted for  him did so because he declared that a fight against  corruption would be a central objective of his administration.

Such support was driven by the disturbing awareness of corruption as an implacable incubus that has perennially stalked the development of the nation. To be sure, one cannot by any stretch of the imagination project corruption as Nigerian.

Even the history of the so-called advanced nations of the world is replete with cases of corruption. When their political and business activities are probed, only a few persons escape a rebuke for corruption.

In the 16th century Britain for instance, Francis Bacon, lord chancellor, philosopher, statesman and scientist, after postulating about the capacity of education to make the complete man, and being hailed as a revered custodian of the laws that upheld justice in his society, was found guilty of corruption.

On April 17, 1621, he was charged with bribery offences; and this ended his public career.  It is the same predilection for corruption that propels the businessmen of these so-called advanced nations of the world into colluding  with Nigerian public officials and swindling the nation of billions through bogus deals.

But a troubling character of the corruption in Nigeria is its seeming atavistic sovereignty that has transformed it into an ubiquitous culture in contradistinction  to  tremulously occupying a tangential space in the polity as one passing  social-cultural aberration. And its adherents are by no whit abashed as they publicly  profess their allegiance.

While aligning with the culture of corruption easily lends one access to the inner sanctum of the exclusive group  of the controllers of the levers of  the socio-economic and political fortunes of the society, a  resolve to be  transparent  inevitably  makes one an outsider, an endangered species.

Thus  when Buhari said he would tame this monster,  it never demanded an epiphany to realise that a successful prosecution of corruption would be a much-sought vista  to  the  release of all the trapped potential of the country and its  development.

But Nigerians now need to move out of this laudatory  mould  and subject  the  proposed anti-corruption fight to scrutiny. Buhari  has  explained  why  the anti-corruption  campaign would be  limited  to a certain period of our national life.

He  has  stressed  the need  to avoid  a  wholesale  anti-corruption project  that would  stretch  backwards  to  decades before his second coming into government.

But this position opens him to the charge of attempting to  persecute  some  people  while  protecting his  benefactors and minions.

Or, how can  Buhari  sincerely justify  his  limiting  the  anti-corruption fight? To demonstrate that he has set out to prosecute an anti-corruption crusade that is sincere and that would redound to the common good, Buhari is  obliged to review its scope. It must not be limited to the immediate past administration of former President  Goodluck Jonathan.

It must embrace all the  administrations  that  this country has  known since independence. It must even include his own past government and the offices he has held before.

After all, he is serenaded as Mr. Clean.  This is the only way Buhari  can validate  his constantly refrained  transparency on whose back he was ferried into the presidency.

A nation whose history from its political  independence is streaked with egregious cases of corruption has not known equity when it is said  that only some  people  have been  punished  for their  financial misdeeds.

Here, one is not making a case for the aides, ministers  and  even the president of the past  administration; they  must be made to account for their stewardship and if they are found guilty, they should  be appropriately sanctioned.

Despite the unremitting protestations of their  incorruptibility,  the leaders of the country in other  periods are not freed of corruption.

Let the anti-graft  officials begin their work from the 1960s and progress  to the contemporary times. What would be unearthed  is  how the proceeds of corruption have sustained business and political empires over the decades.

We  cannot all pretend as though the Nigerian National Petroleum Corruption (NNPC) which is now a poster boy for institutional corruption only lost its fiscal responsibility moors  in the last five years. Past  governments officials  benefitted  from  the rot of the corporation and these should all be duly punished.

But Buhari’s  anti-corruption  should  not be limited  to financial profligacy. Let him extend it  to  high- profile  murder cases  that  have  serially  jarred  public consciousness .

From 1999 when the current  democratic  dispensation began up to the presidency of Umaru Yar’ Adua, there  were several unresolved high-profile murders.

Who killed  these people? How could  they perpetually escape  the radar of  security officials? The security officials have no excuse.

They must get to work as their counterparts in other nations of the world  and ferret out those who committed crime no matter  how long it takes.

When the anti-corruption campaign assumes these ramifications, it is easy for the government to hector the public about the prospect of the time and the energy it would consume.

Yet, this  is the only way the Buhari government  can  justify  the confidence of Nigerians in his ability to  successfully fight corruption. After all, he is not the one that would directly prosecute the  campaign.

All he would do at the beginning is to set the tone, define the framework and set the officials to work.  Just in our recent history, the Justice Chukwudifu Oputa  Human Rights Violations  Investigation  Commission  was  set  up  to investigate  cases  of  human rights violations including assassinations and attempted assassinations.

It was not limited to a certain political epoch; it covered almost  the entire gamut  of the nation’s political history, from January 15, 1966  to May 28, 1999. And former  President Olusegun Obasanjo was not involved in the  investigation when he set up the panel.

Nor was the late Nelson Mandela  involved  in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission  of 1995  which he set up as president to investigate  violence and human rights’ violations  that resulted  from the  apartheid regime that humiliated  the blacks.

And since the Buhari  government needs all the stolen money to revamp the failing economy and infrastructure,  it would  boost its revenue  if it widens  the scope of the anti-corruption campaign and validate his sincerity.

GUARDIAN

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