Two leading front page reports of the Saturday Punch (October 31, 2015) are quite paradoxical and telling about the current epoch of Nigeria’s political development. The prime headline rendered in perhaps, the boldest of letters available screams: “NIGERIA BROKE, CAN’T PAY MINISTERS – Buhari”.
But a less striking headline below the one quoted above reads: “Nigerians demand public asset declaration from Buhari’s ministers” while the ministers-designate are reported to have retorted that they would not make a public declaration of their assets. Even the bold cover photo on this page lends an epic corroboration to today’s thesis. It is the picture of a failed portion of the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway. It is an unsightly picture of vehicle wading through a deep, water-logged trough right in the middle of the road. It is a picture of abjection, stagnation and soulless dereliction seen only in extreme war conditions and failed states.
Did you ever hear of the failure of a portion of highways anywhere else in this age? Let us take the liberty to point out a few more grisly stories highlighted on this front page: “South Africa to return seized $9 million currency to Nigeria on November 30,” it says. This is the story of Nigeria’s ‘raw’ cash, ignominiously caught-up in the middle of an official money-laundering heist last year under the guise of trying to purchase arms. And one more: “Customs retires three ACGs and 26 others.” Here about 40 senior officers of the Nigeria Customs Service were swept out of office just by a wave of the hand. If they were found guilty of abusing their high positions and gouging themselves with revenues accruable to the nation’s treasury, we were not told. Whether they had tainted the high offices bestowed on them, it did not matter. They were just shuffled out. No points made, no lessons learned, highly trained top officers just flushed out: perhaps to go and enjoy their ‘good fortune’.
But we digress. Today is actually about our ministers-designate and the question of public assets declaration. Some of the screened men and women who would handle some of the most important jobs in the land soon were asked if they would declare their assets following in the footsteps of their boss, President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB), but the majority of them had promptly objected to such prospect.
According to the report, a good number of those called up on the phone noted pointedly that they were not constitutionally bound to make their declarations public. They did not have to follow in the footsteps of the president and his deputy, some of them said. Recall that President Buhari and his deputy, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, recently set the example of making their assets public.
Some ministers-designate indicating they would not let the people they would serve know what they are worth, immediately reminds one of America’s 19th century ‘robber baron’ businessmen, who deviously amassed wealth and became very affluent and powerful; often beyond the control of the state. But while those were businessmen who deployed rough and untoward tactics to corner the commonwealth, most of our politicians of today can easily pass for baron politicians or robber public officials who hijack premium political positions and offices and convert same to personal estates.
Since independence and particularly in the last 16 years, having acquired a huge chunk of the state, they go on to begin to subvert the state and all her institutions or tinker with them to suit their purposes.
Buhari’s Sisyphean huddles Over the years, Nigeria’s political robber barons have grown unchallenged and set in their ways. They had become the very bane of the country; growing in means, growing in number and making Nigeria a banana republic where the rule of law had taken flight. Now for Buhari, tackling this ugly phenomenon would be akin to Sisyphus the storied King of Corinth condemned pushing this giant rock up a hill and each time, being trolled back to the base.
For the first time since independence, Nigeria’s political robber barons are facing a modicum of scrutiny with the advent of the Buhari presidency and it seems now or never to break that killer mould. Does the president have the resilience, capacity and the ruthlessness to extirpate this monster?
The matter of political robber baronage is exemplified by the current dilemma about making assets public. This is one huge test of his ability to crack the skull of this monster. Most of his new men cannot and indeed, would not dare to make full public disclosures of their net-worth. It would amount to the option of either the country going up in flames or the ‘culprits’ being set alight.
One would wager that very few politically-exposed Nigerians today would be comfortable showing what they have to Nigerians. How would Nigerians react if they woke up one day to find on a minister’s assets sheets, a total worth of about N50 billion or more. Many are wealthier than their states or even a few states combined. That is why they cannot be brought to book. They can hire all the SANs in Nigeria to frustrate a cause.
Now what would he do with these set of barons; some of whom he had nominated for the big jobs. When asked recently about the nature of some of his nominees, he had spoken candidly that: “This is a teamwork… there are people (nominees) I accepted from other people in our team that I trust without even knowing them… may be the one that had problem in the National Assembly, I doubt if I have ever met him in my life.”
How far can he go if compromises such as he noted above have been made already. But the obverse is that how far could he have gone if he did not make such compromises in the first place. Let’s call the task ahead of the president the devil’s alternative. Meanwhile, Nigeria is broke according to the president, yet it is being run by some of the richest people in the world, who would not dare make public their assets.
NATION
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