The likes of Obono-Obla can only thrive and continue to constitute public nuisances that collectively assault the sensibilities of Nigerians…indicating nothing but a mockery of the otherwise serious task of the comprehensive tackling of the scourge of endemic corruption, which equally result from the fundamental integrity failure of President Buhari.
Over three years into the Muhammadu Buhari administration, its failure to effectively tackle corruption, as highly anticipated by the Nigerian people, is premised on certain fundamentals. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of Nigeria’s peculiar problem of corruption by the Buhari government. This improper diagnosis has led to a primary error of judgement of what constitutes corrupt practices, and laid the foundation for economic and financial crimes, as well as the administration of a wrong antidote.
Nigeria’s problem of corruption is made uniquely entrenched because there is a foundational dysfunction whereby its sub-national ethno-geographic constituents are being pulled apart, while having locked horns and in mortal combat over its resources, commonly referred to as the national cake. Under these prevailing circumstances, corrupt practices such as nepotism, cronyism, favouritism, and influence-peddling, all leading to conflicts of sectional and national interests, are functions of cultural tendencies that are deemed necessary to secure advantageous shares of the national cake. Added to this is the reality that Nigeria’s political culture is premised on the primordial sentiments of ethnicity, geographic origins and religious sentiments, with rewards firmly hinged on a direct patronage system entirely at the expense of the state, thereby legitimising corrupt practices unintentionally. This elaborate system of patronage is further affirmed by the zoning and rotation of important positions of authority and power to ostensibly distribute Nigeria’s commonwealth evenly.
Another unintended consequence of this system is the overconcentration of attention on the sharing of the national cake, which in reality is the revenue from Nigeria’s oil mineral resources, without consideration for increasing its size. This fixation on the ‘equitable’ distribution of the national cake – which is actually the equitable distribution of loot among the ruling elite – to the detriment of seeking means of increasing the size of national revenue, has now led to the situation whereby Nigeria’s fast diminishing oil mineral resources can longer cover the basic needs of its 200 million people. This has provided the perfect setting for the financial inequality of citizens, the inadequacy of available resources and hence insecurity, resulting in widespread poverty and induced financial malfeasance at the expense of the public treasury, in order to achieve basic living standards.
For someone who forcefully thrusts himself forward in feats of overzealous overdrive as an apostle of Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade, Obono-Obla’s discernable personality contradictions was quick to unravel, calling to question the credibility of Buhari’s war on corruption.
By 2015, the majority of Nigerians had reached a consensus on the unsustainability of the status quo and opted for change. In voting for change, Nigerians vested their democratic choices in Muhammadu Buhari, a man who was believed to be high on integrity, incorruptible and rich in moral authority, to reduce corruption in the system to a less than the prevailing disconcerting level. However, a lack of knowledge and wisdom on how to channel his integrity to effectively combat the scourge of corruption has seen President Buhari elevate sectionalism to a near state policy, thereby deepening the roots of corruption, with its branches spreading out wider than ever before. Buhari’s faulty diagnosis of Nigeria’s corruption problem by misrepresenting a deep national malaise as only peculiar to opposition partisans, has led to selective war on corruption, which has succeeded in perpetuating the vicious cycle of grand corruption. The politicisation of the war on corruption thathas seen dubious, clever-by-half characters emerge as champions of Buhari’ war on corruption, has a direct consequence in the happenstance of Okoi Obono–Obla in government.
Initially self-designated as a special assistant on prosecution to President Buhari, but now appropriately addressed as the chairman, Special Presidential Investigative Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIP), Obono-Obla, who is also an All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain from Cross River State, has since become a poster boy of how not to fight corruption. Always eager to hug the klieg lights, Obono-Obla comes across as a rabble rousing chatterbox, as he often incoherently struggles to put forward his usual cocktail of illogical defence of the government’s glaringly selective, hence ineffectual, ‘war’ on corruption, having falsehood laced with inverted reasoning. For someone who forcefully thrusts himself forward in feats of overzealous overdrive as an apostle of Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade, Obono-Obla’s discernable personality contradictions was quick to unravel, calling to question the credibility of Buhari’s war on corruption.
Bothering on what many consider as Obono-Obla’s hollow and shallow blabbing on matters of jurisprudence, a dig into his academic background became inevitable. Following credible media reports about certain discrepancies in his secondary school certificate, as well emerging facts of gross misconduct bothering on harassment, extortion and financial recklessness in his management of the SPIP, the House of Representatives constituted a special investigative committee under the chairmanship of Aliyu Ahman Pategi, to unravel Obono-Obla’s skeletons. Following extensive public hearings and painstaking investigation of the matter, the House committee indicted Obono-Obla for forgery of his West African School Certicate Examination results and financial recklessness. In arriving at this conclusion, the House committee relied substantially on the testimonies of West African Examination Council (WAEC) officials and the auditor general of the federation report, which revealed financial malfeasance at the SPIP.
Buhari’s cluelessness on how to tackle corruption may be the only explanation for continuing to engage the services of a seemingly integrity deficient fellow having claims of a questionable character hanging over him in the so called war on corruption effort of his administration.
In a statement revealed at the end of the investigative hearing, Ahman-Pategi said, “whereas the WAEC result [Examination No. 09403/247 May/June 1982] with which Chief Obono-Obla obtained admission and studied Law at the University of Jos as Okoi Ofem Okoi showed that he made five credit passes, including Literature in English, official letters from WAEC dated 11th and 17th April 2018 and signed by Mr. A.A. Okelezue and Mr. Olu Adenipekun, respectively, showed that Obono-Obla was absent for Literature in English.” The deputy registrar of WAEC, Mr. Femi Ola, while testifying under oath, also affirmed Obono-Obla’s WAEC result, on which basis he was admitted into the Law Faculty of the University of Jos. Also, the grounds for his appointment as chairman of the SPIP is regarded as “altered”, “not genuine” and “invalid”. For a fellow alleged to have multiple personality disorders, his accusation of extortion, blackmail and vendetta by some becomes fairly believable. Curiously, Obono-Obla’s reaction to the scandal of his alleged WAEC result forgery gives more room for speculative guilt. Rather than summon the courage to challenge the assertion by WAEC authorities to the effect that his result was “altered”, “not genuine” and hence “invalid”, or to debunk the claim of the auditor general’s report on his financial malfeasance, Obono-Obla, as usual, has deployed the use of ad hominem arguments in a futile attempt to deflate this scandalous fraud, by calling the National Assembly out for acting on behalf of “looters”.
Buhari’s cluelessness on how to tackle corruption may be the only explanation for continuing to engage the services of a seemingly integrity deficient fellow having claims of a questionable character hanging over him in the so called war on corruption effort of his administration. That the University of Jos has not withdrawn Obono-Obla’s Law degree, which he apparently obtained on a false premise and with the Body of Benchers yet to withdraw his certificate of call to the Bar, in line with the recommendations of the House of Representatives, can be attributed to the failure of President Buhari to lead by example by sacking and prosecuting his appointee for the crime of forgery, as well financial malfeasance. This is only consistent with Buhari’s selective war on corruption. The likes of Obono-Obla can only thrive and continue to constitute public nuisances that collectively assault the sensibilities of Nigerians, as done by the accused in his role in SPIP, indicating nothing but a mockery of the otherwise serious task of the comprehensive tackling of the scourge of endemic corruption, which equally result from the fundamental integrity failure of President Buhari.
Majeed Dahiru, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja and can be reached through dahirumajeed@gmail.com.
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