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Public probity should supersede Buhari’s anti-corruption brouhaha 25 Aug 2015

Profound limitations exist in the moral authority of President Muhammadu Buhari in waging a holistic anticorruption war. While it was convenient for U.S. President Barack Obama to hype the victory of President Buhari in the last election, Nigerians know he is the beneficiary of a compromised electoral process in which underage voting, amongst other shenanigans that produced past Nigerian civilian presidents, secured him the victory. Even more questionable are the sources of his campaign funding.

A lot of the people President Buhari should be “probing” are nestled in his political party. Others are cleverly backing his anticorruption rumpus. The worst of these offenders in the eyes of the public, going by the huge wealth they personally accumulated and the performance gaps they left while in office, are untouchable. They amassed a lot of wealth because of the leeway for unaccountability in public resource governance – for example the discretionary security votes – and some of these folks can squeal on the ruling class.

President Buhari himself is a pro-establishment man, with sectional flavour. He served the government of late General Sani Abacha, who is tagged the-most-corrupt-Nigerian-ruler-ever. President Buhari has to work with the APC leaders, including those who cross-carpeted from the PDP: the party that held sway in the last 16 years of near fatal choke-hold on state institutions. All this is a recipe for selectivity in fighting corruption. It, therefore, has thrown up the raging controversy on the cut-off period for the probing of past public office holders.

Beyond the moral question to President Buhari leading the charge against corruption in Nigeria is the collateral damage of his approach. Any policy that overlooks unmitigated disruptions to the markets is unstrategic and dysfunctional. Part of his anti-corruption strategy is to delay the appointment of ministers who provide policy guidance for the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). For this inaction, however, confidence in the Nigerian market has been receding, instead of increasing on the back of a peaceful political transition. So far, the general pattern under President Buhari's administration is that the MDAs are only funded to pay salaries; capital projects have been mostly suspended by default. This means President Buhari's anti-corruption entails paying government workers for doing nothing; and, therefore, putting private sector jobs at risk by stalling public projects; all of which would reduce investment commitment to Nigeria.

For all the negative implications of the on-going anti-corruption, the crusade is not imbued with a rosy outlook whatsoever; it is pithily 'buharish.' It is about recovery of loot and jailing of some looters. No clear programme is in place on how the recovered loot would be utilised. Everything seems anchored on President Buhari being a tough cop.

However, the foregoing is not intended as a diminution of the need for fighting public sector corruption and curbing the role of the private sector in it. Rather, it is a call for a more strategic approach that will not disrupt markets and will enhance the welfare result of public resource governance.

This approach entails the knowledge of what works and how to make things work. Markets function by accommodating tolerable levels of defects. So also is politics. President Buhari couldn't have been zero-tolerant of corruption and still emerge as president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. In other words, corruption couldn't impede the progress his election is taken to represent. If President Xi Jinping of China is showing more determination to curb established public sector corruption in 2015, it means corruption was not strong enough to hold down economic transformation, such as has been experienced by China in the last decades.

So what is the way forward? I prefer President Buhari leads the charge for public probity. He too, like all of us as citizens, can seek redemption with public probity. This would send more powerful positive signals. This “change” of tact would be more forward-looking. It would exert stronger influence on the present and the future and not be bogged down by the past, as is currently the case.

Public probity would emphasise effective budgeting and service delivery. Public probity would uphold the verity of federal character. Rather than give credence to personalising anti-corruption, public probity would seek broad buy-in for goodness and personal integrity. This, itself, is a delicate message. Nigeria's public sector corruption is very limited by participation, partly through the recycling of public office holders. While there are those who lack access to the opportunities they crave to participate in the so-called Nigerian Corruption Plc, there are those who are contemptuous of it. Therefore, it is a wrongful projection of the country to give the impression that it is difficult to find upright Nigerians to fill 36-man, or slightly larger, cabinet.

Late in the day, President Buhari has constituted a committee to advise him on his anti-corruption crusade. With a legal luminary like Professor Itse Sagay heading the committee, it would appear that the President appreciates there is a legal conundrum to fighting corruption in the country. Latest inclusions of financial crime laws into Nigerian statutes have been driven by external needs of fighting money laundering which funds global terrorism. This has hardly served Nigeria's need of curbing illegal financial outflows; paradoxically, the countries that are most concerned about global terrorism gladly receive illegal outflows from Nigeria. Nigerian money launderers fund acquisition of offshore assets and not global terrorism. Therefore, we need to upgrade our laws and reform the judiciary to make them relevant to the local need of accountability in public resource governance.

The anti-corruption rhetoric may seem to be working right now as corrupters in the public service are lying low and working up documentation to give legitimacy to otherwise corrupt activities. However, what is needed in resource governance, for optimal delivery of public service, is a new value orientation towards public probity. You can't get people to accept positive values by putting a gun to their heads. While you may overwhelm people with this approach, it would be for a moment. But it is smarter to try to get the people to begin to appreciate and take ownership of positive values for the general good of the country.