Fairly, Fully, Fatally Corrupt: E-Book

O. Chidi Ogbonna

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Fairly, Fully, Fatally Corrupt: Epochal Dimensions to Governance abd Corruption in Nigeria, also known as F 3 Corrupt, is a carefully analyxed input to the already flourishing genre of anti-corruption literature in Nigeria. F3 Corrupt focuses on Nigeria's governance because of the conviction of the author that the three levels of incidental, institutional and systemic corruption prevalent in contemporary Nigeria, is fuelled, propelled and sustained through corruption in Nigeria's governance. The volume seeks to set the records straight on how governance in Nigeria progressively deteriorated from fairly corrupt, to full-blown corruption and now to fatal corruption in contemporary times, making corruption to arguably become the most dominant phenomenon in today;s Nigeria.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

O. Chidi Ogbonna is an experienced, resourceful, articulate and versatilr international criminal justice expert, with over a decade's transnational organised crime law enforcement track record, and research consultancy and training for such orrganizations as the UNODC Office in Nigeria; the Kofi Anan International Peace keeing Training Centre, Accra, Ghana and the National Defence College, Abuja, Nigeria. Mr. Ogbonna has also reviewed for the Commonwealth Law Bulletin, London, UK, and is also the creator of Integrity Consolidated Education gane, for preventing crime and communicating behaviour change among pre- and young teens in Nigeria.

Mr. Ogbonna lives and works in Abuja, Nigeria, with his wife and children. 

Leseprobe

O. Chidi Ogbonna

Fairly, Fully, Fatally Corrupt:

Epochal Dimensions to Governance and Corruption in Nigeria

F 3 Corrupt, is dedicated to beloved Wife, Joy and my ebullient Sons, Jason and JedidiahBookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Preface

Fairly, Fully, Fatally Corrupt:

Epochal Dimensions to Governance and Corruption in Nigeria

By

O. Chidi Ogbonna

BA (Hons), CALABAR, NIGERIA; ma, leeds, uk.

PREFACE

The book is essentially a three epochal, socio-legal expose to the phenomenon of corruption in Nigeria, that highlights the existence of an enabling environment for corruption at the inception of Nigeria’s state-hood; underscoring the crucial impact of crude oil discovery and the consequent ‘Dutch disease’ on statecraft in Nigeria; while concluding with an emphasis of effects of the present age of globalization and the raising of the transnational criminal bar, on governance and corruption in Nigeria.

The account mirrors corruption’s febrile attack on Nigeria and her peoples,actuated at the inception of the country through the unwavering ethnic proclivities of her political ‘middlemen’; accentuated by the ubiquitous yet inane allocative mentality of rentier oil inclinations; and capaciously sustained by the prodigious vice-like grip of contemporary globalised corruption.

The three epochs espoused in this book, are reminiscent of the broad stages of human biological development – infancy, adolescence and adulthood. Whereas at infancy, the foundations are being laid for what the child would become in the future, at adolescence, character traits are accentuated and modified by prevailing environmental circumstances,then at adulthood there is an ossification of the unique course identifiable with the dramatic personae. Thus, the era of the ‘middlemen’ represents Nigeria at infancy; the oil boom era represents the country at adolescence; while the present-day era of globalisation represents Nigeria at adulthood.

In this three part volume, the issues and challenges confronting the country – Nigeria, and which mainly restricts her desire to achieving her full potentials, are x-rayed analytically and considered with a futuristic interventionist perspective, if only to inspire possible solutions to such pathetic remarks as the one below;

Nigeria is undeniably a country blessed with an abundance of natural resources ... comprising a fifth of all the black peoples in the world and are the seventh most populous and seventh largest producer of oil, yet regrettably we have failed to become what our pre-independence prospects in the 1950’s led the world to expect from us.”

INTRODUCTION

The rise and continuation in governance of those I refer to as “middlemen” at Nigeria’s independence set the stage for a distanced, isolated and predatory picture of the state administrative apparatus in post-independent Nigeria. These ‘independence fighters’ who at best were local interpreters of the colonial agenda for the rest of their brethren, unwittingly inherited a colonial administration that was structured on resource-suction away from the Nigerian society, without a commensurate investment into the productive capacities and capabilities of the Nigerian citizenry.

Additionally, as crude oil was subsequently discovered and mined in large commercial quantities there was an increased greater reliance on oil as the major foreign exchange earner, and a progressive neglect and ultimate mortification of erstwhile mainstays of the Nigerian economy such as agriculture, fishery, and budding cottage industries. These were rejected for the quick money and affluence that were immensely derived from crude oil production, and thus served to disconnect the ideals of governance from the rest of the Nigerian public. This scenario stems from the understanding that as a natural resource, rents gotten from crude oil was not directly tied to the productive capacities of the Nigerian people, and thus required exceptional understanding and astute management by the coordinators of an emergent ‘rentier economy’ to assuage and meet the aggregate aspirations of the people for the achievement of growth and development in that society. Unfortunately, Nigeria became a victim of the dreaded “Dutch-disease” with very gloomyconsequences.

Finally, globalisation and the raising of the transnational crime bar in contemporary times, has distorted the trajectory of auto-centred development in Nigeria, while affording some very rich and affluent officials and their cronies, the opportunity to launder their wealth outside the confines of the territorial sovereignty of the country, leading to the development of a phenomenon fundamentally more disastrous than capital flight – economic and financial corruptionagainst the Nigerian public. These crimes are arguably equivalent in context and consequences to such crimes against humanity as genocide and terrorism.

These three epochs above could be further represented organically as the babyhood stage, the adolescent stage and the adulthood stage. The period of ‘the middlemen’ was the babyhood period, wherein ethnic chauvinism became rabid, and was belatedly ushered into the adolescent period of ‘oil boom’ by the incursion of the military into governance, culminating in this present adulthood era of ‘globalisation’, wherein all the three stages have coalesced to arrest the acclaimed ‘giant of Africa’ in an endless political and economic whirlpool of greed, rapacious stealing and corruption in governance.

O. Chidi Ogbonna

PART 1: ‘THE MIDDLEMEN’

Chapter 1

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MIDDLEMEN

Just before Nigeria secured political independence from the British colonialists, there were inchoate agitations for self-rule depicted by a non-uniform desire by the three regional governments of the North, West and East of Nigeria, on the specific date for the actualisation of this self rule. While agitators from the northern region wanted self-rule at a later date, those from the southern and eastern regions wanted the self rule to commence in the early 50’s. So this lack of unity among the torch-bearers for Nigeria’s independence unconsciously created a schism in their collective campaign that was fully exploited by the British colonialists, and would set the agenda for the deep divisions characteristic of later Nigeria’s political and governance landscape.

But what was not very obvious at that time was the nature of the evolution of the leaders of this independence agitation. They were what may be referred to as “middlemen” whose over-riding ambitions were to rid the country, albeit their respective local regions, of the control and influence of the colonial government, to be replaced by indigenous leadership in which they obviously would exert great and overwhelming influence.This is what has been termed ‘the parochialism of awareness.’

These middlemen were fundamentally united on the premise of the different ethnic platforms they were operating from. Being conversant with their ethnic persuasions, the middlemen exhibited great caution that graduated from suspicion, to prejudice and then to outright discrimination when dealing with matters that concerned other ethnic groups who were co-inheritors of the British colonial administration at independence. This predominantly ethnic-based mind-set may have been the singular most important factor that militated against the development of the still elusive national ethos for governance in Nigeria. In fact, a famous Nigerian political satirist once declared that for the ‘complete Nigerian’, ethnicity is supreme.This ultra-ethnic bias was well played out with the manner in which, for instance, the three main political parties campaigned and jostled for votes between 1955 and 1959, and this was primarily responsible for creating a progressive tension in Nigeria’s body politick that culminated in the military intervention of January 1966.

The flawed federal system and the differential spread of western education have been fingered as the two most divisive issues in Nigeria before independence. The above issues coupled with the increasing autonomy of the regions,' exposed the central government to the strains of centrifugal forces, who desired a union but not unity. This apparent lack of unity among the political class led to a 1956 prophetic proclamation by one of the foremost ‘middlemen’ at the time, that;

I will confess that the present unity that is supposed to exist in Nigeria is superficial one. [sic] The union may work so long as the Europeans are here, but when they go, there is bound to chaos and bloodshed.

It is pertinent to point out, in a manner of thinking, that governance should be viewed as distinct from culture, which obviously refers to the way of life of people in the society. However, governance is and can be regarded as part of the subsisting culture in any social aggregation and is as much a symptom of culture as it is a consequence of it. Thus any incidence of corruption in governance will necessarily affect the culture and way of life of the people, in that a culture that gradually allows incidental corruption would lead to institutional and then aggravate into systemic corruption in the polity. The point here is that governance has a great impact on the polity, especially in its direction and focus at any given point in time.

Corruption in the early years of nascent Nigeria is arguably, a function of the progressive coalescing of the constituent ethnic nationalities that make up Nigeria, each with strong primordial affinity to their ethnic origins, supported with a belief that the colonial state is a symbol of oppression, coercion, and repression. The obvious lack of social capital and broad understanding between and amongst these ethnic nationalities at the time, was aptly named “The Nigerian Factor”, and served to create strong bulwarks against positive oneness and national cohesion in the country. Thus corruption provided the conducive environment for the expression of intent among those administering the country and their collaborators, who as members of the same interest-group actively sought to satisfy the demands of their class over and above the collective aspirations of all Nigerians.

It is note-worthy that the,

Separate political development of the north and south of the country might have been suitable for colonial rule, but certainly not suitable for the development of a state and a nation, especially given the context of Nigeria’s multi-ethnicity.

In fact it was reported that the first ever meeting of Nigerians in the 1947 legislative council, it was a meeting of ‘strangers.’ The reason for this stranger feeling was that,

The nature of colonial rule had not encouraged horizontal interaction, even though it had maximised vertical interaction between the various groups and the colonial administration.

Some pointers to why the colonial government elected to encourage separate political development of the regions in Nigeria, may be found in their experiences with indirect rule in India, where the Indian Moslems (later independent Pakistan) constituted a very serious administrative and political nuisance to British rule, that to assuage temperaments in the Nigeria’s northern region [similar to Pakistan in India], the British elected to train the Muslim Northern Nigerians with the best British teachers at Katsina College,, and prepare them for leadership positions in the newly independent Nigerian civil service. Nevertheless, the ebullience and political sagacity of the Southern ‘Middlemen’ could not easily be overlooked by the colonial government.

It would be recalled that the educated class from Southern Nigeria at the time were trained in such missionary schools as Hope Waddell Training Institute, Calabar; Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha, in present day Anambra State; etc. These mission schools exposed graduates to liberal virtues aimed at producing clerks and interpreters for the colonial government. Meanwhile, in Northern Nigeria, the likes of the Katsina College were populated by colonial teachers that promoted the tenets and etiquettes of leadership to their wards, almost unilaterally directing the students’ minds to ‘leadership’. The viewpoints of graduates from the respective regions necessarily betrayed the ideological and structural orientations they were exposed to educationally.

Thus, as a result of the lack of bridges of horizontal dialogue and understanding among the different ethnic nationalities at independence, Nigeria lacked an overriding national symbol that depicted the collective aspirations of all Nigerians. This is the reason why,regional politics in the first republic, for all its good intentions, created the platform for Nigeria to be administered along obvious regional lines, thereby further strengthening the already polarised political and governance structures along the same ethnic/regional lines. This position negatively impacted on the movement to identify and develope national symbols and consciousness among Nigerians at this formative period of modern Nigerian statehood, thereby setting the stage for the stillbirth of future efforts in this regard.

Allied to, and existing concurrently with the above submission, was another development that became a basic characteristic of governance in post independent Nigeria, - that of a view of the colonial state as aloof, predatory and exploitative, intervening in the lives of Nigerians only in so far as it would serve the interests of the imperial colonial capital – London. This view of the state unfortunately became synonymous with the governance apparatus of the central government (federal government), at independence, and has remained alarmingly so even in contemporary times.

Thus the state (central government), which is burdened with directing the affairs of the country, is viewed as wielding an unwelcome but overwhelming influence in the lives of the citizens of Nigeria, without creating a strong sense of belonging and attachment to the state. When this basic view of the state in the embryonic Nigerian governance psyche is juxtaposed with the predominantly ethnic nature of governance ideals at the time, it makes the individuals and groups entrusted with administrative responsibilities seek to first fulfil their own personal and group agendas over and above those of the collective in Nigeria, resulting in outright capacious stealing and embezzlement of public funds.

Suffice it to mean that while London was the destination of derived revenues for the colonial administration, the middlemen and their cronies created a clique which controlled (and unfortunately, still control) the derived revenues in post independent Nigeria. As one social critique puts it:

In effect, therefore, the succession of Nigeria political elite at independence to the sovereign political authority meant that they could now attempt to solve their central problem of dearth of private capital by broadening their accumulative base through exploiting maximally the public wealth of the state which was previously unavailable to them.

In fact, there is a concession that;

They were thus able to diversify their activities into new, often dubious and fraudulent forms of primitive private accumulations at public expense. These forms include the fraudulent award (including outright sale) of unsecured government loans, produce buying and import-licenses to their cronies, the inflation of government contract values ... and the straightforward looting of the public treasury by its very custodians.

That part of the process that culminated in the political independence of Nigeria created a view of the state as alien, was a paradox entrenched deeply in the perception of the colonial administration as one to be defrauded, defied and decimated at any opportunity. Any act of defiance or defrauding of the colonialist acted as a rallying point for collective identification and renewed energy against colonial rule. These energies were tapped by the various regional leaders in their push for the end of colonial rule in Nigeria as exemplified by the Eastern Nigeria women’s riot.

However, and paradoxically so, the regional fighters for independence left these energies at the point of galvanising hatred against colonial administration without consolidating towards positively building concrete bridges of social capital along the length and breadth of the country, thereby allowing the divisive and ultra-injurious phenomenon of ethnicity to thrive even in post independent Nigeria.