We
have got the leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain…
Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world”, UK Prime Minister David Cameron was caught on tape telling the
queen ahead of the anti-corruption summit organized by the UK government, this
week, which was attended by Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari. This
diplomatic gaffe rubbed many Nigerians on the wrong side, but most of the
responses, coloured by overtly emotional love of country and a certain
defensiveness is downright hypocritical.
We
all know that indeed Nigeria is “fantastically corrupt”, and that is why the
most profound reaction, the most honest also, is the statement by President
Muhammadu Buhari who admitted that indeed Nigerians are “fantastically corrupt”
and that Cameron is right, but the clincher was the rider added by President
Buhari, when he said he would not ask for an apology but he would be glad if
Great Britain can release all the stolen loot in its custody. I know President
Buhari is often criticized for condemning his own people offshore, but no one
can fault his sharp honesty, certainly not in the present instance. His reply
to the Cameron statement is absolutely brilliant, diplomatic and loaded with a
meaningful sarcasm that is yet to be properly defined.
Nigeria
is “fantastically corrupt.” Yes, our president says. The dictionary defines the
word fantastic to mean something so extreme as to be unbelievable, strange,
most unlikely, extra-ordinary. Can any Nigerian in good conscience really claim
that this is not true? We are probably one of the few countries in the world
where corruption is the reality we grapple with, from cradle to grave. You go
and try to have a baby delivered in a Nigerian hospital. You can’t escape the
nurses, matrons and the security men at the gate who upon hearing that your
wife had been delivered of a baby would start greeting you: “Oga we go wash am
oh.” The really smart ones among them will even poke your ego a little: “Oga,
this one wey Madam deliver bom boy, na big celebration. Oga you sef na sharp
shooter. You just do am, hit am, commot bom boy”.
You’d
be in serious trouble if your wife is fertile enough to give birth to twins.
Meanwhile, this has nothing to do with your hospital bills, and the aggressive
solicitation is beyond culture. Where else in the world do people have to pay
bribe just because their wives have given birth? If giving birth invites
corruption, dying has even become more expensive around here. If you have to
bury anyone in Nigeria, there must be a special budget for officials and
sympathizers whose palms have to be greased.
I
attended a funeral recently where a dignified beggar insisted that since the
deceased was his benefactor, he would really love to die too, and jump into the
grave, but everyone at the funeral would do well to keep him alive by putting
something in his pocket. People laughed and obliged. Every funeral in Nigeria
is a source of income for all kinds of scammers and no matter how sad you may
be, you are not expected to complain. When you go for a funeral in Nigeria, you
have to hold your pockets, monitor your phones, and even watch yourself,
otherwise your personal items could be stolen and you may yourself be
kidnapped. The children of the deceased are usually special targets. What kind
of human beings would go to a birthplace or a funeral only to add to the burden
of the people involved. Fantastic? Of course, Mr. Cameron is right.
Between
birth and death is a significant polarity. When you live in Nigeria or you
visit, or you have anything to do with Nigeria, including something as harmless
as just passing through, you would feel the air of corruption. You will be
touched by it. And if you stay long enough, you will imbibe it. There is
corruption in other parts of the world, of course. Corruption is an English
word, not so? And it defines all human beings, doesn’t it? But in Nigeria and
some other countries, there have been very fantastic manifestations.
Every
foreigner or traveller who has walked through any Nigerian port in the last,
say 40 years, would most certainly have been asked for a bribe, not
clandestinely, but openly and frontally: “Oga wey the dollar for the boys?
Oyinbo, correct oyinbo, we dey here for you oh. Anything. Nigeria na your own.
If you wan be Governor sef, just call us, or this my oga.” If the visitor is one of those
difficult ones who do not know that a passport in Nigeria is supposed to be a
sandwich at the point of entry and he is busy claiming that he has one funny
visa, before he knows it, he will be detained. Uniformed officials will ask
him: who is thisbomboclat who is trying to teach us our
job? Such officials don’t allow stingy bomboclats to cross the border, any border at
all.
Bomboclats can’t access government institutions either. You have to bribe
every government official in sight: to move a file, to get anything done, to
have your rights respected. And you can’t hold government positions. You are
expected to steal government funds and make returns to the community otherwise
you are considered a bad or stupid person, who can’t eat national cake.
Fantastic? Yes. America knows. David Cameron knows. Public and private Nigerian
institutions are fully compromised. Petty corruption is encountered in ordinary
places on a daily basis, grand corruption has also badly affected Nigeria as a
state, country, and nation. President Buhari wants to deal with the latter, but
he is overlooking the former.
Right
under his watch, that other sphere is thriving. But the challenge of corruption
is not just about grand corruption: the big money that is stolen, the mad men
and women who turn elections into opportunities for theft and primitive
accumulation, the greedy officials who manipulate the books big time and run
away with the national patrimony or the civil servants who help to cook the
books and later play holier-than-thou; it is certainly not about one particular
administration, it is not about making examples and demonizing some people
while bigger thieves prosper within and outside the system. What is it about?
It is about the Nigerian reality in which everyone is involved from servants to
lords. It is the reason why Nigerians, living in an oil producing country now
have to buy fuel at a “minimum” pump price of N145 per litre. It is about the
collapse of institutions and societal values.
President
Buhari has declared a zero tolerance for corruption. How does he define and
secure that legacy? His strategists don’t seem to understand the implications
of that question: that is what this is also all about. And it is why almost one
year after President Buhari assumed office, David Cameron, the prime minister
of Britain, would still say Nigeria is “fantastically corrupt”. It wasn’t an
innocent remark, it may be wrong to describe it as a gaffe. And I also don’t
think the leakage of that privileged and classified conversation with the queen
was innocent or accidental either. I imagine that Prime Minister Cameron
despite the subsequent diplomatic fine-tuning was passing across a message. It
should be noted that it was also at that supposedly confidential meeting that
Her Majesty made a snide remark about the Chinese, our good friends, the
Chinese whose economic expertise is supposed to help Nigeria, and who President
Buhari visited recently.
International
diplomacy is a game. It is high wire politics. The president’s team must step
back from the recent trip to the anti-corruption summit in London and properly
decode the signals. One signal is that Britain is probably not too pleased with
the projected long-term impact of President Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign,
and there may well be a lot that they know that they are not talking about in
the open. Note the timing of that “caught-on-camera” comment. Note also that it
is coming close to the first anniversary of the administration. The archbishop
of Canterbury reportedly smuggled in an aside in President Buhari’s favour but
did either the queen or the prime minister respond to that priestly,
consolatory aside? The only response by Speaker John Bercow was even worse:
“They are coming at their expense, one assumes?” Classic Britishism! Every
nuance, every gesture, every inflection in diplomacy is to be taken seriously –
what is said, or mentioned often has deeper meanings than what is not said. If
it is not important, the subject will not be broached at all.
But,
I commend President Buhari for his confidence. He got the message from Cameron.
Old age and experience can be an advantage sometimes. And he gave it back to
the prime minister in full measure. Rather than accuse our president of putting
his own country down, Nigerians should actually applaud his understanding of
the game of international intrigue. By telling Britain to return the stolen
loot hidden in Britain and its tax havens, President Buhari was actually asking
Cameron to shut up and walk the talk. In other words, Britain cannot organize
an anti-corruption summit and spend time bad-mouthing other countries whereas
it is a principal destination for stolen funds. It is a trite point in law that
the receiver of stolen goods is also a thief. Nigerians are fantastically
corrupt, yes, but they take the proceeds to countries like Britain where they
are fantastically, and corruptly received.
The
onus is on Prime Minister David Cameron who has not shown enough commitment to
ridding Britain of stolen wealth, to take concrete steps to help fight
international corruption. We do not expect that he will lie to the queen, the
sovereign whose government he heads. He knows certainly that there is so much
Nigerian wealth inside Britain, money stolen from both the government and the
private sector and translated into acquisitions in Britain. Nigerians own some
of the most expensive houses in London and elsewhere in Britain, on the best
streets even; they also have fat bank accounts and they have investments that
are fantastically alarming. But Britain and its prime minister cannot just
laugh over that when they too are complicit in an “ole
gbe, ole gba (you thief am, I collect, help you
keep am) arrangement.
Prime Minister Cameron has all the records of our stolen wealth and all the
Nigerian thieves hiding in Great Britain. Let him listen to our president and
begin to show, beyond condescending gossip at the palace, and the rhetoric of
talk shops, that Britain is indeed committed to the ideals of transparency,
integrity and accountability.
Dr. Reuben Abati was spokesman and special adviser, Media and
Publicity to President Goodluck Jonathan (2011 – 2015). He tweets from @abati1990.
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