Auditor-General's report

NEXT claims they have obtained a copy of the previously suppressed 2006Auditor-General's report that is currently before the National Assembly. Excerpts of the depressing details can be found here and here.

To put this in perspective, the last proper audit of the federation accounts to be released was the 2001 report produced by Vincent Azie, then the acting Auditor-General ("acting" because the Senate had three times refused to confirm him). The Azie report famously indicted the federal government for corruption and waste, citing specific examples (some of which are mentioned in these 2008 Vanguard reports (here and here), written to complain about the fact that there had been no audit since "1999" (sic.).

The response of the sitting Olusegun Obasanjo administration to the 2001 Auditor-General's report, was to sack Vincent Azie! If you were an ambitious fellow, seeking to move up in the world of politics, government and public administration, you learned from this that you were supposed to talk about the so-called War-On-Corruption, but were not supposed to actually act as if it was real. Indeed, after several years of the Nuhu Ribadu-led EFCC and its supposed campaign against corruption, the now-released 2006 A-G report confirms that nothing of substance had changed in our governance since the Azie report. And then there was Charles Soludo, who was consolidating banks (granted, a good thing) while seemingly oblivious of the fact that his home state, Anambra, was being wrecked by the Uba brothers and their mentor then-President Olusegun Obasanjo.

People sometimes lament that things don't work out they way they should in Nigeria (e.g. "turn around maintenance" that never results in "maintained" refineries), but this is the source of it; for every gesture in the public eye that looks like a good idea, there are several realities no one talks about that defeat the stated purpose of the publicly-viewed gesture. It is one step forward, two and a half steps back -- thus eight years of noise about "reforms" followed by the most ridiculous election in Nigerian history.

Cherry-picking easy targets, scapegoats, opponents of the government and politicians who have fallen out of favour is no way to wage a systemic war on systemic problems like corruption, mismanagement and waste. Helping to manipulate the 2007 elections makes you ineligible for my sympathy when the "winner" of those elections sacks you. The first rule of Nigerian politics is godsons always turn on their godfathers after "winning" office, and move to put their own loyalists into powerful positions as a hedge against that godfather. It isn't just a "civilian" matter, as most of our military heads of state of Nigeria started out as the godson (or godfather) of the person they overthrew.

Why was Ribadu surprised? Erstwhile Vice-President Atiku Abubakar was one of Obasanjo's many godfathers, and Ribadu was the field marshal on the frontlines of stopping the Atiku political machine when Obasanjo turned on Atiku. Ribadu knew the Obasanjo regime was as dirty as any other, and knew the 2007 was being rigged. Why is he pretending that all was well before 2007, and that Yar'Adua is responsible for there beiing no "War on Corruption"? There was never a war on corruption! And I bet if Yar'Adua had kept him in office, he would have been singing the man's praises the same way he does Obasanjo's even till this day.

I am NOT blaming Ribadu or Obasanjo for the issue of waste, theft, mismanagement, corruption and patronage. They did not create these scourges, but then neither did Yar'Adua, or Abacha for that matter. The Uba brothers were not the first to wreck Anambra for political (and financial) ambition's sake; Emeka Offor and Chimaroke Mbadinuju were already at it before them. If there is one thing I like about the late Lamidi Adedibu, the late Wada Nas, and the still-with-us Arthur Nzeribe, it is that every once in a while they were very honest about how Nigeria is actually governed. But even they are not to blame for functioning in the way our federal republic requires us to function.

Ultimately there is a way our society, economy and politics function, and all of these individuals (and the decisions and actions they make and take) are but a reflection of that, a creation of all of us Nigerians and of the decisions we all make and the actions we all take. The Federal Republic of Nigeria as presently functions is the sum total of all of us, and until we take responsibility as individual citizens, and band together to force reform and transformation, nothing will change. When WE change, our leadership will change, because ambitious people (and there will always be many of those) will know they have to act differently if they are to have any hope of power and wealth within the formal and informal rules we the citizenry set.

In any case, we are now faced with a repeat of previous events. The Azie report came out in 2001, two years after Obasanjo was "elected" into office in 1999. This 2006 report, released by the current A-G, Robert Ejenavi, has come out in 2009, two years after Umaru Yar'Adua was similarly "elected" into office.

What will the reaction be this time? Will Yar'Adua follow suit and fire Ejenavi? Or will he keep Ejenavi in office, but allow the report to gather dust, like all such reports/plans/policies/promises/intentions for the last 50 years?

I don't think it is possible to fight corruption under the present circumstances. Getting the current Nigerian political system to fight corruption is like trying to convince a pride of lions to become vegetarians. Before we can see change, we will have to replace the lions, not with sheep, but with intelligent omnivores, who know how to eat a balanced diet.

And a balanced diet is the best we can get from government. I have said before on this blog that corruption, waste, mismanagement and outright thefty exist in EVERY country in the world, in EVERY government. However, in the more successful countries, the crooked system is nevertheless geared toward producing outcomes that raise societal wealth and welfare to a degree that the citizens come to accept a little wuruwuru in government as par for the course. In countries like Nigeria, we obsess over corruption in large part because our system makes us poorer than we need be, and hinders our progress rather than promote it.

It is great to have Auditors-General who are not afraid to speak the truth. But their work will be for naught until we radically reform and transform our federal republic. The best we can hope for from the Yar'Adua government is a series of spectacular nothings, much like we got from Ribadu's EFCC, events that appear to be dramatic and shocking, but which in the end turn out to be empty and ineffectual.