At the end of George Orwell's Animal Farm, no one can tell the difference between the humans (who used to rule the farm) and the pigs (who overthrew the humans at the head of what was supposed to be a revolutionary movement to secure the rights of the animals). In other words, the new regime turned out to be the same as the old regime.
In the simplest language of all ... the more things change, the more they stay the same. I have forgotten most of the French I once learned, but I think it translates to something like plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
The Olusegun Obasanjo II administration used the EFCC in 2003 to punish and/or strong-arm and/or extort politicians and political machines deemed loyal to the government's political enemies or hostile to the government.
It didn't start out that way.
I mean, lets be honest, corruption is the very life's blood of politics in Nigeria, so you would have to be naive or stupid to believe that the political system was capable of sanitizing itself. The EFCC was always going to be a symbolic entity that engaged in a few symbolic, scapegoat-type prosecutions, but the political system at large was never going to change. You might as well ask lions to be in charge of imposing vegetarianism.
So the EFCC under Nuhu Ribadu was never as "effective" as the fawning, hagiographic coverage in the Nigerian media suggested. I am not an old man, but I stopped being a child a long time ago, and frankly this is not the first, second, third or even hundredth time the Nigerian intelligentsia has hyped something or someone as the solution even though in retrospect it becomes clear the person never did anything worthy of the hype. It is one reason I tend to make sarcastic jabs at "intellectuals"; they have this unfortunate tendency of guiding the broader public into placing all its confidence in things that will never work, not in the real world, not ever. Taken to an extreme, "intellectuals" are actually more responsible for history's disasters than the paramount political leaders; like palm oil and pounded yam, the smooth words of intelligentsia convince millions of people to give devoted support to men and groups that ultimately lead them to disaster.
Coming back to the point, I believe that an independent investigation would show the first 8 years of the Fourth Republic (1999-2007) competing with the Oil Boom 1970s for the title of most corrupt period in post-colonial history. Notice both periods (the 1970s and 1999-2007) coincide with upward spikes in the barrel price of crude oil. The Nigerian intelligentsia likes to say corruption in Nigeria started with Babangida. It didn't, but that is not the point. The Babangida Era was every bit as corrupt as the other leading epochs of corruption, however, our economy was not doing quite as well in those days, so while theft and graft were widespread, there was less available to steal (and in the context of a military regime, fewer hands grasping to steal it).
The EFCC was not "effective" in any substantive sense of the word, but it was not at first a tool of overt politicking either .... not until the failure of the Third Term gambit.
While Obasanjo still thought he could engineer a constitutional amendment to give himself a Third Term, he played "nice" with all the political machines. But he forgot that this is Nigeria, where even military dictators are not allowed to self-perpetuate in in office; Gowon was thrown out after 9 years once it became clear he had no intention of stepping down as agreed, Babangida was "persuaded" (probably at the risk of his life) to leave after eight once his fake transition programme ground to a definite halt, and no one will ever know how Abacha really died during the fake "Five Fingers" self-perpetuation transition programme.
We are not a democratic country, and we never have been .... but we differ from much of the rest of Africa in that Nigerians do not tolerate Life Presidency. Even the corrupt politicians, the kleptocrats, the constitution-shredding militicians, the venal plutocrats, yes, even they have a line of principle they do not cross: No Life Presidency.
Nigeria is probably the only country in Africa where a Third Term bid was "constitutionally" defeated. Elsewhere, the attempts either succeeded or were stopped (in one case) only after a coup-de-tat (which brought its own problems).
The defeat of the Third Term bid also marked a change in the functioning of the EFCC. Under Ribadu's enthusiastic leadership, the EFCC became a personal political tool for the Obasanjo presidency, to blackmail, extort, strong-arm and/or punish anyone foolish enough to stand in the way of Plan B -- the imposition of a hand-picked, weak candidate whom Obasanjo could control (or thought he could control), so as to create a Third Term by proxy (as Putin did in Russia, and as Nestor Kirchner did in Argentina).
And this was what Ribadu did, with gusto.
As I said earlier, "corruption" (a broad term encompassing several things) is the life's blood of Nigerian politics, so you do not need to lie or otherwise frame anyone if you want to bring charges against them. Almost everyone in politics is guilty; you need only threaten to do your job and prosecute them, and they are instantly under pressure to cut a deal with you.
Even so, there was a certain "law of the jungle" aspect to it, as "survival of the fittest" dynamic where men who totally controlled states as though the states were private property, men like Orji Uzor Kalu (Abia) and Bola Ahmed Tinubu (Lagos), remained beyond the reach of Ribadu.
Then again, it should be understood that the PDP as an entity, and Obasanjo as an individual, had long since given up any hope of dislodging the political machines loyal to Kalu and Tinubu in Abia and Lagos. What I am saying is they didn't bother trying to break these men because they didn't have the "infrastructure" to manipulate elections in these states even if the Big Bosses were in jail.
I digress.
The federal republic is now presided over by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, one of ex-President Obasanjo's godsons. Or at least he was. It is hard to tell with Jonathan. He was an acolyte and protege of Diepriye Alamieyeseigha, ex-Governor of Bayelsa.
Jonathan was Alamieyeseigha's deputy-governor and heir. He was a quiet, unknown fellow, who didn't rebel against his boss like other deputy-governors were doing. I find it interesting that Alamieyeseigha alone was charged with economic and financial crime; if he was guilty, there had to be a lot of people aiding and abetting. Knowing Nigerian politics, I know that everyone in the Bayelsa hierarchy, from bottom to top, was feeding off the Big Man's criminal table, but even if you pretend someone in the hierarchy refused to join and chop (and mind you such a person would have been summarily sacked), they would be guilty of knowing high crimes were taking place and doing nothing about it. What could they do about it, you might ask. After all the high-ranking police officials were probably eating off the governor's table too (and note I said high-ranking police officials; the lower ranked are underpaid and poorly-treated; still the high-ranking officers are nice enough to give the low-ranking officers permission to extort "kola" from motorists, provided they give their superiors a cut of the "kola").
I digress.
Bayelsa State is the biggest receiver of "oil derivation" funds, some 13% of revenue accruing from crude oil pumped from Bayelsa. If "power" is measured by the size of the budget you control, oil derivation make the occupant of the Bayelsa State governor's mansion one of the most powerful of our 36 governors. Our statistics are generally unreliable, and in an environment of corruption and wuruwuru the key players have a vested interest in the public never really being sure how much money is where at any given time, but the Governor of Lagos may quite possibly be the only governor with a bigger budget.
In a country where State Governors treat the State Treasury as though it were a personal, privately-owned piggy bank, control of Bayelsa and neighbouring Rivers State is a huge prize for local politicians (and for the kleptocrat-infested Peoples Democratic Party on a national scale). The international NGO Human Rights Watch only restated what Nigerians already knew when they reported the origins of the Niger-Delta "militants" lay in private armies used by PDP (and ANPP) politicians to displace rivals from disputed political turf and to compel 93% winning vote totals.
Lagos State, the richest state in the federal republic, is the private fiefdom of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a territory in which political matchines allied to the PDP have been weakened, co-opted or destroyed. As such the Peoples Democratic Party have left nothing to chance in terms of controlling the oil-rich states of the Niger-Delta: Bayelsa, Rivers, Delta, Akwa Ibom and Cross-River. If it wasn't so tragic, you'd laugh at the sight of current Bayelsa Governor Timipre Sylva "winning" the 2007 rerun election with 93% of the vote.
By removing Alamieyeseigha, the Obasanjo regime kept the Bayelsa budget in the hands of the PDP, but replaced an Atiku Abubakar loyalist with someone (Goodluck Jonathan) they thought they could control. It is amusing to see sections of the media that were overly critical of the late Umaru Yar'Adua seemingly warm up to Jonathan; both men were chosen, not for their suitability for the presidency, but because certain political machines thought of them (rightly or wrongly) as being weak and easily manipulated.
And just to make sure new-Governor Goodluck Jonathan knew his place, ahead of the do-or-die 2007 Elections, the EFCC seized $13.5 million from him in 2006. Ostensibly the money was taken from his wife, but no one said where his wife got the money. More importantly, his wife was not prosecuted, and the incident has since been covered up and forgotten, even by the media.
It was a message to then-Governor Jonathan. As I said earlier, corruption is the life's blood of Nigerian politics, so there is always evidence of crime if you were serious about prosecuting; on Obasanjo's behalf, Goodluck Jonathan was being reminded that the same people who made him could break him.
He seems to have learned, and learned well.
Today, a report from the Daily Trust about the Jonathan administration deploying the EFCC to harass state governors opposed to his plan to run for the presidency in 2011.
No one important has been touched, but there is a message that is being sent.
"You are guilty, and we can prosecute you if we want. You can scream discrimination, partiality and selective prosecution, but we will prosecute you anyway. Be warned."
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
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