Guardian

A RUSE. That is the only way to describe the much talked-about war against corruption in Nigeria.

Despite grandstanding by this government or its officials and protestations to the contrary, there is no war being prosecuted against the devastating scourge. Therefore, there is no reason to speak of any success or failure of any war.

There is one dubious consolation however, for the Goodluck Jonathan government: the regimes before it did very little too, so the current administration has not had to reverse much. It has been, as they say, business as usual, business as typical.

This is the context in which to understand the challenge, thrown the other day, by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to President Goodluck Jonathan to hold him liable if any member of his administration was suspected of corruption. The call was made at the birthday thanksgiving of Oby Ezekwesili, a prominent minister under Obasanjo who had earlier accused the Jonathan administration of frittering away the enormous foreign exchange reserves it inherited. She had in turn been threatened with a probe of her tenure in the Education Ministry by the administration’s spokesmen. Hitherto, the grouse about Nigeria’s war against corruption, symbolized by the operations of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), was that it has largely been selective and superficial. Obasanjo’s challenge to Jonathan more than anything else now demonstrates that the anti-corruption war has not only come to a halt, it has simply become a farce.

The undignified saga is very instructive in many respects. Ezekwesili did not say that the Obasanjo regime in which she served was free of corruption. Like every Nigerian, she has and should enjoy the right to ask questions about the use of the country’s resources by the government. This should not have led to the dishonesty, at least in timing, of raising questions about her own tenure in office, an immature and crude substitute for defending the government’s anti-corruption records.

Of course, Obasanjo’s call on President Jonathan to probe him is far from sincere, even laughable. How can a President, thrusted into office by the designs of this particular principal, aided by a bit of luck, who has kept ministers on whose watch monumental corruption has taken place, pardoned a former governor whose involvement in large-scale corruption is well documented, and not known for much courage of conviction, probe the administration of his benefactor?

Obasanjo’s gauntlet was no more than a ploy to scare President Jonathan’s handlers from witch-hunting and mocking his own administration’s appalling record of fighting corruption.

It is painful that the Jonathan’s administration somehow manages to make the severely flawed anti-corruption effort of the Obasanjo administration look like the Golden Age of the anti-corruption war. Nigerians once only doubted the sincerity of the anti-corruption fight; now they are sure that “probes” are a tool for those who have political power to harass and stall their competitors, real or imagined, or get their own share out of the massive proceeds of the corruption perpetuated by others.

If Nigeria was serious about fighting corruption, by now the institutions established to fight the scourge, the EFCC and the ICPC, should not have to wait for a former president or any former government official to “offend” the ruling government before serious allegations or suspicions of fraud are investigated and prosecuted. Obasanjo should also not have to dictate to the institutions or advise Jonathan on who to probe and when to do it. President Jonathan or his officials should also not have the power to preemptively declare that anyone will not be probed over corruption cases, even if they are former presidents.

It has become painfully obvious that Nigerian anti-corruption watchdogs possess only politically-fitted teeth, which are kept in the pockets of their paymasters and only worn on them when the former wants political rivals bitten.

What the spat between Ezekwesili and the Jonathan administration as well as Obasanjo’s attack on President Jonathan’s commitment to fighting corruption also reveals is the extremely poor quality of the nation’s political party system. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) boasts about being the largest party in Africa, yet it sadly remains an incoherent, soul-less entity. A bulldozer for clearing the path to power, little by way of ideology, agenda or programme bind the rival teams of drivers jostling to seize the steering wheel and gears together. The President’s interests, often amplified by overzealous aides, take precedence over party rules, processes and institutions, which are often abused to advance them. This is why power is so personalized and, consequently, violently opposed factions of “yesterday’s” and “today’s” men emerge in what is supposed to be a single ruling party. In that context, the interest of Nigeria perishes wherever there is any loot to be shared.

Perhaps, the first step in the anti-corruption battle is a vigorous promotion of the rule of law, a better investigation machinery, the sanitization of an infected judicial system and strengthening of the institutions for fighting the scourge.