There
is no doubt in my mind that President
Buhari is a patriot, and will not tolerate corruption. Buhari is as clean
and straight as a whistle as they come in Nigeria.
But
if corruption as defined as “stealing” (something that is quite new to Nigeria
after our five years of differentiating between stealing and corruption) is the
main worry of Buhari, he will only be half way through the battle of his
political life that is about to begin.
Nigeria truly is a
country drowning in corruption – both unofficial and official. Unofficial
corruption are easy to go after, it is the official one that will be really
hard to crack. Enter Sample One, the well documented and misdirected tirade of
outgoing Senate President David Mark
against BudgIT #OpenNASSBudget Campaign.
Official corruption is defined as sanctioned
corruption; the type of corruption include in the body of laws that transfer
unreasonable wealth to the ruling class, and should naturally lead to a
revolution. This kind of corruption increased to extreme levels under the People Democratic Party led government
since 1999 to date. To eliminate this kind of corruption is not only extremely
difficult, it requires tact and deft and this is the main reason why Buhari
better be ready to walk the talk. It is inevitable that Nigeria actually loses
more to official corruption than the unofficial variant.
Aside from the fact that this method of taking from
the public purse is actually legal and backed by law, it is also a given that a
select few stand to benefit from them and they will fight tooth and nail to
preserve their position. This always ensures that official corruption is more
difficult to eliminate than official corruption.
Unfortunately for
Nigeria, while unofficial corruption have led to losses of over 2 trillion
naira in national revenue official corruption is leading to a waste of over
fifty percent of the already paltry sum of the national budget.
The source of these leaks are plenty, starting with
the National Assembly budget where
for some strange reasons, only 469 legislators consumes 3.33% of the budget in
the past four years with very little results to show for it. Legislators have
taken to awarding themselves gifts under the pretence of constituency
allowances, constituency projects and fake overheads even as the nation’s
treasury bled! This process is of course blessed with an appropriation budget,
but the fight to battle waste must start at the people’s house charged with the
power of the purse for it to be meaningful.
We do not need
constituency offices if it costs this much; every legislator should be eligible
to 2 civil service staff of their choice paid for by the head of service,
alongside rent, and telephone line and electricity bill – all repayable.
Furthermore, a well-known source of official
corruption is the case of double dipping on non-salaried benefits. It is a well-known
facts that various public officers who collect furniture, housing and vehicle
allowances continue to enjoy these gift even while acquiring high retinue
of aides and assistants that feed fat on the nation’s purse. All these
essentially goes to the over bloated overhead budgets of the MDAs that have
incessantly increased even as the country is barely able to afford capital
projects!
Indeed, during the previous administration the use of
contracts to legitimize payoffs to friends and cronies was perfected ensuring
official blessings for corruption. From subsidy payments to NIMASA security contracts to Tompolo,
and OPC’s pipeline contracts -a lot
of questionable deals are baked into the system that requires flagging and
review. These contracts are either inflated or payoffs to cronies, and are found
mostly in the energy sector. The NPDC
Alliance deals with Atlantic Energy also deserves revocation, if the General is
serious about tackling official corruption and saving Nigeria money. Speaking
about suspicious transactions, the duty waiver regime in the Ministry of Trade and Investments
should be closely scrutinized as the nation continues to lose substantial
revenue from official sanctioned corruption in this agency to the detriment of
the bottom-line.
Official corruption in Nigeria can also take the shape
of constitutionally allowed corruption. This may be the case with the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Commission
(RMAFC) published emoluments for public officers that smacks of official
corruption. The RMAFC plays ostrich with the low wage, high allowances and high
travel compensations it offers public officers. This pay structure invariably
encourages public officers to leave their duty post, waste public funds and
seek alternative means to make ends meet. It is as such imperative to flatten
the pay structure, boost base pay and eliminate allowances completely while
transforming the travel/tour procedure of the government to a central journey
booking and reimbursement regime open to public investigation.
The worst kind of overhead in the federal system today
however remains training and scholarships, and it amounts to officially
sanctioned corruption tied to the quest for escaroles as described above. The Federal
Government is said to spend 100 billion naira on overseas scholarships
alone, and probably equal amount on overseas training. If a quarter of this
amount was spent on Nigerian universities, they could be quickly transformed to
accommodate these journeying civil servants that feed fat on federal gift. This
waste is mind changing and must stop quickly to bring sanity to the system.
When it is all said and done, the most shameful
official corruption in Nigeria will have to be the insane pension we pay
retired public officers – men and women who in addition to grabbing a large
share of the collective franchise while in power, also seek to keep more for
themselves in their dying years to the detriment of their grandchildren.
According to BudgIT, Nigeria spent 2.3 billion naira on the emoluments of her former
leaders and 2.6 billion naira on those of retired head of the civil service in
2014! These numbers for a handful of individuals is annoying!
The amount we pay ex-presidents, governors and heads
of other arms of governments is only a tip of the iceberg. Nigeria can simply
not afford to pay these sums, and an enabling constitutional amendment to limit
pensions of retired public officers (especially disallowing double payments and
payments for illegitimate sojourn in power) should be enacted. The country must
explore alternative means for paying or engaging politicians to bring down the
cost of governance which is simply too expensive to sustain. Centralized
governance systems leveraging technology will also help bring much needed
transparency to a system in need of one.
