By CHARLES IKE-OKOH
WED, 17 AUGUST 2016-What do Nigerians, businesses and the international community want most from Nigerian leaders? To cease being viewed as a source of economic genocide and turn to being a source of economic stability, political models with superior morality, and a source of economic solutions.
It is far less fun-let alone dignifying for the political class and even the presidency to be lectured on its own rules of engagement on corruption. It is even more humiliating when those lectures are thoroughly deserved-as it is today.
Unfortunately, there is no chance that President Muhammadu Buhari will escape blame in the formal and even the legal forms of corruption pervading the country today. His allies will argue that he is not to be blamed for the scourge. Alas, the more percipient of them, as well as their peers around the world know that he has a fair share of blame.
Yes, it is comforting to know his pronouncements on corruption have elicited positive nods locally and abroad and you may want to question why he should be held accountable. He should be because corruption is still everywhere and he is looking in the wrong places. Many agree that corruption is still at the proportion of natural calamity, undermining trust of Nigerians under his leadership and curbing national development.
The government-in this case the presidency and the National Assembly is almost universally regarded as the source of pre-eminent threat to the economy underlined by the inconsistency of policies, dying businesses and waning investor confidence.
The risk is that the current demeanour of both organs of government towards corruption could trigger a sustained bout of economic meltdown. Such a wreck may still be regarded as unlikely, but it is very conceivable.
Corruption trend as epitomized by the sleaze infested House of Representative and the reactive response mode of the federal government organs charged with combating corruption creates more uncertainty in the country that investors, still scarred by the global financial crisis, are not prepared to bear.
The result is the silent flight to safety being witnessed. This is seen in the very low yields on the safest assets such as bonds of the federal government. It is also seen in the losses at the capital market and the consistent pressure on the Naira and equity investors are still staying away from the market.
The House of Representative runs like a government that has a concession to sell-in most cases in the form of contrived ‘probes’-or inquisitions, as in the case of Senate, the budget padding probe and a host of other probes. These probes opens up avenues for negotiations and those who run government, including the law makers, knows that negotiations creates a strong incentive to offer them bribes.
The only guarantee of stemming this scourge is that the corrupt institution, corrupt public servants, and the corrupt political class pay the price of a toughened punishment regime.
To crack down on officials and curb their unending desire to take and give bribes, a simple rule should be made and used-the losses for engaging in corrupt deals should out weight the benefits. It is vitally important to step up the reform of law enforcement in the country. It is only by uprooting corruption in law enforcement agencies and in law enforcement itself can we expect any headway in our fight against graft.
Perhaps, Nigeria was cursed by its early good results shortly after the establishment of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, EFFC, during the optimistic period prior to the exit of Nuhu Ribadu.
Those heady days allowed the emergence- or festering- of groups preparing a counter offensive against the anti-graft agencies, pressing irresponsible attacks on the work of the EFCC and mounting huge campaigns to question the legitimacy of their fight against corrupt public and private top guns. The result is the credibility question hanging over the commission’s work today.
But, the Commission is at least a suitable agency to confront the possibility of a sustained corrupt act. In the EFCC, the federal government should contemplate past follies that lead to the weakening of the agency-and reach agreement on the imperative of avoiding further examples.
