Few will contend that corruption is Nigeria’s biggest impediment towards realising our desire for good governance. The country’s position on the annual Corruption Perception Index (CPI) has remained largely unchanged over the years, an indication that corruption, for the past four decades, has proven to be stubborn and hydra-headed.
The blame always falls on the country’s presidents, especially since 1999, who are adjudged to be too weak to fight corruption. This perceived “weakness” has nothing to do with lack of needed human, financial, and legal resources; it is a lack of “political will,” which in itself is an indictment on the President.
Political will, as used in Nigeria, often means that the President does not have the will to allow high profile public officials to be investigated and prosecuted. Unfortunately, such political will, even if super abundantly available, cannot end corruption.
The reason is that, being a political figure, every action of the President is understood only from partisan political perspective.
President Obasanjo exhibited the best of it but even his best efforts were described as a witchhunt of perceived opponents. Rather than expect the President to wield a magic wand against corruption, Nigerians must begin to make specific demand for solutions that have worked in other countries, especially Singapore and Hong Kong.
Historically, having an anti-corruption agency has not proved to be a panacea for ending corruption. Since 1950, The Philippines has had about 18 anti-corruption agencies and in 2012, it was rated 105 out of 174 countries surveyed on the CPI.
The solution to corruption lies in its causes. A cursory look at cases of widespread corruption in many countries will reveal that it is caused mostly by inflation (bad economy) and military rule. Singapore’s corruption became worse during the British colonial period and peaked during the Japanese military occupation.
Lee G.B. wrote in The Synonan Years: Singapore Under Japanese Rule 1942-1945 that: “nepotism and corruption was perfectly acceptable and everyone resorted to connections, friends and relatives to get jobs.
“Bribery worked wonders. From generals to the ordinary soldier, gifts and money smoothed the way. Nothing was transparent and everything was about connections and payoffs. Nothing was impossible with the right connections. … Shortages created the black market and a culture of thievery to fuel the market. Everyone—the Japanese included—did black marketing. The Japanese Occupation culture brought out the basic survival instincts in people and produced a society where all manner of evils could be justified because it was all about survival.”
People must survive. Lee’s account could well describe Nigeria and implies that we are yet to de-militarise our polity, some 14 years after the military retreated to barracks.
The best tool to fight corruption is an efficient civil service system. Therefore, the best expression of political will against corruption in Nigeria is not just successful trial of high profile corruption cases but conducting civil service reform, something that has never happened since the fall of First Republic.
People are employed into Nigeria’s civil service by a balance weave of quota system, nepotism, and god-fatherism. So, from day one, civil servants are compelled to be more loyal to whatever got them the job than the country. The fact that they are not competitively paid even pushes them for a mad rush for whatever they can grab.
The lessons we can learn from the experience of Singapore are: adopting meritocracy, paying competitive salaries to attract and retain the “best and brightest” citizens in the civil service.
But we really do not need to learn these from Singapore. It was the practice in Nigeria’s First Republic. The best students are employed by the government while the rest are left for private sector employers.
Besides civil service reform, another crucial factor that is lacking is a performance tracking /accounting system to determine the effectiveness of our anti-corruption agencies. Nobody cares if EFCC does not record any conviction in a calendar year, the same way nobody cares if budgets perform optimally.
To truly win the war against corruption, Nigeria must implement comprehensive civil service reforms and develop performance benchmark that must be met by anti-corruption agencies.
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