“We have got the leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries
coming to Britain… Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most
corrupt countries in the world”, UK Prime Minister David Cameron was
caught on tape telling the Queen ahead of the anti-corruption summit
organized by the UK Government, this week, which was attended by
Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari. This diplomatic gaffe rubbed many
Nigerians on the wrong side, but most of the responses, coloured by
overtly emotional love of country and a certain defensiveness is
downright hypocritical.
We all know that indeed Nigeria is “fantastically corrupt”, and
that is why the most profound reaction, the most honest also, is the
statement by President Muhammadu Buhari who admitted that indeed
Nigerians are “fantastically corrupt” and that Cameron is right, but the
clincher was the rider added by President Buhari, when he said he would
not ask for an apology but he would be glad if Great Britain can
release all the stolen loot in its custody. I know President Buhari is
often criticized for condemning his own people offshore, but no one can
fault his sharp honesty, certainly not in the present instance. His
reply to the Cameron statement is absolutely brilliant, diplomatic and
loaded with a meaningful sarcasm that is yet to be properly defined.
Nigeria is “fantastically corrupt.” Yes, our President says. The
dictionary defines the word fantastic to mean something so extreme as to
be unbelievable, strange, most unlikely, extra-ordinary. Can any
Nigerian in good conscience really claim that this is not true? We are
probably one of the few countries in the world where corruption is the
reality we grapple with, from cradle to grave. You go and try to have a
baby delivered in a Nigerian hospital. You can’t escape the nurses,
matrons and the security men at the gate who upon hearing that your wife
had been delivered of a baby would start greeting you: “Oga we go wash
am oh.” The really smart ones among them will even poke your ego a
little: “Oga, this one wey Madam deliver bom boy, na big celebration.
Oga you sef na sharp shooter. You just do am, hit am, commot bom boy”.
You’d be in serious trouble if your wife is fertile enough to give
birth to twins. Meanwhile, this has nothing to do with your hospital
bills, and the aggressive solicitation is beyond culture. Where else in
the world do people have to pay bribe just because their wives have
given birth? If giving birth invites corruption, dying has even become
more expensive around here. If you have to bury anyone in Nigeria, there
must be a special budget for officials and sympathizers whose palms
have to be greased.
I attended a funeral recently where a dignified beggar insisted
that since the deceased was his benefactor, he would really love to die
too, and jump into the grave, but everyone at the funeral would do well
to keep him alive by putting something in his pocket. People laughed and
obliged. Every funeral in Nigeria is a source of income for all kinds
of scammers and no matter how sad you may be, you are not expected to
complain. When you go for a funeral in Nigeria, you have to hold your
pockets, monitor your phones, and even watch yourself, otherwise your
personal items could be stolen and you may yourself be kidnapped. The
children of the deceased are usually special targets. What kind of human
beings would go to a birthplace or a funeral only to add to the burden
of the people involved. Fantastic? Of course, Mr. Cameron is right.
Between birth and death is a significant polarity. When you live in
Nigeria or you visit, or you have anything to do with Nigeria,
including something as harmless as just passing through, you would feel
the air of corruption. You will be touched by it. And if you stay long
enough, you will imbibe it. There is corruption in other parts of the
world, of course. Corruption is an English word, not so? And it defines
all human beings, doesn’t it? But in Nigeria and some other countries,
there have been very fantastic manifestations.
Every foreigner or traveller who has walked through any Nigerian
port in the last, say 40 years, would most certainly have been asked for
a bribe, not clandestinely, but openly and frontally: “Oga wey the
dollar for the boys? Oyinbo, correct oyinbo, we dey here for you oh.
Anything. Nigeria na your own. If you wan be Governor sef, just call us,
or this my oga.” If the visitor is one of those difficult ones who do
not know that a passport in Nigeria is supposed to be a sandwich at the
point of entry and he is busy claiming that he has one funny visa,
before he knows it, he will be detained. Uniformed officials will ask
him: who is this bomboclat who is trying to teach us our job? Such
officials don’t allow stingy bomboclats to cross the border, any border
at all.
Bomboclats can’t access government institutions either. You have to
bribe every government official in sight: to move a file, to get
anything done, to have your rights respected. And you can’t hold
government positions. You are expected to steal government funds and
make returns to the community otherwise you are considered a bad or
stupid person, who can’t eat national cake. Fantastic? Yes. America
knows. David Cameron knows. Public and private Nigerian institutions are
fully compromised. Petty corruption is encountered in ordinary places
on a daily basis, grand corruption has also badly affected Nigeria as a
state, country, and nation. President Buhari wants to deal with the
latter, but he is overlooking the former.
Right under his watch, that other sphere is thriving. But the
challenge of corruption is not just about grand corruption: the big
money that is stolen, the mad men and women who turn elections into
opportunities for theft and primitive accumulation, the greedy officials
who manipulate the books big time and run away with the national
patrimony or the civil servants who help to cook the books and later
play holier-than-thou; it is certainly not about one particular
administration, it is not about making examples and demonizing some
people while bigger thieves prosper within and outside the system. What
is it about? It is about the Nigerian reality in which everyone is
involved from servants to lords. It is the reason why Nigerians, living
in an oil producing country now have to buy fuel at a “minimum” pump
price of N145 per litre. It is about the collapse of institutions and
societal values.
President Buhari has declared a zero tolerance for corruption. How
does he define and secure that legacy? His strategists don’t seem to
understand the implications of that question: that is what this is also
all about. And it is why almost one year after President Buhari assumed
office, David Cameron, the Prime Minister of Britain, would still say
Nigeria is “fantastically corrupt”. It wasn’t an innocent remark, it may
be wrong to describe it as a gaffe. And I also don’t think the leakage
of that privileged and classified conversation with the Queen was
innocent or accidental either. I imagine that Prime Minister Cameron
despite the subsequent diplomatic fine-tuning was passing across a
message. It should be noted that it was also at that supposedly
confidential meeting that Her Majesty made a snide remark about the
Chinese, our good friends, the Chinese whose economic expertise is
supposed to help Nigeria, and who President Buhari visited recently.
International diplomacy is a game. It is high wire politics. The
President’s team must step back from the recent trip to the
anti-corruption summit in London and properly decode the signals. One
signal is that Britain is probably not too pleased with the projected
long-term impact of President Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign, and
there may well be a lot that they know that they are not talking about
in the open. Note the timing of that “caught-on-camera” comment. Note
also that it is coming close to the first anniversary of the
administration. The Archbishop of Canterbury reportedly smuggled in an
aside in President Buhari’s favour but did either the Queen or the Prime
Minister respond to that priestly, consolatory aside? The only response
by Speaker John Bercow was even worse: “They are coming at their
expense, one assumes?” Classic Britishism! Every nuance, every gesture,
every inflection in diplomacy is to be taken seriously – what is said,
or mentioned often has deeper meanings than what is not said. If it is
not important, the subject will not be broached at all.
But I commend President Buhari for his confidence. He got the
message from Cameron. Old age and experience can be an advantage
sometimes. And he gave it back to the Prime Minister in full measure.
Rather than accuse our President of putting his own country down,
Nigerians should actually applaud his understanding of the game of
international intrigue. By telling Britain to return the stolen loot
hidden in Britain and its tax havens, President Buhari was actually
asking Cameron to shut up and walk the talk. In other words, Britain
cannot organize an anti-corruption summit and spend time bad-mouthing
other countries whereas it is a principal destination for stolen funds.
It is a trite point in law that the receiver of stolen goods is also a
thief. Nigerians are fantastically corrupt, yes, but they take the
proceeds to countries like Britain where they are fantastically, and
corruptly received.
The onus is on Prime Minister David Cameron who has not shown
enough commitment to ridding Britain of stolen wealth, to take concrete
steps to help fight international corruption. We do not expect that he
will lie to the Queen, the sovereign whose Government he heads. He knows
certainly that there is so much Nigerian wealth inside Britain, money
stolen from both the government and the private sector and translated
into acquisitions in Britain. Nigerians own some of the most expensive
houses in London and elsewhere in Britain, on the best streets even;
they also have fat bank accounts and they have investments that are
fantastically alarming. But Britain and its Prime Minister cannot just
laugh over that when they too are complicit in an“ole gbe, ole gba (you
thief am, I collect, help you keep am) arrangement. Prime Minister
Cameron has all the records of our stolen wealth and all the Nigerian
thieves hiding in Great Britain. Let him listen to our President and
begin to show, beyond condescending gossip at the palace, and the
rhetoric of talk shops, that Britain is indeed committed to the ideals
of transparency, integrity and accountability.
About the Author:
Reuben Abati is a columnist in The Guardian and former Special
Adviser on Media and Publicity to former President Goodluck Jonathan.
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