Corruption: Building accountability into Nigeria’s public sector

Corruption, no doubt, has become an household name for Nigeria. In its various forms, the ill has become a stench the Country has been known for, with malodorous perception which has sent signals of negativities in the international realm. Among comity of nations, the Country now ranks at the top of corruption ratings of various reckoning reports. Report of the 2021 Corruption Perception Index,  (CPI) of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) and Transparency International (TI) released in a January 2022, indicated that Nigeria ranked 154 out of 180 countries in the globe.

While the menace can no longer be isolated alone to the public sector, its grip within that sphere from where the scourge, (it is believed) zooms from, to permeate other fabrics of the society, remains too disturbing that discourse on same must never cease. The plight of the masses, recently, has gone too excruciating that the fight for sanity for what has made a country of plenty become where citizens are languishing in struggles of poverty, must be fought with continuous force till enough heat is generated for wanton and glutinous culture of corruption among public office holders begin to melt.

The records of laundering, among other forms of corruption devices, have been too expansive that the Country has suffered losses that have posed apparently irredeemable fractures. Up till now, unaccountable funds laundered abroad into foreign accounts remain unending in the effort to recover them. Several of these funds, unknown and untraceable, dwell in the limbo while struggles to recuperate the identified ones remain embedded with strings of conditions, some of which are entangled with bottlenecks.

The rigmarole of recuperating these funds nonetheless, more subjects of concern come to bear, particularly on how recuperated funds are utilised, since it remains indisputable that certain funds laundered have come to light with enough information to secure their recovery, be it those laundered abroad or those domestically laundered through dubious devices, but which tracking operations have revealed concrete evidence to guarantee and enforce their recovery.

The Federal Government, on Thursday, 11th August, 2022, had said it has recovered over N3.2billion (£6,324,627.66) of stolen funds from various jurisdictions globally from March 2021 to May 2022.

The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, disclosing this when he featured on the weekly ministerial briefing organised by the Presidential Communications Team, at the State House, Abuja, said that the government generated a total of N1.82 billion from the sale of bid forms and actual sale of forfeited properties in the first 18 months of the Buhari-led regime. He had also mentioned that an inter-ministerial committee on the audit and recovery of back years on stamp duty has so far recovered over N596million (N596,055,479.47).

While the disclosure is a good one, the thrust for accountability demands for more inquiries.  Although the AGF had mentioned that the recovered foreign loots have since been disbursed into key infrastructure projects nationwide which include the Second Niger Bridge, Abuja-Kano Road and the Lagos-Ibadan expressway among others, the need for impact assessment for more detailed report is pertinent to give the reckoning frame of accountability more sense of the thrust of qualitative definition with the force of responsibility.

Nigeria increasingly has been woefully waned by the blows of corruption. The shrieking of its impacts have left perception of reproach on the Country. The profile of such stench on her internationally is gradually demeaning her status, substituting for the once glamorous accordance of repute with deforming attribution of spite.

The tag of corruption associated with the Country, if the political leaders haven’t taken note of, is one debilitating on its potential power as a nation, among others, in the world. Where the Country is weakened in perception, its potential power becomes underestimated and undermined.

Domestically, the impacts of corruption have only left the Country with myths of paradoxes. Songs of dirge have continued to permeate the nooks and crannies of the society as the scourge of unpalatable conditions of living keep waxing gross. The paradox of ‘living in poverty amidst plenty’ has become too pronounced, leaving nothing behind but lamentations.

It is deeply noteworthy that a sense of discontentment rising from the poor conditions, is gradually generating frustrations reflecting themselves in formations of aggressive rep representations in various forms. The signals are threats that must be looked into by the ruling class, majority of which have displayed flagrant insensitivity to rising flashes of resistances gradually showing forth with splashes of aggression.

In all parts of the Country, acrimonies standing on various grounds for claims of justification for actions of aggression have continued to take deep root continuously. Calls for self determination in the South-East, South-South, and much gradually rising in the South-West, have begun to take root. In the South-East, the reflection is growing into aggressive dimensions, which the government is finding difficult to tame. Just as the aggression of insurgency in the North started gradually to become an albatross, every threat has its potential to degenerate into same if the roots are not tackled. The pronounced profile of poverty in Northern Nigeria,  no doubt, is known to have made an easy course for recruitments of disadvantaged persons into terror adventure. All, link back to the years of bad and distasteful governance,  ridden with corruption which has deprived the Country of growth that would make good living conditions an ambience of the society for the thrust of development.

The contrary, other way round, has been the source for clusters of reactions becoming too turbulent, as confusions set in over conditions of living waxing gross. It is apparent that as the conditions wax more gross, the clusters of aggressions apparently reflecting in one form or the other as reactions to worsening conditions have been taking forceful grip on the Country. The need for the custodians of power in the Country to take a turn to the prevailing challenges is pertinent.

The culture of gluttonous selfishness which has taken grip on the disposition of public officers, a culture that has left the public sector ridden with corruption, is one endemic vulture devouring the Country’s fortune. In as much as the problem of corruption can be linked to this deforming culture, it is pertinent for the echelons of the public sector system, from the Federal Government to work concertedly with all stakeholders to harmoniously set the thrust to rejig the operating system of the Country’s public sector to take a reforming shape, such that the loosened holes condoling corruption are blocked. Such embrace demands structural reconstruction to redefine the system for  institutional overhaul, to give the system a new orientation by frameworks that are automatically too virile and responsive than the subsisting order easily outplayed by opportunists who will not give a second thought to any chance to sap public funds.

Since the system is saturated with opportunists, who would always choose to occupy the space for selfish purposes to the detriment  of the greatest number, only a systemic order to foreclose the cleavages that afford them the gap to exploit, would be the closest approach to block the ravaging vices of corruption which have not only worn on the Country a reproachful look, but has broken downdown its fabrics.