“The difference
between a man and his valet: they both smoke the same cigars, but only one pays
for them.”
Robert Frost.
Whether
you believe former Minister of Power, Professor Barth Nnaji jumped or he was
pushed will depend largely on where you stand in your assessment of the general
levels of transparency and integrity of the federal administration. If you felt
a tug in your heart a few days ago at the passionate lamentation of President
Jonathan over the unceasing and near-universal criticism of his administration,
you are likely to believe that one of the few bright sparks in the
administration was eased out as a part of an effort to commence a roll-back
process against corruption. You will then say he was pushed. If, however, you
are among the cynics who believe that the administration has neither the will
nor the capacity to fight corruption, you are more likely be believe that the
good professor resigned to salvage what is left of his good name, rather than
save the administration further embarrassment over endemic corruption. You may
then believe that he jumped.
Either
way, the circumstances around the departure of the former Minister and its implications
for some of the policy priorities of the administration do not reflect very
well on a government which says it is transforming the nation. There are so
many questions and inconsistencies around the whole saga (with the highlights
being President Jonathan publicly eulogizing the removed Minister) that it is
safer to believe that there is a lot more to the story than has been revealed. But
it will not be idle speculation to ask whether Professor Nnaji’s resignation
has set a new bar for this administration in terms of accountability and
respect for the rule of law, or is challenging it to set one since it does not
appear that one has existed. Certainly, in the context of events which have
exposed the administration to accusations of being soft on corruption, or at
the very least of being indifferent to accusations that some of its frontline
ministers and executives are sitting smugly on top of entire systems which will
not stand the slightest scrutiny, the circumstances of Nnaji’s departure cannot
fail to shake the ground a bit. He could be a fall guy, a man sacrificed for
comparatively minor offence of indiscretion and poor judgment, so that the
administration can earn a few brownie points on probity. Or he could be the tip
of an iceberg of institutional weaknesses, weak political will, and a system in
which corruption now inspires and influences all policy. Either way, the
administration has lost one of its more capable hands in an episode it could
have shrugged off, or made efforts to limit the damage by settling those he had
offended in a sensitive bidding process, or simply blaming others for his misjudgment.
You now have to wonder if Nnaji, one of the best and brightest could fall so spectacularly
on a questionable moral issue, what other Ministers are doing that may not stand
up to any scrutiny.
The
real test of the value of the President’s removal of Nnaji lies in what happens
to the pivotal privatization policy of power stations. Will the entire process
now be re-visited afresh, using different institutional mechanisms? Will it be
a fresh bidding process, or will existing bids go forward? How much integrity
will the entire exercise have, now that Afam has revealed how murky the
procurement waters can be? Given the volatility around the entire privatization
policy in the power sector, what impact will the revelations from Afam have on
the programme as a whole? Can this administration be trusted to undertake
sensitive and far-reaching reforms which represent key aspects of its
transformation agenda? Will the international and investor community retain the
same level of trust now that one of its blue eyed boys appears to have bitten the
dust, or has been unfairly sacrificed? Will major labour issues around the privatization
programme now disappear, or will labour unions dig in their resistance to key aspects
of the policy? Will the new Minister be better than Nnanji, or will he or she avoid
pitfall and booby traps in a sector that needs courage and competence?
The
Nnaji saga must have a lot more behind it, but for now, it will merely remind Nigerians
that corruption in and around government is the most serious problem the nation
faces. It will remind Nigerians that it took the most monumental struggle by citizens
and civil society groups to open up the subsidy scams, and even with what
government claims to be open-and-shut cases against many of the scammers, the
nation was recently reminded of its vulnerability to corruption after it was alleged
that the scammers were behind a union strike. There are reports of attempts to
pay some, and withhold some of the amounts being owed to importers, even when
the issues relating to culpability or otherwise are being examined. Trials will
take months or years, and with very expensive lawyers lining up to take up
costly briefs, no one should hold their breaths over possibilities of
convictions. Yet key players who participated in the administration and
management of the subsidy policy before the lid was inadvertently blown open by
President Jonathan’s decision to remove subsidy are sitting exactly where they
have always been, some with even more powers. They straddle the oil and gas
sector like colossus, and every decision or appointment in the sector is made
by them. The landscape is replete with issues begging for the application of
some decisiveness and political will around openness and integrity from the
administration.
The
shocking revelations around the pensions scams are being dulled by the
time-honoured Nigerian strategy of burying one scandal with a bigger one. The involvement
of the legislature in probes of suspected scams is now looking like a
liability, after it promised so much in terms of prying open the rock-solid
defences of the intimate relations behind corruption and the operations of key
institutions of the executive arm. Time and time again, legislators have fallen
prey to corruption tentacles themselves. It is anyone’s guess where the
investigations on the pension scam are. The legislature got its fingers burnt
over Oteh, over subsidy probes, and even over constituency projects. If legislators
become reluctant to join the fray after another major exposé, some Nigerians will
think it is for the better; but the nation would have lost a valuable leverage
for demanding higher levels of accountability and openness in governance. As things
stand, both legislative and executive arms of government need massive purges to
regain public confidence. Both are in the gutter, and it is unclear whether one
or both of them are looking up at the stars.
President
Jonathan recently cried out to high heavens over criticisms of his administration,
basically saying he is not the architect of the problems he is being blamed
for. Just when Nigerians were putting those lamentations down as familiar
refrain, he concluded by promising Nigerians that he will surprise everyone by
2013 with his achievements. How comforting it will be to believe the President;
and how desperately Nigerians will hope that the removal of Professor Barth
Nnaji as Power Minister will signal the beginning of a new era in the life of
this administration in which drift, incompetence and corruption will be
decisively tackled. 2013 is only a few months away, and President Jonathan has no
Minister of Defence or Power. He may perform the 2013 miracle groping in the dark
to find solutions to the insecurity threatening the very existence of the nation.
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