LET  us accept as Nigerians that what is happening in the banking industry today is simply symptomatic of what is happening across the country… I have been accused of opening many battle fronts… I did not open any battle front, the reality is that corruption has many battle fronts and when attacked from one front, all other fronts rise up against you” – Lamido Sanusi, CBN Governor at the 15th Economic Summit Group Meeting, December 15th 2009.

Lamido Sanusi, the Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank, whose “battle” against the greed and graft of many chief executives of Nigerian banks resulted in their removal during the second half of 2009 learned the lesson that is summed up in the subtitle of this essay: Corruption fights back; those who try hard to hunt the corrupt most often end up becoming the hunted.

However, this short essay is not about the anticorruption effort of Sanusi in Nigeria’s banking sector; rather, it is about the more ambitious battles of two anti-corruption czars who are arguably among the most courageous and committed of their tribe world-wide: John Githongo of Kenya and Nuhu Ribadu of Nigeria.

The essay is in the form of a review article of two books on the exploits of the two men – (i) It’s Our Turn to Eat:  The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-blower by Michela Wrong (2009) and (ii) The Trial of Nuhu Ribadu by Azubuike Ishiekwene (2008).

John Githongo,  Anti-corruption warrior

I will begin with a flashback to my first encounter with John Githongo at the Third International Conference on Anti-corruption held in Lima, Peru in 1997.  His brilliant exposé on the problem of corruption in Kenya made him the star performer at the conference.

The illustrative cases in his presentation that involved many of Kenya’s high and mighty wowed the entire audience.  When the offer of political asylum was raised informally with him by some participants who feared he might risk incarceration back home, he would have none of it. He returned to Kenya and, two years later, he became the head of Kenya’s branch of Transparency International (K-TI).  Under his watch, K-TI was widely acknowledged as the most active and effective TI branch in Africa.

During my stint as a World Bank field staff in Kenya (1998-2000), I learnt a lot from John about Kenyan politics and society during our numerous “tea sessions” held in selected Nairobi hotels.  Predictably, the problem of corruption in Kenya featured prominently in almost all our conversations.

Significantly, the last time I discussed the subject with him was in the State House in November 2003, some months after he had assumed office as the Permanent Secretary in Charge of Governance and Ethics (a.k.a anti-corruption czar) in the newly-installed Kibaki administration.  John and I enjoyed a good laugh about the “progress” from conversations in hotels to a conversation in the State House.

In It’s Our Turn to Eat, Ms Wrong tells the story of John Githongo’s experience as an anti-corruption czar between 2003 and 2005. Following his appointment, Githongo wasted no time in setting in motion the probe of the Goldenberg scam of the early 1990s – fake exports of gold and diamonds, estimated at between $600 million and $4billion under president Moi’s watch.

The probe was still on-going when Githongo obtained strong evidence about the Anglo leasing procurement scam (18 phantom military and security-related contracts) in the amount of about $750 million that involved top officials of the newly-installed Kibaki administration. (Some of the Anglo leasing contracts were inherited from the Moi administration – a case of change in dramatis personae but continuity in the “State House’s system of authorised looting”).

When Githongo conclusively traced the Anglo leasing “eating” to the President’s doorsteps, he decided to flee the country in February 2005, after barely two years on the job: “Ultimately, it became clear.

I was investigating the President” (p. 220).  Woven around the informed and balanced biography of Githongo that is at the centre of the book is the sordid story of the system of corruption in post-independence Kenya that the author has baptized “Our Turn to Eat” culture: from the turn of the Kikuyus in the immediate post-independence years (the Kenyatta presidency, 1963-1978) to the turn of the Kalenjins (Moi presidency, 1978-2002) and back to the Kikuyus again (2003 to date).  This poisonous conflation of ethnicity and corruption has the added ugly dimension of virtual exclusion – no thought for the other 41-odd other ethnic groups.

The portrait of Githongo as a whistle-blower is crafted in fascinating details: his taping of conversations with his colleagues, his independent network of sleuths (substitute for the corrupt official intelligence service), the diaries of his findings and reflections, and above all, the “upstander” with a single-minded commitment to exposing corruption, even at the cost of hardships to his family and real threats to his own life.

And “atypically”, he was a believer in Kenya, not in “Gikuyu Inc” (that is, dominance by his own Kikuyu ethnic group).  In exile in Oxford, the whistleblower produced a comprehensive dossier on Anglo Leasing that he released to Kenya’s most widely-read daily newspaper, Nation.  He also got a succinct version of the dossier posted on the website of the British Broadcasting Corporation in early 2006

Wrong affirms a linkage between Kenya’s post-election violence of December 2007/January 2008 and “Our Turn to Eat” culture.  The obvious implication is that Kenya is unlikely to make real progress towards good governance as long as systemic corruption persists. It would appear that the whistleblower and his biographer share this viewpoint: Githongo returned to Kenya in February 2009 and has resolved to seek elective office – to continue the fight against corruption from another front.

While keeping her story sharply focused on the problem of corruption, Wrong also provides an incisive analysis of Kenyan politics and society, drawing on the rich literature on Kenya’s political history.  There are two important messages in the book for those genuinely committed to fighting against corruption in Africa.

The first is the need to focus on using existing laws and institutions to fight the scourge instead of campaigning for new ones: “The key to fighting graft in Africa does not lie in fresh legislation or new institutions … Most African states already have the gamut of tools required to do the job”.  The only exception that I would make is the need for a freedom of information (FOI) law in countries that do not yet have it.

Continues tomorrow

Mr. Adamolekun, an independent scholar, writes from Iju, Akure North, Ondo State.