By John Amoda
DECISION Points is a memoir of George W. Bush giving account of highlights of his tenure in the office of President of the United States. Memoirs can be written only by office holders drawn to politics by personal visions of a life of stewardship.

Memoirs are not accounts of the implementation of manifestos of political parties; they are testimonies of what the author did in honour of his stewardship; an account of how challenges encountered were used as opportunities to create conditions where leadership triumphed over inertia of routines, routines of bureaucracies, corporations and of politics.

Account of stewardship in office are rare in Africa, and a telling comment on what office holding is in Africa in general and in our nation in particular. A politics of posters and slogans suggest no ideological connection between personal vision, family cultures and name, and service to nation. It is a politics that is money for printers providing stuff that block the drainages come the rainy seasons.

In Decision Points President George W. Bush discussed one of the initiatives worthy of note and which is the subject of this piece, the Millennium Challenge Account. We quote from his account.

“The principles of accountability and partnership that guided PEPFAR were also behind the centre piece of our new approach to economic development, the Millennium Challenge Account.

To be eligible for MCA funds, countries had to meet three clearly defined criteria: govern free of corruption, pursue market-based economic policies and invest in the health and education of their people. The change in approach was dramatic. Economic aid would be treated like an investment instead of a handout. Success would be measured by results produced, not money spent”.

The above is good as principles but what understanding of the conditions of the societies of the target recipient countries informed these principles? Very little. The predictable result is a giving that no recipient may be qualified to receive. It was no different from the Lord Jesus’s condition given to those who brought the woman to the Lord for his verdict. “He who is without sin let him cast the first stone.”

There was none on earth but the Lord himself who could execute the punishment. Conditions for access to the MCA are stringent and possibly can be described as exclusionary in their implication. Let us examine the criteria: Govern free of corruption- what is corruption in Africa’s post colonial countries? Why is corruption and access to power positively so correlated, that access to power may even be said to be the cause of corruption?

Why is office holding almost uniformly in Africa correlated with wealth accumulation? Why is lack and poverty associated with powerlessness? These questions reveal the normative prescription embedded in the naming of the phenomenon. Corruption as used in the access to MCA criteria stipulates the purpose of power. Embedded in the accusative usage of corruption is the command “use power altruistically; do not use power self-servingly”.

What one should ask in privileging this use of the term corruption is where in the world is power always used altruistically? When in the history of the countries of the West was power used altruistically? And for that matter is power of the religious orders and private corporation used altruistically? What conditions compel holders of office in Western democracies to use power accountably?

And is accountability and faithful stewardship the same as altruism? When in the history of America did conditions favourable for corruption prevalent? Are those conditions similar and identical to the conditions in Africa that are corruption susceptible?

These questions suggest that the cause of corruption in society are structurally political and thus the abatement of corruption would require the political restructure of corruption- prone societies or better phrased the restructure of “corruption politics”. When corruption is seen as abuse of office rather than the objective of office-seeking then the criminalization of corruption only amounts to the setting of ideals that are irrelevant to the order of corruption politics.

This reconceptualisation of the term is no different from Princeton Lyman’s description of the US Korean anti-corruption policy. According to Ambassador Lyman, corruption was the context of South Korean politics- but it was positively correlated with performance- it was primitive accumulation in service of effective policy implementation. What Lyman decried in Nigeria was corruption disconnected from concern for policy effectiveness.

The second criterion- pursue market-based economic policies: This criterion helps explicate the point made above, for it is a condition which stipulates one set of norms for public office-holding and stipulates the opposite for the private sector. Market-based economic policies are not altruistic but profit-driven. Political power is on the one hand to be used for non-profit ends, while economic power is to be used for profit ends.

And here political power in market-based societies is in the service of market-based economy. The question is not asked what is the structure of Africa’s post-colonial societies in the first place? Is it market-based structured?

Market-based as here presented is an abbreviation for capitalist market-based. Was the United States society always capitalist market-based? Is it realistic to prescribe an order of society for Africa without the question of what it takes to transform Africa’s post-colonial societies into capitalist market-based society, a question to be frontally addressed, if such transformation is of interest to Africa’s politicians?

More specifically what is the result of making access to MCA governance market-based economic policies?

Will one of the immediate results not be the hyper-development of inequality of wealth between the propertied and the propertyless and the hyper-development of poverty in societies pursuing market-based economic policies?

Given the above two conditions, why should those with power invest in the health and education of their people if their interest in development be circumcised by the market? These questions suggest that MCA hitched to a wagon driven by these three conditionalities would not move from the starting point- for these conditionalities do not evince an understanding of “corruption politics” or is it that its formulators refuse to address what it takes to transform “corruption politics” into “non-corruption politics”? This is why this piece is titled “Giving Under Condition that Disqualify All”.