By Obi Nwakanma
Nigerians are obviously by now already too numbed by the reports of public corruption at the highest places. There’s very little that is new about public corruption, nor anything in any scale now shocking or surprising about corruption in Nigeria. News of public corruption which could still scandalize and shock people in other places, and even sometimes make the devil blush with embarrassment, is now considered quite routine in Nigeria.

Nigeria has hit rock bottom and has nowhere else to go. The scandals these past two weeks that have erupted, first around the National Pension Fund, and then more recently, the oil subsidy scam, in more civilized places would bring down a government. But in Nigeria, it is an occasion for endless analysis and hand-wring.

It is also an example of what Mr. Philip Asiodu in a recent interview very poignantly described as a “culture of competitive corruption.” Philip Asiodu told a quite remarkable, almost improbable story of a civil servant in a now bygone era who had just been promoted after many years as a Clerk to an assistant executive officer position.

Part of his entitlement was a low interest car loan, for which he quickly applied. Thing was, the man was approaching his retirement, and had just one year to get to the bar, when he would retire based on age. The age bar was nonetheless not the issue. He had rightly applied for a car loan. But he chose not to buy a car, but instead to use the money paid out to him as a car advance, to build a house, since he was near retirement.

The issue was also not whether he could repay the loan, but according to the civil service rules, he had acted fraudulently and improperly by leveraging a car loan and putting it, not to the purpose for which the service approved the loan, but to the quite different purpose of property development. The civil service instituted, first a query, and thereafter, a board of investigations, which was about to indict the poor fellow.

To make this brief, the old man chose suicide rather than face the disgrace. Contrast that with today, he asks us, when a public official who is caught in the scandal of placing the national pension fund in his private account, remains defiant to the point of summoning irrationality – the claim of unfair persecution andunnecessary attention. How dare we persecute him?

Is he the only one doing it? Everybody does it. Well, here is the point of it, dear reader: everybody does it and therefore guilt is selective and subjective value. People steal public funds and are celebrated in their communities. But imagine the sums named in these scandals.

Billions of naira. Nigerians no longer talk in “ordinary” millions. The project is to destroy Nigeria by all necessary means – this is exactly what these activities are – they aim at its financial jugular. But I did ask you to imagine this: how could just a handful of individuals have the authority, beyond the processes of regulation and control, to amass and appropriate public fund at that magnitude? It simply means that there is a fundamentally structural leak in the design of Nigeria’s public administration. Public fund is now privately handled.

Accounting controls are manipulated, and auditing has been left in the hands of easily malleable processes that undermine the integrity of Nigeria’s public finance administration. I will come to this matter presently, but let me draw attention to another scam – bigger and more portent in its implication: the N1.7 Trillion oil subsidy fraud recently uncovered by the Lawan Fraouk committee of the Federal House of Representatives.

The Farouk committee report paints a profoundly gory picture of a country squeezed to death by the greed of a few privileged oligopolists, who suck her resources dry. This past two weeks have seen a flurry of debates around explosive revelations, following parliamentary inquiry about the oil subsidy fraud in the Petroleum ministry, the PPRA and the expenditures under the petroleum Support Fund.

In one instance, N999 million was allegedly paid 128 times within twenty four hours to the same beneficiary. As part of its recommendations, and in utter dismay for negligent complicity, the Lawan Farouk reports recommended the termination of the services of Akintola Williams-Deloite, and Adekanola groups of Accounting firms; but above all, their prosecution. I think it is about time too.

It is about time to bring them all out – hand and feet – including the named individuals like former Account-General of the federation, Mr. Dankwabo, current Accountant-General, John Otunla, former minister for finance, Segun Aganga,  former Director of the Budget Office, Dr. Bright Okogu, and all those who may have questions to answer on this affair. Indeed, by the now, the minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Diezani Madueke ought to have handed in her resignation, to give way to a more transparent process.

Nigerians now need to keep their eyes wide open on the outcomes of this process. It has to be said, that Mister, the honorable Lawan Farouk and his committee, has done their sworn duties to the nation as legislators by exposing this terrible miasma. I did read that the president has promised full compliance with the report.

I should say, at this stage, it is no longer up to the president to prosecute. It is now up to the justice and enforcement arm of the federation to prosecute and punish as should be necessary for the purposes of deterrence. It is up to the police and the Attorney-General’s office to develop the case and arraign people before proper courts for prosecution under Nigeria’s criminal laws.

It is also imperative, for the president to demand the immediate resignation of any of his appointees who have been named in these scams. We must be clear nonetheless: the Lawan Farouk report is but a mere tip of the iceberg. The petroleum ministry is a cauldron of corruption.

We are yet to know the full details of the activities of this ministry, particularly through the eight years of the Obasanjo administration, to date. The KPMG report must be made public and enforced alongside the current report by of the Federal House of Representatives.

Nigeria’s stolen wealth must be recovered, and those who have made capital of exploiting Nigeria, and making it difficult for Nigerians to have the fullest benefits of their natural resources because of corrupt practices are the enemies of the land; far more dangerous and subversive than Boko Haram. Those who steal must be jailed. It is the law. It is not up to the president.