By Ugoji Egbujo

The new president made many promises and politicians routinely make even promises they would not to keep. The public may let him off on some but not on the pledges to rout the boko haram monster and to fight corruption. If there is one fight Buhari must not lose it is the fight to retain public support.

While he has started adroitly by curtailing expectations on the war against terror, he cannot employ that strategy against corruption. The fight against corruption is the war the masses hired him for and it is a war that leaves him no room for excuses. And his performance on that front will determine how long they will abide with him as he grapples with an economy in a ditch.

Public disenchantment sets in easily , public expectations on corruption must be matched in words and in deed. The nation’s well-being will depend on much more than stemming corruption, but the symbolic value of a firm and diligent engagement against corruption and malfeasance in government can be politically life-saving for his administration. With an increasingly harsh economic reality and a seething populace, patience will be short and the public’s mood may be mercurial and heroes can quickly become villains. Buhari is perhaps , after all , not a very fortunate man.

His pedigree as a brutal , no nonsense, austere and passionate leader would create a challenge for him . On the one hand it feeds the widely held perception of incorruptibility, inflexibility and single minded patriotism . These are attributes many believe make him especially suited to lead the nation out of the morass of corruption . On the other hand, it marks him out as a man that should be carefully watched. A man whose passion for rectitude can tolerate some excesses in the fight against serious crime. While many do not fear that he possesses the parochial vindictiveness of one his earlier predecessors, some are worried that the fight against corruption may get overly zealous and lose moral legitimacy. Great expectations but diminished maneuverability.

Fighting corruption as a military dictator can be simple and simplistic. A military junta is accountable to no one. Fighting corruption with weak criminal justice structures in a democratic society where corruption is notoriously endemic but where rule of law must be upheld is an entirely different subject matter .

Former EFCC chairman , Nuhu Ribadu , once remarked that in Nigeria corruption fights back strongly against attempts to stem it.. Any committed change agent therefore necessarily has to be aggressive and creative. Effective crime control under such circumstances may demand periodic application of extra legal means of dubious morality to bridge gaps and institutional defects. Obasanjo and Ribadu often discarded due process to drive that war which drew them international applause . Buhari’s pedigree would deny him that latitude. Because Buhari is a man that must prove to many that he is now a democrat and an adherent of rule of law, he can ill afford to jettison due process in the fight against corruption. Many will however argue that Obasanjo and Ribadu failed. And that they failed because their methods lacked objectivity, were self serving and smacked of malice. Such law and order efforts tragically undermine institution building. Others may hold the view that though they reached for only their opponents they managed to curb impunity in part.

So how would Buhari prosecute this war that the ordinary man on the street expects him to start winning from day one and which might define his presidency? He must soberly reflect on the reality he is inheriting and set very clear objectives. He must approach the fight with moral integrity applying objective standards in a principled and consistent manner . Crime agencies must be seen as independent, impartial and objective . Heavy- handed retributive approach alone can be counter productive and a multi- faceted approach that focuses on prevention may be more fruitful . Jobs creation to curb unemployment will substantially help to curb vice more than coercion. He must not purchase apparent success at the cost of moral legitimacy . He must seek to build enduring institutions and systems.

And from a moral perspective Buhari has many issues to navigate. Many Nigerians are not law abiding because it often pays not to be. The system is lax and permissive and does not discourage corruption. Take the business of importation of goods for instance. Nearly every importer and every clearing and forwarding agent in Nigeria engages in some form of corruption and stealing. Corruption is so customary in that environment that it is impossible to remain competitive there without being corrupt.

The system has in a sense failed all importers and clearing agents. Any government desirous of change in that sector can, of course, recover hundreds of billions and send many to jail by probing the Customs and freight forwarding activities in the last 10 years . But governments would lack moral justification to apply criminal sanctions if they acted irresponsibly by failing to firmly regulate and therefore abet fraudsters while inhibiting conscientiousness .

So Buhari must embrace regulatory reforms first.  Every politician who wins any election in Nigeria has either directly or indirectly engaged in fraudulent acts. It is fraudulent to know the spending limits set by INEC for electoral campaigns and allow your agents spend many multiples of that limit and yet claim victory and moral high ground. I do not blame the politicians. Many good people have stayed away from politics because the environment is not properly regulated. Thuggery , rigging and questionable funds rule our political contests.

Many good people , well aware of these short comings but conscious of the need not to abandon politics to rogues and nitwits delve into our murky politics in hope that they would sanitize the process at some point. If such a consequentialist reading of their involvement is permitted , would such an interpretation not foreclose any subsequent backward looking anti- corruption crusade? What is hypocrisy? Criminal law is supposed to be a society’s strong collective condemnation of gross deviance. A law that is not enforced and not obeyed is effectively no law. Any backward looking application of such a law would render such an enforcer morally vulnerable to charges of ‘retrospectivity’ or scapegoatism.

So does any politician or group of politicians who, in the course of political campaigns, deliberately and cynically desecrate fundamental electoral laws have any moral standing to engage in any massive probes of any other sector? I doubt that they have. I doubt that they can in good conscience, without appearing hypocritical, engage in such an exercise . They lack moral legitimacy for such a righteous posturing. Political and electoral reforms must top any genuine anti-corruption crusade in Nigeria. Nigerian politics has remained a high yielding money laundering enterprise.

And I suspect that President Jonathan was soft on corruption because he had a sensitive conscience. I suspect that he prevaricated into so many quasi theories on ‘stealing and corruption’ and on ‘goats and barns’ because his conscience wouldn’t let him fight corruption since he was a product and a beneficiary of a thoroughly corrupt system. Perhaps it would take a man like late Gen Abacha to set up tribunals for all manner of failed ‘activities’ even while he looted the treasury with equanimity. And perhaps only a committed modern day political Pharisee will go searching for specks in other sectors while our electoral system is filled with logs of filth and corruption. Hypocrisy and politicians.

It is true that the law is often  applied selectively and that not every offender can be punished. But if retribution is to have any desirable deterrent effect, rational choice theory suggests that the offender must appreciate that crimes will nearly always be punished and that criminal sanctions have the heft to make crimes unprofitable, a bad choice. Public prosecutors ensure that prosecutorial activity retains moral legitimacy by having clear prospective guidelines that enable consistent, objective, application of standards in selecting cases so that the process is deemed impartial , and purposive.

Being subjective , whimsical , selectivity is unfair , immoral and leaves room for further corruption . Any anti -corruption war that seeks to achieve narrow political advantages or to appease a public baying for blood will be morally illegitimate and ultimately counter productive. And such demagoguery has in the past led many EFFC chairmen to engage in showy trial of innocent people on the pages of newspapers and to concentrate on arbitrary illegal detentions rather than the more productive , more normative diligent and thorough prosecuting.

Buhari’s anti corruption war can find easy legitimacy and can side step many moral constraints only if it is forward looking , painstaking and fair. But can Buhari ignore the mass looting of the treasury that has happened in the last few years and retain public support? I have my doubts. Some shattering revelations will come to test his focus and agitate the public. So can he choose some and leave others and retain moral integrity? It’s difficult. An ad hoc case by case approach would do him no good. Predictability rather than arbitrariness would help the cause of probity. He must have clear objective aims and standards. He may look backwards only when absolutely necessary and in the face of compelling evidence of theft of government funds of a gravity that can shock the conscience of the public. He must apply same standards against all men regardless of political , religious or ethnic affiliation. The far north is desolate but all convicted former governors are from the south.

The true test of objectivity in a political culture steeped in cynicism must be that if the criminal justice system must habour any bias then it must be against the president’s closest supporters.