By Abiodun Adeniyi
Corruption seemed intertwined with the evolution of Nigeria as a nation-state. It has been a malaise, a big elephant in the room, regularly talked about, loathed through synchronic rhetoric, but growing in systematic proportion, with little or no hope of redemption. The discourse of corruption looks, therefore, like an exposition of the nation’s attempt at social, economic and political development. From the descriptive “ten percenters” of the 1960s, it has gestated to greater fractions, sometimes 100 per cent, with gusto, extraordinary impunity and bravado, after the fashion of persons plundering a captured territory. The looting of public patrimony has been differently described as prebendal, predatory, rapacious, locust-like, or mindless. However, we are still challenged to continually examine its context, which is patently multi-dimensional, octopodal and cyclical, if to sustain an attempt at reminding the populace that the practice, deep-seated as it may appear, cultured or acculturated as it seems, is still an anomaly.
It is in this light that one can situate the work of Prof. Ademola Adebo on How Corruption Works in Nigeria: Institutional Failures in a Culture of Corruption from start to finish. The 531-page work bears the character of a magnum opus, far from a parvum opus, flowing from the recess of a long-established scholar, a researcher, administrator, university lecturer, public intellectual and corruption scholar. Adebo deployed the curious skill of a practised researcher, from the prism of an agitated change agent, largely working from the case of the Code of Conduct Bureau to extrapolate a national, even global cancer, without losing focus of the meaning or unmeaning the problem represents for a nation in quest of development. He deployed the case to examine a retrogressive social fabric, seemingly untamed, despite a consciousness of it, several campaigns, workshops, submits, stakeholder engagements and numerous jamborees.
In 12 chapters, nearly a hundred sections, an appendix and a glossary, Adebo dissected the essences of corruption from the stage of its psychological construction to its hydra-headed practice, helping in the location of its past and present dimensions, and providing a gaze into its future. The work is at once exhaustive, penetrating, insightful, and fascinating, and leaves hardly any further questions unanswered unless they relate to the predictable evolution of new shades of corruption–a sure thing, likely in a state where an abnormality has been normalised, evening up to a perverse culture.
Two forewards to the book by erudite Professors Wale Olaitan and Victor Adetula delivered a helicopter overview of what is in Adebo’s pudding. They situated the literature within the realms of our theoretical understanding of the sorry state of the land, as ensconced in neo-patrimony. The term, amongst many others, as clientelism, the patronage system, patrimonialism, rent-seeking, principal–agency, state capture, political culture and ruling coalition, featured prominently in the work.
Neo-patrimony is in evidence, further from Max Weber’s simple patrimony as an ultra-state of municipal hijack where office holders share fortune simply based on nepotism, favouritism, ethnicism, religion, “connectionism” and such other nebulous reasons far from merit, laid-down procedures, and against the interest of the populace. The distribution mentality becomes established, insidious, and continuous to the extent that the state becomes blinded to it, turning to salute it as a fad, a right opportunity to desire, culminating into stunted development, and the reversal of the concentric circle of leadership, where the leader privileges the interest of friends and associates, first, before the interest of the community–the ideal purpose of leadership.
Olaitan and Adetula were united in describing the book as groundbreaking, not just for the decade-long effort invested in it, but for copious references to theories, pre-existing thoughts on corruption, the conflating and conflicting definition of the subject and the avalanche of evidence available to back up claims. In recommending the book somewhat as a classic, the scholars highlighted its value in societies’ pursuit of transparency, accountability and openness in the public expenditure process. The preface, acknowledgement and introduction by the author are a handful. Therein the reader is invited into the initial experience of the author at the CCB, the influential and instructive works of great reasoners like Francis Fukuyama, Andre Frank, Immanuel Wallenstein, Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Claude Ake and Frantz Fanon, amongst others, and how they impacted on seminal work.
It is also within this bracket, specifically in the introduction that the author revealed his metaphorical construction of some computing terms to pinpoint the contexts of corruption practice. How? He described on internal ring of corrupt officials and their practices as the Local Area Network of Corruption, while viewing their external variant with whom LANOC are in cahoots as the Wide Area Network of Corruption. The two networks share the corruption philosophy, from the case of the CCB, and limit favour and opportunities to cronies, further to neo-patrimony. The two are related to the negotiation of deals, the monopoly of power, the continuation of the patron-client system, and the perpetuation of meritocracy, plus more.
Regretting here how “a culture of corruption is nurtured to become the default mode of governance”, Adebo argued that the consequence is the emergence of a kleptocratic bureaucracy becoming an “indispensable political tool that is leading corruption in the country for the extractive ruling oligarchs that have been in power in Nigeria.” The author is no less analytical in chapter one, on corruption in developing countries: conceptual and theoretical issues, where there are exposes on neoliberal definitions, neo-liberal control, the views of institutional political economy, the seminal Johnston’s theories, the syndromes of corruption, Khan’s four-factor theory, corruption as a default order and how governance system determines corruption.
The chapter is lucid on the multiplying notions of corruption, from the willful appropriation of public patrimony to official advantage talking, and to the deliberate denial of services otherwise meant for the public. From breaking down the many definitions of corruption, it emerged to limit its analyses to “how endemic corruption works in Nigeria within the framework of Johnston, Khan and Mungiu–Pippidi’s theories of corruption and control of corruption.” This zeroing in looks safe faced with the ceaselessness of the malaise, the extending ideation and intellection around it, and the need to keep a focus, lest the direction of an analyst is obfuscated.
Chapter two, on the expansion of endemic corruption in Nigeria and the making of the CCB as an anti-corruption strategy, takes us directly to the author’s case, where he detailed constitutional provisions against corruption, the fusion of ethics codes and codes of conduct powers of the CCB, the frequency of assets declaration, CCB’s powers on assets, the structure of the organisation, their code of conduct, and why he thinks the organisation is failing, and much else. In these regards, Adebo invites readers to the letters and the spirit of the institution, the specificities of its functions, how much is expected from it, to drive a noble fight, and how less is being realised.
The inflexibility of its laws, the place of income and assets declaration, and the role of the code of conduct for public officials were also in focus. With picturesque examples, sometimes directly naming names to drive home his points, he is unmistakable about the dysfunctionality of the many units in the institution, eventually adding up to the failure of the whole. What to do? “The Nationality Assembly needs to amend and overhaul constitutional provisions relating to the CCB/CCT to serve the cause of justice and promote federalism. The CCT should be decentralised. The present arrangement inhibits justice, increases the cost of governance and expands endemic corruption.” See!
Chapter three focuses on the drivers of Nigeria’s endemic corruption, which provides the author with the opportunity to give the malaise a historical and constitutional background. He located the driver within two paradigms: one within the realm of issues, and the other centering on personalities. Some of the drivers are identified as the failure to decolonise the post-colonial state, the activities of elite bureaucrats, and the de-federalisation of Nigeria, the curse of resources, and the pressure to be corrupt. The parts of Generals Yakubu Gowon and Murtala Mohammed are also featured; confirming earlier hints on how regimes and administrations have severally perpetuated it, whether directly or indirectly; or campaigned against it, but still unable to reduce or eliminate it. The real or imagined anti-corruption initiatives of President Shehu Shagari, General Muhammadu Buhari, General Ibrahim Babangida and General Sani Abacha were not ignored. The chapter concluded that most so-called fights against corruption are rather ruses than real efforts.
Chapter four is on how dysfunctional leadership and human resource deficits stagnated the CCB. Here, he diagnosed the questions of causes and consequences of dysfunctional leadership, regionalisation of positions, nepotism, and the lack of training for officials, leading to poor quality productivity and inefficiency. With illustrations, he demonstrated some lopsidedness in organisational recruitment, resulting in the weakening of institutional effectiveness, over time. In chapter five, which is on how extractive institution enables endemic corruption in the CCB, the author is explicit on enabling laws and CCB’s operational framework, how the autonomy of the organisation is subjugated, illegal and improper office holding, undue compartmentalisation of departments, dearth of research and planning, lack of professionalism and the stagnation of branch offices of the institution by the headquarters.
Adebo is rigorous, with excellent use of sources and quotations to support claims on how institutions could fail in fulfilling their mandate only on account of consistent dereliction of duty, poor supervision, improper decision-making and the outright failure to implement extant roles. The result is an eventual perversion of processes, their circumventions, and obvious self-aggrandisement.
Chapter six is on how the absence of integrity breeds corruption complex in CCB: Methods and techniques for fleeing public treasury. He is specific in this regard, attesting to the manifestation of what looks like participant observation or ethnographic studies. He highlighted shades of fraud like salary rackets, stationery fraud, staff “incentive” fraud, and peculiar allowance fraud, entertainment of auditors and inspectors’ fraud and multiple self-payments of allowances by the CCB’s secretaries. Here, Adebo showcased the creativity of the corrupt, how they could become ingenious in opening new avenues to plunder, and new flanks of looting in a predatory, prebendal and systemic manner–words that featured repeatedly through the breadth of the work.
He summed: “In all of the above absurdities, there was never any query from either the internal or external auditors or the relevant committees of the National Assembly responsible for performing oversight and horizontal accountability functions of the CCB. The Nigerian corrupt order worked seamlessly to permit the diversions of public funds and the diversion was always smoothly executed due to the high level of ‘vertical and horizontal collusion between elite, middle level and junior bureaucrats and top political authority.”
Chapter seven, on deification of corruption and season of anomie in the CCB, is on other avenues of corruption like yearly office-rent racket, abuse of Service Wide Vote, salary arrears scam, inflated nominal roll, personal costs, misappropriation of salaries, employment rackets and ghost workers syndrome, abuse and misuse of overhead cost, a certain N5m book fraud, hazy reconciliation committee and controversial petitions for the dissolution of the bureau. To be sure, seven extends the creativities of corruption in six and reminds us of not just the culturation of a malaise, but a readiness to mine opportunities for it.
Chapter eight is on bearing the costs of standing against entrenched corruption in the CCB– the famed case study of the author. He discussed an attempted co-optation into LANOC, which is the obvious strategy of the crime elite to enlist a seeming critic or rebel against their ways. He also reveals whistle-blowing and its consequences, how he was persecuted and removed, a media notice of his removal through the Nigerian Television Authority and his pursuit of justice at the National Industrial Court, Abuja. This chapter evokes emotions, pains and regrets, in addition to the frustration, trauma and loneliness of an anti-corruption crusader in a climate of corruption. It explains why the weak-willed could easily be co-opted by the dominant, corrupt majority given the covert or overt badgering that a crusader could face. He is ironically easily seen as an outsider, a deviant, who should be an outcast, for being different from the norm. Pity!
Chapter nine, on how public and private sector corruption collides to promote corruption in the CCB, dwells on training fraud, job completion reports, and a multiplication of fake, nebulous and bogus contracts. Here he revealed the role of the private sector in encouraging sections of the public sector to steal. Viewing them as members of WANOC, he was outspoken on how sections of the private sector depend on filthy funds from the public sector to stay afloat. A failure to cooperate on their part means a lack of patronage. To remain in business, the private sector keys in, becoming conduits for the outflow of illicit funds.
Chapter 10 is on how power holders use weak institutions to maintain and preserve power: The (mis)use of IAD, CCPO, and ICT. Adebo tells us about the unlawful demand and release of completed assets, and unlawful transmission of the CCB cases to the CCT and then discusses the celebrated trials of Bola Tinubu and Bukola Saraki. He argued that the weakness of institutions as evidenced in the CCB could occur through a lack of collaboration, the absence of consultation, communication lapses and willful sidestepping of procedures. While reasons around ego, territoriality, or the protection of covens of corruption might be responsible for this, a contrary situation would not only have grown institutions, but also be helpful to their sustainability and by extension the thriving of a national, or even global system.
Chapter 11 is on how endemic corruption undermined institutional reforms in the CCB. In stretching the theme of the previous chapter, this chapter is devoted to the interventions of multi-lateral organisations like the UNODC, and the World Bank, and how their efforts at institutional growth are undermined by the culture of corruption. Chapter 12 is the conclusion. Aside from being a bird’s-eye view of all discussions prior, the author reminded us of the problem of papering over the corruption crack. The crack, he argues, is much deeper than imagined, viewing the wrong diagnosis as resulting from “mischaracterisation.”
He concludes: “Endemic corruption is a social order and a product of Nigeria’s governance context.” One or two arrests, prosecution and sanctioning is not the solution. Rather, “Unless Nigerian ruling elites understand correctly that corruption is an extractive governance order nurtured and sustained by the nation’s governance context and embark on political agenda to reform that context that generates predatory social order, future administration will continue to dither on the appropriate path to the control of corruption and development.” He emphasised further: “The solution for Nigeria would be to embark on reform initiatives that would disrupt the equilibrium of entrenched corrupt social order, constrain its expansion and engender a new social order that promotes incorrupt norm and inclusive development.” Prof. Adebo finally asks: “I hope this work contributes to such reform initiative.” I can respond: “Yes, indeed, Prof.”
Overall, the book is a classic, a deliberate masterpiece, coming after an elongated immersion in a field of research, from where Adebo assembled more than enough data to do a book on a big elephant in the national and global room. Great book no doubt, and hardly let down by anything, aside from the less important issues of further chances of improving on the quality of presentation, class of aesthetics, or rather raising the overarching style of formatting. Regardless, we now have in our libraries a magnum opus on corruption, a reference point, where all issues of corruption are consolidated and deconstructed. It is a good fit for many disciplines, including law, political science, sociology, public administration and indeed the regular reader, more for the lucidity of thought, clarity of expression and even more for the depth of analysis. Congratulations, Prof. Adebo.
Adeniyi is
a Professor of Communication at Baze University, Abuja
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