By Alabi Williams
To provide a clear distinction between the private wealth of public officials, separate from state-owned resources, the
1999 Constitution compels officials to declare their assets as soon as they assume office. The process is supposed to be a compulsory and honest declaration of material wealth, both cash and other assets, but like in most things here, the details are always concealed.
The Fifth Schedule of the Constitution at Section 11(1) provides that a public officer shall upon assuming office and at the end of service, submit to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), a declaration of all properties, assets and liabilities; and those of their unmarried children who are under eighteen years.
They are not expected to declare assets that they anticipate to acquire. The idea, for instance, is to provide the CCB and the perceptive public a fair idea of what a man claimed to own before he became the governor of a state.
When public officers contravene this provision of the Constitution, they are liable to be tried at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), after which they may be removed from office, or vacate their seat in the legislature. They may also pay a fine or forfeit whatever they had acquired illegally. In practice however, both the CCB and CCT have been unable to prevent politicians from encroaching on, converting and confiscating public resources.
The Amnesty International (AI), a globally acclaimed anti-corruption NGO, holds that assets declaration is a necessary guide against accumulation of illicit wealth as well as monitor and prevent conflict of interests at critical decision-making level of governance. The way to achieving the goals of assets declaration, according to AI, is by the oversight it allows over the financial activities of politicians and other public officers.
According to the CCB guidelines, officers eligible to declare their assets are to collect and sign declaration of assets forms from any nearby CCB office. It says in the second guideline that, “the responsibility to collect, fill and return the form rests solely with the declarant; therefore, submission of completed forms by the declarant through his/her respective Head of Department does not in any way exonerate a declarant from responsibility or liability.”
The implication here is that the big men in public offices don’t bother to show up. They send their personal assistants and drivers to pick and submit the forms. No commitment.
Since 1999, public officers, especially the politicians, have no fear and regard for the entire Schedule Five of the Constitution, either because of the non-obligatory manner the Code is applied, or in the way those who ought to lead by example have disdained the procedure.
Whereas the Code doesn’t enforce public declaration, politicians at the highest levels end up concealing their details. The few who have made their assets declarations public do so as mere symbolic gesture.
That cloak of obscurity encourages public officers not to come clean on their assets. They make under-declarations and the CCB does not demonstrate the intention and capacity to verify claims.
It was reported by a newspaper in May 2024, that lack of fund to run state offices hampered their capacity to do needed follow-ups on assets declared by public officers, particularly politicians. To properly do an assessment of assets declared by a president and his vice, 36 governors and the host of lawmakers across the country, and also verify and prosecute cases were needed, both institutions require enormous funding.
The report revealed that many state offices of CCB were owed months of running cost and their activities were grounded. Inadequate funding could be deliberate and systematic, just to frustrate their ability to track and verify declarations.
Another drawback for the CCB/CCT is the politicisation of their operations by politicians. The chief executive of the country has substantial leverage to instigate the tribunal to pursue a particular mission, like in the case of a former Chief Justice of the Federation (CJN), Walter Onnoghen.
Onnoghen was convicted by the CCT in April 2019 for false declaration of assets. In November 2024, the Appeal Court discharged and acquitted him, after adopting the terms of settlement reached between the Federal Government and the defendant. The court ruled that the CCT lacks jurisdiction to entertain the matter without resorting to the National Judicial Council (NJC). That suggests the abandonment of due process.
In the absence of strict enforcement of assets declaration, a most basic anti-corruption tool to prevent public officials from stealing, politicians devise ways and means to ferry public resources outside the country, for instance, through sponsorship of overseas education. State governors are suspected to have exploited this scheme to divert and steal state resources.
In June 2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), issued a guidance note on Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), to update banks on measures they needed to take to mitigate potential money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation of financing risks posed by high-risk customers, including PEPs.
The guidance note described PEPs as individuals who are entrusted with prominent public function, positions that can be abused to commit financial crime. The risk associated with them also include their families and associates.
In a 2019 edition, The Economist reported that nearly $600 billion had been stolen from Nigeria since independence. Britain’s International Corruption Unit announced it confiscated 76 million pounds ($117m) in laundered money since 2006, with another 791 million pounds frozen worldwide.
A report on illicit financial flows published in 2020 by an American-based non-governmental organisation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a product of an investigative research conducted by one of its nonresident scholars, Matthew Page, reported that a former governor and now minister in the Tinubu government and a former senator from Enugu, were among 334 prominent Nigerians linked to 800 properties located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
The value of the properties was put at N164 billion. The report noted that owners of the properties were persons of diverse political and religious divides, including about 20 former and serving (at that time) governors, seven former and serving senators, heads of ministries, departments and agencies of government, commissioners and agents (money changers).
In 2021, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in a report accused Nigeria’s political elites of using the guise of seeking British educational system for their wards/students to launder money. The report was commissioned by the UK government “to better understand the risk to the UK from illicit finance in West Africa,” British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing, explained.
The report noted that, “the capital flight and greater foreign exchange and currency pressures associated with paying costly school and university fees have harmed these countries’ future development and prevented them from correcting deeper socioeconomic inequalities that compound underdevelopment and can even spark violent conflict.”
It added: “As long as PEPs flock into the education sectors of countries like the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, instead of investing in their own sectors, West Africa will continue to suffer a ‘brain drain’ and financial outflows that harm their economies.”
In February 2024, the Central Bank Governor, Yemi Cardoso, blamed the free fall of the naira on foreign education and medical tourism, which gulped $39.6 billion in 10 years, spanning 2010 to 2020. He said $28.6 billion was spent on foreign education and $11 billion on medical tourism. The implication, he said was that, the amount surpassed the total foreign exchange reserves of the country, thus weakening the naira.
A photograph shared by Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, last week of his son’s graduation at the Queen Mary University, London, UK, reawakened the debate on the impact of foreign sponsorship of education has on the economy.
In a story shared by Sahara Reporters, an online newspaper, a data specialist, Dayo Adegoke, lamented that the funds Nigerians spend on foreign education could revamp local universities and increase their capacity to function optimally, like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and others. He worked the numbers to suggest that what is spent to procure foreign education by Nigerians is in the region of billions of dollars, spread over the years.
On state sponsorship of foreign education, Wike had in 2015 argued against the idea after he terminated funding for Rivers State students who were enrolled in the state’s overseas scholarship programme, then empowered by the Rotimi Amaechi administration.
Wike made a lot of sense when he argued that states shouldn’t waste scarce resource to train students in foreign universities for courses that are available here at home.
Many PEPs have flaunted similar photographs when their children graduated from foreign institutions. Some were heartless enough to post the pictures at a time Nigerian universities were closed for months due to industrial actions bordering on underfunding and neglect.
The failure of both CCB and CCT to separate the private wealth of politicians from state resources provides an escape for PEPs to deep their hands fraudulently in state coffers to fund lavish lifestyles at home and abroad.
For Nigeria to be taken seriously as a responsible country, there’s an urgent need to formulate a policy that will shield public finances from criminally-minded and thieving PEPs. Countries that have emerged from poverty into prosperity, overtime, had to deliberately deny their countries and citizens costly and fleeting imported luxuries and behaviours.
At the time Nigeria signed MoUs to begin assemblage of automobiles in the 1970s, China and India queued behind Nigeria. But those countries demonstrated the discipline to shut their borders against luxury automobiles. Today, they’re competing for markets with Western automobiles.
Nigeria was among the best in education among Commonwealth countries. But due to repeated under-funding, Nigerian universities have diminished in stature and learning, a perfect excuse for state governments and politicians to launder scarce forex in the name of foreign education. For instance, housing costs have gone up in the Island of Cyprus due to activities of agents of Nigerian politicians, who hide behind procuring foreign education to fund property ownership. EFCC take note.
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