Buhari’s war on corruption: Real or fake

By Chinweizu

Many Nigerians are puzzled by President Muhammadu Buhari and wonder what his #Change agenda really is. Someone has even gone as far as to say that “most people are feeling conned, and it is only morning yet.”  Luckily, Buhari’s first 100 days now belong to history. So, historians can begin to examine it for clues to his actual mission and agenda as President, and how he will go about implementing it. This essay is my contribution to that effort.

It is helpful to divide his actions into two groups:

(A) those he embarked on without public pressure and, in some cases, in great haste, as if to accomplish them before Nigerians wake up to what he is up to; and
(B) those he embarked on only after public outcry and pressure.

(A) includes his napalming of Akwa Ibom villagers claiming that he was going after what he called “oil thieves”; his sending of Boko Haram detainees to Ekwulobia prison in Igboland; his claim that those seeking the breakup of Nigeria are crazies; his determination to limit his anti-corruption prosecution to the Jonathan administration; his directive to make Islamic books mandatory in all secondary schools; his slowness in appointing cabinet; his war on corruption; his pattern of lopsided appointments.

(B) includes his delay in making public his assets declaration.
Nigerians have protested against most of these.

To help those who are confused about Buhari’s agenda, this series will X-ray his first 100 days with the aim of finding clues to his real but hidden agenda.

Thus, the Part I of this series, shall examine Buhari’s war on corruption to see why it won’t work, indeed why it will further entrench corruption and lootocracy; how it is being restricted to implement the Caliphate’s hidden agenda; and if it is real or fake.
Buhari’s War on Corruption
The question to be answered here is this: Is Buhari’s war on corruption real or fake?

The first thing to note is that, as we all know, corruption is a worldwide malady. But what most people don’t know is that the Nigerian brand of corruption is peculiar in two ways. First of all, it is primarily lootocracy. Whereas corruption is the dishonest exploitation of power for personal gain—as by a clerk who hides a file until he is bribed; or a policeman who mounts a checkpoint and extorts money from bus drivers.

Lootocracy is the constitutionally approved and protected looting of the public treasury by officials. It should be noted that the bribe-taking clerk or policeman is breaking a law, but the governor or president who empties the treasury into his personal bank account is not breaking any law. His constitutional immunity is a licence to do so.  Secondly, because lootocracy is legal and not prosecutable in Nigeria, its example has promoted rampant and brazen corruption throughout the society. This makes lootocracy the fountainhead of corruption.

In his inaugural address, Buhari listed corruption among the enormous challenges which he promised to tackle immediately and head on:

“At home we face enormous challenges. Insecurity, pervasive corruption, . . . are the immediate concerns. We are going to tackle them head on. Nigerians will not regret that they have entrusted national responsibility to us.”

— President Buhari’s inaugural speech http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/05/read-president-buhari-inaugural-speech/

And he has also just told us that:

“Corruption in our country is so endemic that it constitutes a parallel system. It is the primary reason for poor policy choices, waste and of course bare-faced theft of public resources.”

While further clarifying his administration’s commitment to the war against corruption, the President said: “Our fight against corruption is not just a moral battle for virtue and righteousness in our land, it is a fight for the soul and substance of our nation.”

Giving an insight into the way corruption destroys the nation, Buhari told the second plenary of the conference that “it is the main reason why a potentially prosperous country struggles to feed itself and provide jobs for millions.”

In the same way, the President posited that “the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the infant, maternal mortality statistics, the hundreds of thousands of annual deaths from preventable diseases are traceable to the greed and corruption of a few. This is why we must see it as an existential threat, if we don’t kill it, it will kill us.”

— Corruption is cause of poverty in Nigeria –Buhari
http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/189983-corruption-is-cause-of-poverty-in-nigeria-buhari.html

Despite all that rhetoric, we must ask: How serious is Buhari’s war on corruption? What are the chances that it will reduce, let alone kill, corruption? What is the likelihood that it is just a foxy PR gimmick that will further entrench corruption by leaving its fountainhead, lootocracy, in place?

I must first draw attention to how a war on corruption can paradoxically obscure and protect a corruption system.

From his rhetoric thus far, Buhari will noisily hound, prosecute and severely punish hundreds and even thousands of corrupt officials. That is all well and good. But, unfortunately, that isn’t part of the solution to the plague of corruption. Paradoxically, that is a key and devious part of the ways to preserve the plague, for it camouflages and distracts attention from the looting system itself. It is like when a magician makes a noise in the east to turn the gaze of the audience eastwards while he strikes a silent blow from the west.

Of course, all those caught looting must be punished severely, routinely and without favoritism. But paradoxically, that punitive approach, if used all by itself, contributes to preserving and proliferating corruption. It hides from public view the fact that there is a mechanism or system that breeds corrupt officials every day, in their hundreds or even thousands, and in fact more than you could hope to catch even if the entire criminal justice system was commandeered for fighting corruption alone. It also hides from public view the fact that the elimination of that system or mechanism is the key to winning the war on corruption. You can’t win your fight against mosquitoes in your house unless you destroy their breeding ground in your compound. That corruption breeding mechanism must be eliminated if the war on corruption is to have any chance of success at all. If that breeding mechanism is eliminated, the number of corrupt officials to be caught and punished will dramatically reduce and become manageable.

But what is that breeding mechanism that must be eliminated? It is the 1999 Constitution and any amended version that has certain of its key features.

Dumping the 1999 Constitution is the key to winning the war on corruption. Corruption in Nigeria is at the constitutional heart of the Nigerian system. If anybody really means to defeat corruption, he should first get rid of the 1999 Constitution which is demonstrably the godfather of corruption, and which has entrenched and institutionalised lootocracy, the fountainhead of corruption.  (Please see Chinweizu, “Nigerians and Their Anti-Corruption Charade.”
http://ugowrite.blogspot.com/2015/07/nigerians-and-their-anti-corruption.html
or Chinweizu, Four Frauds That Are Fatal For The 1999 Constitution
http://ugowrite.blogspot.com/2015/07/four-frauds-that-are-fatal-for-1999.html ]

In that “Four Frauds” essay, I examined the 1999 Constitution and showed that:
(a) The 1999 Constitution is the Godfather of corruption, through the immunity clause 308. (1), which protects, and thereby implicitly invites, looting by the highest officials who have brazenly set the terrible example that the rest of society have emulated.
(b) It is a fraud for the Godfather of corruption to give the impression that it is against corruption, and the fraud is compounded when it empowers the State to fight corruption but then surreptitiously discourages it from doing so. That’s double duplicity/double perfidy!
(c) All in all, the 1999 Constitution has been, and remains, a Guarantor of bad governance and the Mother of all evils in Nigeria.
Buhari claims that “corruption in our country . . . constitutes a parallel system”; it should be clear from the foregoing that, contrary to Buhari’s claim, corruption is at the constitutional heart of the system. It is indeed the Nigerian system, not a parallel system to it.  And so long as we have that constitution, nobody can end lootocracy and the corruption that it spawns.

A commitment to get rid of the 1999 Constitution is, therefore, the litmus test of anybody’s seriousness about getting rid of corruption. If he is serious, Buhari can get started by implementing the 2014 Confab report and organising a truly democratic People’s constitution to replace the 1999 Constitution. But of course he won’t do that! Why? He won’t because, entrenching the 1999 Constitution is the most fundamental task on his Caliphate hidden agenda. And Buhari’s Caliphate constituency is already moving to prevent any implementation of the 2014 Confab Report. [Northern leaders move to block implementation of confab report  http://sunnewsonline.com/new/northern-leaders-move-to-block-implementation-of-confab-report/]

And some presidency sources have claimed that Buhari will not implement the Confab Report.
Buhari Will Not Implement Confab Report – Source
https://www.naij.com/494271-buhari-will-not-implement-confab-report-source.html]

If these sources are proved correct, then it means Buhari is not serious about defeating corruption, his hot rhetoric notwithstanding. We’ll have to wait and see what he does.

If he refuses to implement the Confab Report, then, like Obasanjo before him, Buhari will merely use the EFCC, ICPC, etc. and noise-making against corruption to harass and persecute his political enemies, including some Caliphate men, to cheering from his delighted and ignorant dupes.  He is already using it to avenge himself on those who overthrew him in 1985.  He has started with Col. Dasuki, the man who arrested him during the IBB coup. We can expect him to extend his vengeance to David Mark, John Shagaya, Joshua Dogonyaro and the others who made that coup against him, and eventually, when he has consolidated his power, he will go after IBB their leader.

The Nigerian corruption system is a clever mechanism. It is so configured that it continues to covertly serve as the Caliphate’s principal device for plundering Nigeria even while the proclaimed war on corruption distracts the public from its systemic roots in the constitution. The noisy war on corruption is also used to persecute the Caliphate’s enemies, with the Caliphate’s alleged corruption fighters enjoying acclaim for fighting a mysterious and intractable malady. In reality, there is nothing mysterious about corruption in Nigeria. It is bred by the lootocracy that is encouraged and protected by the 1999 Constitution.

People should not be fooled by Buhari’s show of impartiality when he goes after some Caliphate looters. An institution under serious attack will sometimes find it expedient to sacrifice some of its own members, throw its most blatant offenders to the baying dogs, and save itself to continue business as usual. For example, during the Vietnam War, the U.S. army sacrificed platoon leader Lieutenant William Calley for the My Lai massacre of March 1968. He was made a scapegoat and accused of directing the killings, and in 1971 he was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison. As a result, the army’s numerous and contemporaneous massacres in Vietnam were ignored. By making Lt. Calley a scapegoat the U.S. army was even vindicated in the eyes of the duped American public, and was seen as not tolerating atrocities by its soldiers.

It could, therefore, continue with its habit of massacres that are on record from its Indian wars of the 19th century and even earlier. (The books to read are, Understanding Power, by Noam Chomsky, p. 35,  for Lt Calley and My Lai; and  Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown, for the Indian wars.) This is a form of triage: throw overboard a third of the people crowded on a sinking boat so as to keep the boat afloat and save the rest. So we can expect Buhari to sacrifice Nyako, Sule Lamido, and some other blatant Caliphate looters so as to save the looting system itself and also make himself appear an impartial anti-corruption fighter. But don’t be fooled.

To understand why no caliphate politician, let alone Buhari, the current political leader of the Caliphate, will seriously fight corruption by getting rid of its fountainhead, the 1999 Constitution, we must examine the function of corruption in the Caliphate’s mechanism for plundering Nigeria.

The 1999 Constitution and the Caliphate system of plunder and exploitation.
“pre-capitalist agrarian ruling classes in virtually every case depended on what Marx called surplus extraction by extra-economic coercion to reproduce themselves. They therefore owed their ability to take part of the product of the peasants not to their role in production, but to their capacity to organise themselves politically to exert force against them.

In European feudalism, [the] lords’ place in agricultural production, notably via the management of their demesnes, was in general quite limited, and in some places non-existent; but this in no way impeded their ability to dominate and exploit the peasantry, a capacity achieved through their self-organisation into politico-military communities or groups, lordly states on whatever scale.”
[The origins of capitalism-debate in 2004, between Chris Harman & Robert Brenner http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=219 , Accessed Sept 2012]

Like their counterpart in feudal Europe, the feudal Caliphate sarkuna (aristocracy) in Nigeria has used its politico-military organisation to dominate and exploit the economic producers – farmers, oil companies, manufacturers, etc. The Caliphate’s politico-military organisation is the Nigerian state apparatus.

Chinweizu wrote via Sundoor999@gmail.com