Two recent events in Abuja beamed the spotlight on the protracted and yet-to-be-won battle against corruption in Nigeria. The first was a conference and a report presentation by Chatham House, one of the world’s preeminent think tanks; the second was the unveiling of an initiative to promote transparency and accountability in Nigeria’s 774 local councils by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC). The attention and reflection offered by the two events were necessary and timely, especially in the context of the seeming dip in enthusiasm about anti-corruption in both political and popular consciousness in the country.

It is important to keep the fire of the anti-graft campaign burning as corruption remains the bane of the Nigerian society. The second part of the last sentence is a statement straight out of the inaugural address of President Olusegun Obasanjo at the dawn of this republic in 1999. Without a doubt, anti-corruption has been the most consistent feature of the last 25 years in Nigeria, even when we have also seen uneven emphasis across administrations. We have had a phalanx of laws, institutions, policies and initiatives devoted to checkmating graft in the country, and some significant progress has been made. But there is still much more to be done. In taking this necessary work forward, we need to expand the toolkit for tackling corruption in Nigeria.

I will share my highlights of the two events, interspersed with observations, then conclude with a few comments.

On 3^rd April, ICPC unveiled an initiative to deepen openness and probity in Nigeria’s local government areas (LGAs). The initiative is called the Accountability and Corruption Prevention Programme for Local Governments in Nigeria (ACPPLG) and will be run with the Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Public Integrity (CFTPI), a civil society organisation. In the main, this initiative is designed to nudge the local councils to comply with laws and policies mandating proactive disclosures of their finances and operations.

All the 774 LGAs will be assessed and ranked based on their performance in terms of public and pro-active disclosures in five broad categories: fiscal transparency, open procurement, human resources, citizens’ engagement, and control of corruption. These five categories have 27 sub-categories, ranging from proactive publication of annual budgets, budget implementation reports, revenue flows, annual audits, debt profiles to records of tenders, procurement and recruitments, staff nominal rolls, and policies on bribery, conflict of interests and whistleblowing and the existence of functional websites, social media accounts and records of interactive engagements with citizens.

I think this is a very important initiative. The local councils are the most critical tier of government in terms of service delivery. This is the tier of government that is not just the closest to the people but it is also where the presence and essence of government should be felt the most. This is hardly the case at the moment. The LGAs are technically the closest tier of government to the people but they are realistically the farthest from the people in terms of impact. Local elections are the least credible, the local officials are rarely accountable, and the local people are seldom involved in decision-making about local priorities and resource allocation. Where governance is needed the most is where it is the most broken. We need to reposition our local councils for them to effectively discharge the responsibilities entrusted to them in the Fourth Schedule of the 1999 Constitution and for them to deliver, like their counterparts elsewhere, on the promise of good governance embedded in the theory of decentralisation.

The 11 July 2024 ruling by the Supreme Court affirming that local councils should only be run by democratically-elected officials and compelling direct federation allocation to the LGAs remains a step in the right direction. But even if both conditions are fully met, they are not sufficient to bring about the needed development at the local level. Accountability and responsiveness will be critical. Free and fair elections and financial autonomy by themselves do not necessarily guarantee accountable, efficient, and responsive governance. This is where the initiatives by ICPC and others can bridge the gap.

The disclosures required by ICPC and on which LGAs will be assessed and ranked are already mandated in various statutes including the laws on freedom of information, public procurement, fiscal responsibility and others. Providing an incentive (through a league table) for LGAs to comply is a great idea that additionally serves three purposes: encouraging peer review/peer learning among the LGAs, reducing the incidence of malfeasance through openness, and empowering citizens with information that they can use to hold local officials to account.

I am aware that CFTPI has been publishing an index for the three tiers of government along these lines. But a ranking by ICPC, an organisation with investigative and prosecutorial powers and national reach, definitely will carry more weight. The partnership between the two organisations is the kind of strategic collaboration needed and a reinforcement of the desirability of a handshake between government and civil society.

It is also noteworthy that the Chairman of ICPC, Dr. Musa Aliyu, attended this event, alongside not just his directors but also the heads of key anti-corruption agencies such as the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC), Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), and the Public Complaints Commission (PCC)—all pledging support for the initiative and stating they would be tracking the processes and finances of LGAs to actualise the landmark and desirable ruling of the Supreme Court and in line with their mandates.

But ranking and threats are also not enough. It will be important to get the residents of the various LGAs to become invested in and committed to holding local officials to account and to have the applicable tools and the capacities to do so. The LGAs can publish all the required pieces of information on their websites and this might still not make much difference. The information on the websites might not make much meaning or be accessible to most of the people in the LGAs for instance. The point here is not to dismiss the importance of this critical transparency (and potentially investigatory) tool but to say that other things need to be layered on it, including capacity building and nurturing for community-based groups/local opinion leaders and even the local officials.

On its part, Chatham House hosted a conference in Abuja on March 19^th with the theme: “Renewing Nigeria’s Anti-Corruption Agenda—Pathways for Change and Reflections on 25 Years of Policy.” Not unexpectedly, Chatham House brought together the leading figures in the anti-corruption space in the country, from government to civil society, development partners and think tanks.

The agenda statement set the tone for the frank and insightful discussion that followed: “Over the past 25 years, Nigeria has developed a broad set of anti-corruption frameworks and institutions. Yet, corruption remains endemic at multiple levels of society, a reality that has corroded public trust in government, stunted economic growth, and weakened Nigeria’s external standing. Corruption’s resilience—despite the raft of legislation and government bodies created over the last quarter-century—continues to underscore the limitations of top-down policy and legislative responses.”  

The event was both reflective and forward-looking, and this was well-captured in the framing of the two sessions: “Taking Stock: 25 Years of Anti-Corruption Efforts in Nigeria”; “Looking Ahead: A Participatory, Multi-Level Approach to Anti-Corruption.” The various speakers and the participants highlighted the need to bridge the research and policy gap, to ensure comprehensive value-reorientation, to leverage technology to limit human contact, to focus on fighting corruption in all sectors and all tiers of society, to make it less difficult for those who want to do the right thing, to celebrate, protect and link integrity champions, to build enduring and resilient social movements, and to impose proper and context-meaningful sanctions for bad behaviours.   

The conference also marked the official unveiling of the 50-page research paper by an Associate Fellow of Chatham House’s Africa Programme, Dr. Leena Hoffmann. Entitled “Taking Action against Corruption in Nigeria—Empowering Anti-Corruption Role Models and Coalitions to Change Social Norms,” the paper argues for a normative, bottom-up and networked approach to strengthening the fight against corruption in the country. The conference and the paper were part of Chatham House’s Social Norms and Accountable Governance (SNAG) project, implemented by its Africa Programme since 2015 and supported by the MacArthur Foundation through the groundbreaking On Nigeria programme.

Using a behavioural and norms-based lens, the SNAG project conducted surveys and produced research papers to deepen the understanding of the depth of and the motivations for corruption in Nigeria. I find it interesting that Chatham House started its first major research with trying to understand why Nigerians partake in corruption but concluded the project with valuable insights into why some Nigerians resist corruption. As the report underscores (which is a confirmation of the work by organisations such as Accountability Lab that have been naming and praising integrity icons in the country), there are actually Nigerians who resist corruption, at a significant cost to their careers and sometimes to their safety. Doing the right thing has a cost, and the cost can be steep, but that has not been a deterrent to those who choose to be positive deviants.

One of the things we need to do is to recognise that such people exist, to continue to celebrate and protect them, and to reduce or even eliminate the cost of being upright, then hope that they can create a tipping point. The paper also argues that there is safety in numbers, and I think this is eminently sensible. Integrity icons and anticorruption champions within and outside government stand a better chance if they work together in “networked coalitions” and are supported with the necessary laws (such as a whistleblower law) and with strategic guidance on how to navigate the mines of the narrow path.

As stated earlier, there is an apparent sense of fatigue about anti-corruption in the country. This could be due to hopes raised and dashed by different administrations. Or because people have seen impunity go unpunished so often that they have become jaded or sceptical or even disillusioned. Whatever the reasons, it is important to keep alive the campaign to significantly reduce corruption in Nigeria. And in doing this, we will need to expand the toolkit of the anti-corruption crusaders as these two events affirm. We definitely need more than the disproportionate emphasis on law and order of the last 25 years. This is not to say we should undo the laws or slow down on enforcement/sanctions. No. But we need to spend more time on the not-so-sexy work of prevention, research and strategy.

We need to make it difficult for people to engage in corrupt practices by putting in place, and constantly strengthening, mechanisms and systems that checkmate corruption before it happens. Preventing corruption is not headline-grabbing but it is cheaper. We also need to significantly hike the cost of engaging in corrupt practices. As is often said: corruption is not a crime of passion but a crime of calculation—perpetrators do cost-benefit analysis and weigh their chances. Where the cost is low and the benefit is high, you know what will happen, especially where it doesn’t take much effort to undertake or conceal.  

Systems and laws do not implement or enforce themselves. They are implemented and enforced by humans whose actions are dictated, sometimes subliminally, by how they have been socialised. This is why it will also be critical to focus on how to change entrenched values that predispose people to, or drive, corrupt practices. Behaviours are what we see, more like the tip of an iceberg. Beneath behaviours are bigger and deeper elements: attitudes, belief systems and values. We need to dive deep to understand what is there.

So, merely telling people to change their behaviours through clever play with words or some fancy behavioural change campaign without addressing the values that define and motivate them may not amount to more than empty preachments. We need to surface the norms that drive action and know what buttons to press to make the difference. It is going to be some tough and persistent work, needing a lot of probing, nuance, rigour and reflection. But it is a necessary and worthwhile work, if the goal is to slay the monster of corruption in our country.

“When beggars die, there are no comets seen; heaven themselves blaze forth the death of princes” - spoken by Calpurnia, Julius Caesar’s wife, in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

At first, I took little interest in the Uromi massacre for obvious reasons. How many of such assaults on our sensibilities do we suffer on a daily basis? So, any time I come across them - incessantly - on social media, especially when the authors are kind enough to warn viewers to beware, I delete and move away! To maintain one’s good health in today’s Nigeria, one must learn to go to Afghanistan, as writers call it. Afghanistanism means avoiding unfortunate issues or one that could land someone in trouble while preoccupying oneself with innocuous issues, especially from far away lands, to maintain one’s sanity and keep out of trouble.

Another reason why I initially avoided Uromi was because I knew that after the uproar and outrage that greeted it, it would soon pass into oblivion like many others before it in our recent past. Ours, like I have repeatedly said, is a country of one scandal, one moment. Before Uromi, we had the Natasha versus Akpabio “he wants to f*ck me” scandal, which is still trending. As if that and the lady’s kangaroo suspension were not bad enough, another leg of the macabre dance was the plot to recall her from office. Recall that it was in that same Kogi state that the attempt, in 2018, to recall another senator, Dino Melaye “caput” on its head “yakata”, as they say.

The shenanigans of a vindictive recall process apart, the embarrassment of watching Kogi state officials fall one on top of the other devising all manner of machinations to keep Natasha away from her place of birth, despite her undisputable rights, under law, to freedom of movement, beggars belief! If sensible and reasonable persons still remain in the land of Yahaha Bello, this is the time for them to show up to be counted.

In the midst of the Natasha/Akpabio melodrama, a state of emergency was declared in Rivers state. An elected governor was removed - even though his election was fraught with mind-boggling irregularities - and a retired military officer was asked to take his place. The irony of the situation was lost on a president who was a pro-democracy activist and one of the arrowheads of the “military-must-go” struggle that cost ordinary as well as prominent Nigerians lives and limbs as well as properties and liberties.

In the last one week alone we have had Uromi, the sack of the Board and Management of the NNPC, the president himself jetting out to France for what they call a two-week working visit, a euphemism for what I am sure you know! By now Nigerians must have become adept at reading the lips of their presidents! To divert attention, the president gave the people something to cheer for in the clean sweep at the NNPC. This is the proverbial case of someone who poured honey in your mouth but farted into it as well!

As if that was not a mouthful, news also broke that the government had introduced N10,000 and N5,000 denominations into the economy. I was at the Ikeja Shopping Mall when someone suddenly screamed, “They have killed us o! Tinubu has introduced N10,000 and N5,000 denominations o!” The whole place immediately went dead. Who does not know the implications of such a move? Mercifully, the CBN was quick to declare the information as fake news!

So, you can see that it is not every news that you must hurriedly react to if you want to keep your blood pressure in check. For me, Uromi was one of those. I simply sighed, “Aaah, Uromi, the birthplace of the Enahoros - Anthony and Peter - is in the news for the wrong reasons” and moved on. Anthony Enahoro moved the historic “Independence Now” motion in the emerging Nigerian parliament in 1953 while his brother, Peter Enahoro aka Peter Pan, remains one of the country’s most celebrated journalists and writers.

Uromi also reminded me of the Yoruba “iromi”; in my native Owo (Ogho) language where the “u” vowel starts everything, it will be pronounced “uromi”. My people say that the iromi/uromi dancing on top of the river has a drummer dictating the tunes beneath the river. In other words, there is no smoke without a fire. The massacre at Uromi could not have happened if there were no underlying causes. Unfortunately as with all things Nigeria, Nigeria immediately happened to efforts to unravel the truth. Were they innocent hunters? Or were they terrorists masquerading as such? We may never know; I mean, we may all never come to an agreement as to who they actually were.

Returning to Calpurnia, the Fulani - and their Hausa foot-soldiers - are the “princes” of the Nigerian federation while the others, especially those from the Middle Belt down to the South, are the “beggars”, difficult as this is to swallow. That is why the torrents of mindless butchering of the “beggars” have neither commanded the attention of the government nor gingered it to action. Whereas any slight calamity that happens to the “princes”, no matter how minute when compared with the horrendous afflictions visited on the “beggars” in the Middle Belt down to the South, is quickly and squarely attacked and addressed to the satisfaction of the “princes”, who must not be offended.

With one example after another ad nauseum, ad infinitum, this has become not a mistake or oversight but a deliberate and deliberative cause of action. It is politics at work - vile politics that value votes to human lives. Questions have been asked, which must be answered. Were the victims of the Uromi massacre really hunters armed with dane guns, killing lions and elephants, and found with lots of cash on them? Were there no forests in the North where they came from that they had to travel down South? Were they appropriately documented with local authorities according to extant Forestry laws operating in those states?

Pardon me! Being an apostle of Peter Abelard, I ask questions so that I can understand. Says Abelard: “Nothing can be believed unless it is first understood”. Assuming they were terrorists as alleged - or they looked like one? Yes, there are laid down rules and regulations of bringing criminals to justice and self-help is itself a crime under our laws, but where criminality trumps the law again and again and the law lies prostrate, can we in clear conscience ask the people not to take their destiny into their own hands?

The very fact that vigilantes were set up under the nose of the government and were known to law means that the necessity for their operation has been established. The State has failed to protect its citizens. The citizens have been saddled with the duty of providing for themselves what the State has failed to provide. And this is the case, not only in Uromi but all over the country, including Kano where the unfortunate hunters were said to have originated from. And can we say, in clear conscience, that there have been no mistakes or unfortunate incidents in all those other places - even with the Federal Government’s security agencies? How many times have the Nigerian Air Force apologised for mistaking innocent villagers for terrorists and wiping them out in the process?

I did not watch the gory details of how the Uromi 16 met their end - and may never do because I cannot stand such spectacles. So, you may understand that I can never root for it - not even for my enemies. But, truth be told, Uromi is just one of such bestialities that is today a common occurrence all over the place. Once human essence is deprecated, any bestiality becomes sport. Ask them in Kosovo! Witness it in Rwanda! Have you forgotten Liberia and Sierra Leone?

That is why we must never fall into that pit; once we do, it is no longer a case of John Bunyan’s he that is down needs fear no fall. The further down we are; the farther still we fall. The more gory sights we witness every day, the more our sensibilities are dulled; moreso if the victims are people known to us. If we seek to address and redress this - which I think we should before we fall irretrievably into Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature - then, selectively serving justice is not the way to go. We shall be creating weightier problems if we travel that route.

Are we not aware of the perception in the Middle Belt and the South that the “princely” status of the North has prevented the criminals in its midst from being brought to book? What, then, is the remedy left for the victims? A skewed justice system that dispenses justice with fear and favour cannot serve the course of justice. If we cry for peace from now till Armageddon without serving justice, like Peter Tosh crooned, we shall only be wasting our time. Worse than Uromi lurks around the corner.

The symptoms of a failed state are there for us all to see. Non-state actors challenge the State for control and sovereignty over its territory. Citizens have taken over tasks that the government is statutorily assigned to perform. Citizens’ confidence in the government is at its lowest ebb. Poverty, criminality, and corruption bestride the polity like a colossus. In the face of all of these, the judiciary, touted as the last hope of the common man, lies prostrate.

Google says the symptoms of a failed state include “the presence of an insurgency, extreme political corruption, overwhelming crime rates suggestive of an incapacitated police force; an impenetrable and ineffective bureaucracy, judicial ineffectiveness, military interference in politics…”. Which of these is not present in our country today? In the same way Rome was not built in a day, our problems did not just spring up in 2023 but they have steadily and stealthily crept upon us, right from Independence, like a thief in the night (Proverbs 6: 6 - 11).

If you think what we experience today is the worst, note that it doesn’t get better here; it gets worse. Our best years are always behind us. It promises to remain so until the people gain the class consciousness that victim-on-victim violence is not the solution. The repraisals threatened by misguided Northern youths fit into that narrative. The oppressors are not touched and the oppression of the oppressed is not mitigated. Instead, we have a vicious cycle of people who should forge a common front to fight their oppressors leaving the oppressors and fighting to liquidate one another, as was the case with the enemies of Jehoshaphat fought to liquidate one another without Jehoshaphat himself lifting a finger (2 Chronicles 20: 20-37).

Poverty of ideas, more than the poverty of substance, is the bane of the common man in Nigeria. Their day of liberty comes when they learn to loan one another commonsense.

That Wednesday morning, the chickens came home to roost. Our governments don’t think methodically. Often they explain away consequences as inevitable. That was how our naira crashed and plunged everyone into deeper poverty. Good policies that are poorly thought through and implemented erratically. This time, there was no wiggle room. 

They would like to tell us what could have happened if the bridge was not fixed. Cars would have eventually fallen into the sea. So we must endure whatever comes with the repairs, no matter how inept. They would like to say the economy was more fractured than that bridge. But they won’t mention that a properly planned closure of the bridge will begin with better traffic enforcement on the alternative routes to mitigate the consequences on the already frayed citizens. They never acknowledge that failure to institute cushions before announcing drastic economic policies with wide-ranging impact is bad governance in itself, regardless of intentions. The bridge closure was a glimpse of our national life. 

That Wednesday’s traffic madness threw our mess into bold relief. 

Indeed the signs had been pasted for weeks. “But where is the independence bridge?” That was the question on many lips. The communication was poor. A bridge was to be closed for repairs. Neither the government nor the contractor bothered enough. When it was eventually closed, nobody was ready. The government that closed it wasn’t prepared. Their clumsiness made it seem like life was dependent on that short bridge. 

By 8am that hellish day, Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lekki, and Lagos Island were grounded. Cars were running back to meet cars running forward. People were jumping down from panting stationary buses and starting to trek. Their faces said they didn’t believe they would get to their destinations. Then the rain came. 

By 11am, most offices had no workers. Many cars caught in the melee had run out of fuel. And those who underestimated the distances they had embraced with their feet were running out of breath. Soon, they would have the independence bridge etched on their minds. Lagos was accustomed to traffic turmoil, but that Wednesday, even for the initiated, it seemed surreal.

All through the madness, neither the police nor Lastma were anywhere to be found. Perhaps they were all stuck somewhere. On a day when a state of emergency could have been declared and soldiers sent in to move the traffic and restore order, the government was soundly asleep. 

If those who shut the bridge had an eye for consequences, they might have re-opened it immediately to relieve the city of the suffocation. Sick people were stuck. Health workers were trapped. But the engineers at the bridge started to break it. Perhaps having put thousands through the anguish, they might as well go through it once and for all. If likened to taking out a bad tooth without anaesthesia, having started, they were justified to continue and finish. 

When the minister of works, who, it appears, has no respect for environmental impact assessment assays, woke from his slumber, it was already sunset. Without thinking it through, he announced that the works be stopped and the bridge reopened. Perhaps he was worried that some aunties of the president would reach him to tell him that the minister had put them through hell. Perhaps the president was already screaming at him.

Unfortunately for the minister, his order for re-opening left him looking clueless. The bridge had been excavated and broken. The next morning, the governor stepped in to do damage control. He tendered a solid apology. He begged the public not to dwell in the blame game. It’s difficult to know between him and the minister who should get the kick in the groin. 

The bridge repairs were overdue. But had anyone been thinking about the people, arrangements would have been made to lessen the suffering. Lagos can put traffic officials, soldiers and policemen at every bottleneck and curtail the anticipated constipation. But the authorities slept and the city became an obstructed and tangled mess. They know how to prepare for the visit of the president, to prevent him getting trapped in traffic. But they couldn’t think about the people.

That fateful Wednesday, some people got to work at 4 pm. Bedraggled and famished. They hid in their offices till 11pm to avoid any contact with the scourge on their way home. But at midnight, they still ran into it. Many got back home at 5 am. Only to have their bath and start another sleepy uncertain journey back to the office. 

By the time the governor was rendering his apology for the previous day’s commotion, another maze was forming. Nothing had been done overnight. He politely asked the public to disregard the minister of works, suggesting that the Abuja man was at a remove from the consequences. He asked the people to brace for the disruptions to get a healthy bridge and avoid a calamity. Once again he asked for two whole months to fix the short bridge. 

After the governor left the scene, the minister appeared. He said he was sent by the president to sort out the bridge and the nefarious traffic. He said he was taking responsibility but didn’t avoid throwing his staff under the bus, saying he wasn’t informed of the closure and the repairs. He said the president was displeased. He said the Controller of Works wouldn’t go unpunished. The number of times he mentioned ‘Mr President’ left no one in doubt. The president wasn’t just on his neck, but the sulking president was perhaps angry with the governor too. During this appearance, the minister praised the governor for his effort in curbing the traffic before he arrived from Abuja. 

But before sunset, the minister returned. He announced the bridge must be re-opened the next day. “Before the close of work,” he said. Obviously, the president sent him back. Perhaps the governor’s stance had bruised the president’s ego. In his usual style, whenever he had to shield his boss’ tempestuousness, Umahi was ambiguous. He said by the next day, he would have effected a temporary fix that could become permanent. The same bridge he had planned to close for two months for a proper fix. At some point, he almost suggested that the temporary fix could even be a blessing in disguise. Tomorrow he might attribute the ‘miracle’ to Mr President. The same Umahi who had claimed he supervised the original engineering repair design was speaking like a peripatetic luxury bus medicine dealer. Effectively, the broken bridge will be patched up. 

A clash of egos in the end, possibly. Excruciating levity, flippancy and costly reversals, certainly. A country stumbling along. The brunt is always borne by the people. The bridge could be closed again next month. Umahi would again come with some mumbo jumbo.  The story of our country.