MUHARRAM 6, 1430 A.H.
MONDAY JANUARY 3 2009
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Perspectives on Nigeria’s anti-corruption war (I)
By Akintokunbo A. Adejumo
akinadejum@aol.com
“What is truth?” Pilate asked. As for Pilate, he sought no answer from Jesus for his question. Instead, he washed the responsibility from his hands (Matt. 27:24) and walked away from the truth.
In Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ, Pilate’s wife answers her husband: “If you will not hear the truth, no one can tell you.”
Truth, when trying to define it, extends from honesty, reality, good faith, and sincerity in general, to agreement with fact or reality in particular.
The term has no single definition about which a majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree, and various theories of truth continue to be debated. There are differing claims on such questions as what constitutes truth; how to define and identify truth; the roles that revealed and acquired knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective, relative, objective, or absolute (Wikipedia).
Truth can be mythological, religious or scientific. I will not bore the reader with the details.
Truth ...“Is the opposite of lies.” “What is truth but what we believe to be truth?” “I don’t believe that there’s one truth. There are so many different people, and there are so many different ways you can look at things. I don’t see how there could be just one truth.”
These quotes, giving vague descriptions of truth, point towards relativism - a doctrine instructing that truth and morality are relative and not absolute. Relativism asserts that what is accepted as truth is relative to a person’s situation or standpoint, and denies that any standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others.
If truth is relative, then absolute right and absolute wrong become doubtful and obscure. And if truth is relative, then only subjective and indefinite answers exist for the purpose and meaning of life. So is there any absolute or real truth in this complex and uncertain world?
The same theory applies to certainty, which, like knowledge, is an epistemic property of beliefs. (In a derivative way, certainty is also an epistemic property of subjects: S is certain that p just in case S’s belief that p is certain.)
Although some philosophers have thought that there is no difference between knowledge and certainty, it has become increasingly common to distinguish them.
On this conception, then, certainty is either the highest form of knowledge or is the only epistemic property superior to knowledge.
My point therefore is that truth is not a certainty as far as Nigerian politics is concerned. Truth is very relative, at least on a general level. This is not to say that in our individual interaction with one another, truth does not come into play.
Indeed it does, and this might probably account for the reason why the Nigerian society has not degenerated into chaos and anarchy all these days, because when you consider the level of falsehood, insincerity, corruption, dishonesty, deceit, fraud, duplicity and cheating that go on in our daily life, one will come to the conclusion that finding truth in Nigeria is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
It is really very painful to the mind. Certainly, it has affected adversely our way of life and Nigeria will never be the same again. I say this because I have been fortunate, and many have been too, to have experienced certain truth and other virtues as I was growing up in our country.
Again, since truth is relative, our way of interpreting what is true in Nigeria is open to subjectivity and uncertainty.
And this brings me to the way Nigerians have been looking at, and measuring the success, if any, of the government’s anti-corruption crusade, if indeed it is a crusade. I said if indeed, because, obviously, the war against corruption is not really going on as Nigerians would love and expect it, but whose fault is that?
The problem with our anti-corruption efforts lies with the way we perceive truth, and the way we want to interpret it. Certainly, my interpretation of truth will be different to those of many of my 140 million-strong compatriots, and this I will recognize, admit and understand very readily.
When the Obasanjo administration took the bold step, never before taken in the history of Nigeria, to establish the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and its counterpart, Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), through several Acts, the majority of long-suffering and very angry Nigerians saw it as a way forward in curbing the excesses of those professional political charlatans and opportunists who somehow manipulated themselves into power, usually with the sole intention of plundering the treasury.
Although, we took the establishment of these anti-corruption bodies with a grain of salt and skepticism, we started warming up to them. The first czar of the EFCC, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, a police officer, was especially popular with Nigerians, and in fairness to him, he took the anti-corruption fight to an entirely different level, which earned him many plaudits both home and internationally, and indeed, played a good role in convincing the international community, especially the Western countries to cancel most of Nigeria’s debts, as they saw Nigeria on the path of good governance, curbing corruption being an issue of good governance.
Initially, the EFCC was pulling in the notorious “419” fraudsters and fraudulent bank officials, and everybody was happy. The moment Ribadu, probably spurred on by President Obasanjo himself, decided to shine his torch on several corrupt state governors, he started having problems with some sections of Nigerians. This can easily be understood in a country where sincerity and truth in the generality are very scarce commodities. There were many attempts on the life of Ribadu.
Even the Nigerian press, some of them controlled by these politicians, joined in defaming him, alleging that Ribadu was being used by Obasanjo to persecute or harass his political opponents and those who were opposed to his infamous Third Term Agenda.
Some even went as far as saying Obasanjo used Ribadu and his EFCC to harass those who were his rivals in his many extra-matrimonial trysts.
Ribadu himself started making mistakes and uttering unsubstantiated statements against these corrupt politicians, when he should have concrete evidence before making such statements, or backing up what he alleged with facts and evidence.
For example, he said he had files on 31 governors and was ready to prosecute them, when in fact, investigations on them had not been concluded.
Ribadu, however, before he was “seconded” out of the EFCC, which he founded, took about eight former governors to court, but all these managed to be bailed and the cases are still in court after almost two years. His successor, we are told, has concluded investigations on three others and charged them to court.
That Ribadu was able to charge only eight of the former governors to court even one year after they lost their immunity in spite of his open boast that he had concluded investigations on 31 of them and ready for court is an indication of his indiscretion and empty grandstanding which in no small way make the work of his successor pretty difficult, because these ex-governors would have gone all out to destroy available evidence before they left office since he had done them a great favour by alerting them by boasting that he had done what he in truth had not done.
Now these corrupt individuals are swaggering all over the place and laughing in our collective faces, boasting and causing all kinds of credibility problems for Ribadu’s successor, Mrs. Farida Waziri, another police officer. (I will come to her later).
This again makes me come back to “certainty”. Nothing is certain, because our perception of truth is different.
How certain are we that the investigations conducted by the EFCC when Ribadu was the head, were thorough and water-tight? If all the evidence against these corrupt ex-governors were water-tight, why are they still walking around in freedom today?
Or is it that the current EFCC head and other government officials are putting a dampener on the fight against corruption deliberately, according to some hidden political and government agenda, to frustrate this crusade?
The ordeal of Ribadu in recent times has generated a lot of debate in Nigeria, and what I can only say here is that I honestly believe that he has done his best for his country, and he should be able to hold his head very high, without persecution or threat.
He has partially achieved what the majority of Nigerians wanted. However, we have to acknowledge that a man who does not make any mistakes does not make anything at all. Unfortunately, and herein lies the hypocrisy of human beings; the same people who were castigating him when he was Head of EFCC, accusing him of harassment and being used by Obasanjo, are now the same people who are trying to make him a martyr.
I can mention a few instances, but I won’t. We alI know them. That tells you that we all have different and divergent agendas, and again, the truth is dependent on which side of the fence you are sitting.
Immediately after Mr. Ribadu was “seconded”, there were allegations made against him; one of such is that he had properties in Dubai and elsewhere, and that he had salted various amount of money away in some foreign banks. .
