Nigeria is sick. Afflicted by a deadly disease. That disease is CORRUPTION (mind the emphasis). This ten-letter c-word is the reason Nigeria has remained a complex paradox; a puzzle waiting to be unscrambled. Nigeria beguiles. Someone recently made a video in which he said: “If they explain Nigeria to you and you understand it, then they didn’t explain it well to you.”

That video, short as it is, sums up the Nigerian puzzle. Nigeria is difficult to understand. A country so rich yet her citizens swim in poverty. A country blessed with the widest varieties of food, arable land and minerals, yet imports all things including food. The list of paradoxes is endless.

On many fronts, Nigeria twists your senses. One of such fronts is the issue of corruption. Just like the Holy Writ, the Bible, lists the way of a master and his maid as a mystery, so is the connection between Nigeria and corruption. Nigeria ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. But that’s just putting it mildly. Nigeria steams corruption, oozes corruption and bubbles with graft. Too many cases of corruption are confounding. They are stories too greasy to be true.

Just last week, precisely on Tuesday, August 6, the minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Abubakar Momoh, was guest on The Morning Brief on Channels TV. As Niger Delta Affairs minister, he should know many things about the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, which used to be a nest of corruption until the arrival of the current Managing Director, Samuel Ogbuku, an Ogbia true-born from Bayelsa state. The minister was asked about the forensic audit report on the NDDC submitted to President Muhammadu Buhari on September 2, 2021. The report detailed how N6 trillion approved for the commission was frittered by the NDDC from 2001 to 2019 through contracts and sundry shady deals. The report was the outcome of a forensic audit ordered by Buhari and it indicted many big men and women from across the country especially from the Niger Delta region.

Snippets from the report showed that the Federal Government approved about N6 trillion for the NDDC in 18 years. A huge chunk of the money was diverted into private pockets. About 13,777 projects executed within the period were substantially compromised. And this, NDDC operated a total of 362 bank accounts, leading to “lack of proper reconciliation of accounts.” These among others were the messy details of the report now declared ‘missing’ by the minister. It’s called Government Magic, apologies to Fela Anikulapo Kuti. That report may never ever be found. The country has moved on to contend with other far more important matters. Corruption cannot fight corruption, it protects it. Those who loot the public treasury do so with impunity knowing that corruption will always protect the corrupt.

Do you still remember the Halliburton, Willbros and Siemens scandals? These were cases of high-profile bribery involving top Nigerian politicians and public office holders. In each of these cases, foreigners admitted to bribing some Nigerians to influence juicy contracts for their companies or entities they had interests in.

Long after the matter had been settled and culprits diligently prosecuted in the native countries of these bribe-happy companies, Nigeria, home country of the bribe receivers has turned a blind eye to the ignoble crimes. Nobody punished, none prosecuted.

Let’s rewind the tape here. Houston, United States-based KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, pleaded guilty to US federal criminal charges, admitting it paid millions of dollars in bribes to Nigerian officials to win the contract to build a $4 billion natural gas plant in the country. In February 2012, the company was convicted in the US and ordered to pay a fine of $402 million to the US government. And it did. Three staffers were jailed for 30 months. No long story!

US Justice Department said Halliburton and three other companies paid about $180 million as bribe to top Nigerian government officials as well as officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

Recall also the separate cases of Willbros and Siemens. Both companies bribed some Nigerian officials. They have admitted before the court of law and the court of public opinion that they bribed some Nigerians to get some juicy contracts. Both companies had been convicted by their parent countries. In the case of Willbros, a US engineering company, two senior executives were convicted.

Jim Bob Brown, 48, was sentenced to one year and a day, while Jason Edward Steph was jailed for 15 months for conspiring to violate the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Brown and Steph spent about $6 million to bribe Nigerian officials between 2003 and 2005 in an attempt to win Willbros a stake in the $387 million Eastern Gas Gathering System in the Niger Delta.

Back home in Nigeria, the recipient of the various bribes, nothing happened. And we have anti-graft agencies namely the EFCC, ICPC et al. Is EFCC feigning ignorance of this national mess? Does the agency not know or heard that all the companies that were fingered to have bribed some highly placed Nigerians had been convicted? What has the EFCC done about these cases that its counterparts in other climes had long treated with results to show?

The most Nigeria did in the Halliburton case was to set up a panel to probe the matter. The late President Umaru Yar’Adua set up that panel headed by former Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro. Farida Waziri, then head of the EFCC, was also part of that panel. There was an interim report which reportedly indicted some prominent Nigerians. What did EFCC do with the report? Nothing! And what did the then President, Goodluck Jonathan, do with the report? Nothing!

We cannot build a new Nigeria of our dream by pampering corruption and rewarding thieves with national honours. Any leader who can fix corruption in Nigeria would have fixed the nation. Corruption is at the root of all the ills bedeviling Nigeria. Poor infrastructure, insecurity, miserable healthcare, paucity of forex, an economy in intensive care unit, low minimum wage and general hardship are all sustained by corruption.

Only President Obasanjo tried to tame the bogey of corruption. Yar’Adua, Jonathan and Buhari all failed. They were sucked into the cesspool of corruption. Buhari who was thought to be the one to nail corruption and the corrupt ended up running the most corrupt government, so far. It’s scary to imagine that no exorcist can cast the demon of corruption out of Nigeria. Without casting this incubus out of the way, Nigeria will continue to limp where other nations are already in full flight.

Tinubu should not try to chase after many things. He should focus on taming corruption. Should he succeed in doing this, he would have fixed the challenges of poor electricity supply, fuel crisis, food inflation, poor infrastructure among others. It’s clearly up to him to make history or end up in the dunghill of failed yesteryears leaders.

First published in Sunday Sun