By Fredrick Nwabufo
There is no executive or
administrative corruption without civil partnerships. What we often see on the
surface as corruption in government agencies is deeply tap-rooted — with
connectors to social crusaders, polemists, activists and civic groups.
Corruption in Nigeria has a long value chain.
The probe of the management of
the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) over serious allegations of
corruption by the national assembly is two peas in a pod. The NDDC is like a
cookie jar, those probing and those under probe all have their hands stuck in
it.
Last Thursday, Kemebradikumo
Pondei, acting managing director of the NDDC, stormed out of a session with the
house of representatives panel investigating the agency. He accused Olubunmi
Tunji-Ojo, chairman of the house committee on NDDC, of complicity in the fraud
at the commission. He said the committee chairman cannot sit in judgment on a
case in which he is a suspect.
A similar spectacle played out at
the senate a few weeks ago. The NDDC management and Godswill Akpabio, minister
of Niger Delta affairs, as a coterie, traded recriminations with the senate
committee probing the agency for alleged N81.5 billion fraud.
Peter Nwaoboshi, chairman of the
senate committee on NDDC, accused Akpabio of commandeering a N300 million
fencing contract from the commission. The minister, not to be out-shamed,
accused the senator of expropriating a N3.6 billion contract using 11 phony
companies.
Do you think anything worth the
time of Nigerians – beyond the entertainment value of the live sessions – can
fall out of these probes? I do not think so. I have witnessed enough probes by
the national assembly over the years — even with all the theatrics and
fireworks – to predict how these ones will taper out.
Now, this is the crux of the
probes. The probes are essentially about deal-brokering. The audit of the
operations of the NDDC from 2001 and 2019 will bring to the fore lots of
interred skeletons involving those at the national assembly and those at the
composite quarters of national corruption. Though I believe the process of the
audit is already tainted, it must go on.
So, it is a convenient tactic to
hold the dirt of the interim management of the NDDC supervising the audit in
the air for an eventual entente. Really, what is happening now is a crossfire
of blackmail and intimidation. It is the threat of mutually assured destruction
before the ‘’meeting at the table of kindreds’’. The probes will go the way of
other probes.
Nevertheless, the revelations
from these probes should be ammunition for all Nigerians and those directly
affected by the sleaze at the NDDC; in this case, the people of the Niger
Delta. Why is Chief Edwin Clark, the foremost Ijaw leader, taciturn? Why is he
not spitting fire like he often does when issues of resource control and
marginalisation of the Niger Delta are on the table? Or is the mindboggling
thievery allegedly perpetrated by the sons of the region of no consequence
because they are natives?
Where is Asari Dokubo, the
defender of the Niger Delta, who has been vociferous on all national issues? Is
the sleaze at the NDDC not worth raising hell and threatening apocalypse over?
Where are the Niger Delta Avengers? Is the NDDC corruption bazaar not a cause
to undertake a peaceful citizen action for? Or do the avengers only avenge when
it involves a certain Sani, Musa, Taiwo or Nnamdi?
Why is there no outrage in the
Niger Delta?
This same silence of the Niger
Delta was palpable during the administration of Goodluck Jonathan which was in
throes of cosmic allegations of corruption. So, it is clear here that the
agitations of the region over the years have a heavy ethnic burden.
Really, we do not hate
corruption. We only hate where the corrupt person comes from. Let me rephrase
that. Corruption matters to us only when the ethnic background of the accused
is in the equation.
The Niger Delta losing its voice
at this time of great consequence for the region will always haunt it.
Fredrick Nwabufo is a writer and
journalist
Twitter: @FredrickNwabufo
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