Former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has said that the level of corruption in the country has passed the alarming and entered the fatal stage.
He said this in his keynote address on the topic, ‘Leadership Failure and State Capture in Nigeria,’ delivered at the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum, Yale University, New Haven, in the United States of America.
The former president noted that the country will go into extinction “if we keep pretending that she is only slightly indisposed.”
Obasanjo hinted that corruption continues to rank among the most important problems affecting Nigerians.
He said: “More than N700 billion in cash bribes were paid by citizens to public officials in 2023. Most bribes are paid in the street or in a public official’s office. Private sector bribery is increasing but continues to be less prevalent than in the public sector.
“Corruption goes with power; therefore to hold any useful discussion of corruption, we must first locate it where it properly belongs – in the ranks of the powerful.
“Corruption in Nigeria has passed the alarming and entered the fatal stage; and Nigeria will die if we keep pretending that she is only slightly indisposed.
“Ranked 150 out of 180 countries in the Transparency International 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index,1 Nigeria’s ranking places it in the bottom 20 percent of the Comity of Nations and illustrates how systemic and embedded corruption is in the country. It is, in my opinion, and those of many, the most serious developmental challenge to the nation.”
He insisted that the nation would continue to sink into chaos, insecurity, conflict, discord, division, disunity, depression, youth restiveness, confusion, violence, and underdevelopment as long as it is embedded in corruption.
Obasanjo, however, gave a message of hope that all will be well with the country if the challenges of immorality and corruption are squarely addressed.
The former president while copying from a short, classic treatise published in 1983, called “The Trouble with Nigeria” by Chinua Achebe admitted that, “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.
“There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.”
‘We collected money, and we voted’
“That’s the situation mostly in Nigeria in the reign of Baba-go-slow and Emilokan. The failing state status of Nigeria is confirmed and glaringly indicated and manifested for every honest person to see through the consequences of the level of our pervasive corruption, mediocrity, immorality, misconduct, mismanagement, perversion, injustice, incompetence and all other forms of iniquity. But yes, there is hope,” he added.
The former president, who also relied on a World Bank and Transparency International definition of what a state capture was, said that it was described, “as one of the most pervasive forms of corruption, “a situation where powerful individuals, institutions, companies, or groups within or outside a country use corruption to shape a nation’s policies, legal environment, and economy, to benefit their own private interests.”
“State capture is not always overt and obvious. It can also arise from the more subtle close alignment of interests between specific business and political elites through family ties, friendships, and the intertwined ownership of economic assets.
“What is happening in Nigeria – right before our eyes – is state capture: The purchase of National assets by political elites – and their family members – at bargain prices, the allocation of national resources – minerals, land, and even human resources – to local, regional, and international actors. It must be prohibited and prevented through local and international laws.
“Public institutions such as the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, and regulatory agencies both at the federal and local levels are subject to capture. As such, state capture can broadly be understood as the disproportionate and unregulated influence of interest groups or decision-making processes, where special interest groups manage to bend state laws, policies, and regulations.
“They do so through practices such as illicit contributions paid by private interests to political parties, and for election campaigns, vote-buying, buying of presidential decrees or court decisions, as well as through illegitimate lobbying and revolving door appointments.
“The main risk of state capture is that decisions no longer take into consideration the public interest, but instead favor a specific special interest group or individual. Laws, policies, and regulations are designed to benefit a specific interest group, oftentimes to the detriment of smaller firms and groups and society in general. State capture can seriously affect economic development, regulatory quality, the provision of public services, quality of education and health services, infrastructure decisions, and even the environment and public health.”
On Achebe’s personality, Obasanjo hinted that the great author and writer has been known through “his work, and his values for as long as our Nation has been in existence. He was a great and distinguished Nigerian.
“Yale University would be correct in their belief that Achebe belongs to the world – and therefore to them as well – but I am here to tell them that he is an African Icon that belongs to Nigeria first. The Igbo amongst us – his own ethnic people – will remind us that within Igboland he is known as “the Eagle on Iroko” – the “king of the birds” perched on the tallest tree in the African,” he said.
