If Ms. Oduah were an official in a country where ill-thought actions have chastening consequences, she would long have handed in her letter of resignation. Instead, she’s extremely lucky to be a Nigerian, a space where anything-goes is the going style. Nigerians can’t stand the small crook, won’t forgive the petty thief. If a wretched, starving fellow is spied picking somebody’s pocket for a hundred naira for a meal, you can count on any Nigerian mob to deliver a sentence of death. And that sentence is instantly executed, no appeals for mercy from the hapless thief entertained. But let a Nigerian public official – a governor, say –steal billions of naira of public funds, and the same mob becomes amazingly dovish. Some will rise to the thieving governor’s defense because he’s a “son/daughter of the soil,” a fellow “tribesman/woman.” Some will put much store by the fact that s/he worships in the same church or mosque. Some will declare that the Bible warns, let s/he who is without sin throw the first stone. Some will ask whether you expected a person who had sugar sprinkled on her/his tongue to spit it. Nigeria is a paradox. It metes out instant capital punishment on pickpockets. Yet, it is the perfect kingdom for the big, bold, audacious embezzler or squanderer. It’s a country where ethics is frequently asked to surrender to ethnicity, principle must cower before sectarian claims, and where institutions are made to shudder in the presence of personalities, the merest achievement of public officials is inflated beyond belief. It is, above all, a country where nothing is ever any body’s fault. In Nigeria, the buck never stops at anybody’s desk; like the Energizer bunny, the buck must keep on going. Ms. Oduah has benefited from the strange confection of Ethics Nigeriana. Many (I’d even hazard, most) Igbo saw that what the Aviation Minister did was plain wrong – no ifs or buts. But some Igbo groups and individuals rushed to her side, proclaiming her a target of ethnic bigots. Their line of argument, whether deployed by the Efik, the Hausa, the Yoruba, or the Igbo, is exasperating. How does being Igbo lessen the awfulness and scandal of a minister’s decision to buy two BMW cars at a price tag of $1.6 million? Every inch of Nigeria is bereft of basic facilities. For the vast majority of Nigerians, life is hardly livable. Only recently was the country’s minimum wage raised to N18,000 (about $112) per month. That’s $112 per month to spend on rent, clothing, kerosene/ firewood, food, transportation, school fees, healthcare, (tanker-borne) water, (non- existent) electricity, and so on. The federal and state governments were dragged, kicking and screeching, to assent to that minimum. Today, many Nigerian workers are still paid much less than that miserable minimum. Forgive me, but I don’t see how are the millions of hapless Igbo are helped by Ms. Oduah’s approval of vulgar sums for bullet- proof cars. This is not to deny the existence, persistence and power of the ethnic factor. There’s no question that some of the minister’s harshest critics would shed their indignation and sing a different tune were she a member of their ethnic bracket. But that fact, I think, does not validate the ethnic defense of impunity. Instead, it offers an opportunity to build a coalition of people across ethnic courageous enough to pooh-pooh the invocation of ethnicity in defense of nonsense. President Goodluck Jonathan’s response to the Oduah scandal was to – in effect – refuse to address it. He achieved his evasion by setting up a panel to look into the matter and report back in two weeks. Is there any information of consequence that the president doesn’t already have? Nobody, least of all Ms. Oduah, has denied that an aviation agency doled out $1.6 million for two cars. That’s a grave enough misjudgment for the minister to merit being fired. The US, Britain, Germany, Norway, France, China, and Canada have lots more money than Nigeria. Yet, it’s a safe bet that no aviation authority in any of those countries would survive the scandal of doling out $1.6 million on two cars! I’d like to know whether Ms. Oduah and Nigeria’s aviation “dignitaries” are driven around in $800,000 bullet-proof BMWs when they visit other (wealthier) nations. If President needs a panel and two weeks to figure out how to respond to the Aviation scandal, then how much time – and how many panels – would he require in order to tackle his country’s ever-worsening climate of insecurity, its education crises, scary healthcare system, horrible roads, and the tattered state of its infrastructure? It’s a mistake to assume that the president wanted a panel that would exhume the facts to guide his action. No, Mr. Jonathan was merely playing according to the rule book of our mess of a country. One of the rules is to shield, protect and immunize loyal “steakholders” like the Aviation Minister from the consequences of their actions and inactions. The presidential panel’s real, if unstated, mandate is to lull outraged Nigerians to sleep. If it can, the panel must induce us to forget that our “Honorable Minister” blew $1.6 million of our scarce funds on two cars. Once we forget, the president will be able to do what he really wants to do – nothing! Some of Ms. Oduah’s defenders have pointed to the extensive renovation she initiated at various Nigerian airports. The facts are there, undeniable. But Nigeria is a nation of at least 120 million people – perhaps as many as 170 million. Surely, the president can find another minister from that population capable of continuing – and even expanding – the airport renovation projects. To argue that Ms. Oduah and she alone can oversee that job is to fall back on the Nigerian cult of the individual. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo used that canard when he made a thinly disguised bid to alter Nigeria’s constitution in order to perpetuate himself in office. His shameless acolytes argued, “If Obasanjo is not president, who can do the job?” It was an insulting, brainless question to pose in a country that brims with talent, even if the best of them are carefully, deliberately excluded from the pool. And there was the irony that the question was being posed by the surrogates of a man as ethically wretched, mischievous and bereft of a modern outlook as Mr. Obasanjo. There’s a good chance that Ms. Oduah will her cabinet post, but that outcome would be for all the wrong reasons. It won’t be because she’s a superb performer, or that it made sense to fork over $1.6 million for two cars, or that the purchase met the smell test. It will be because she happens to operate in a country where ethnicity trumps ethics, loyalty to the oga at the top supersedes loyalty to the collectivity, and expediency has far more muscle than adherence to sound principles.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 17:35:00 +0000
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