Is President Jonathan fighting Corruption? ----------------------------------------------------- There are various ways of fighting corruption. One is to resort to public spectacle. Remove ministers and shame them publicly. Put them in handcuffs for the cameras. Get the anti-graft agencies to blackmail lawmakers to impeach the governors. You can even get six lawmakers in a 24-member House of Assembly to remove the governor illegally in the name of fighting corruption. This public execution strategy will get you a resounding popular applause and you will win awards around the world. But, lets be honest about this, Kolawole, it cannot last. It cannot work in a democracy where people have a right to seek redress. This approach to anti-corruption can only be sustained by a dictator who cares little about the laws of the land. By the way, President Jonathan has also demonstrated that he can fire ministers. He has done it again and again. Kolawole did not acknowledge this fact while heaping praises on Obasanjo for firing ministers at the slightest provocation. President Jonathan has demonstrated clearly that he too can fire ministers, even if not at the slightest provocation. However, it is not his style to engage in playing to the gallery. He believes things should be done orderly. When he declared his assets, he was being put under pressure to make it public. But he refused. The law does not stipulate that. He did not break any law. It is a public document that can be accessed through due process. You can fight corruption by playing to the gallery. That is just one way. Ill show you a better way, Mr. Kolawole. You can decide to fight corruption sustainably by adopting administrative, policy, legal and moral suasion strategies. Administratively, some measures have been adopted by President Jonathan that have saved the country tonnes of money previously being pilfered. There are two ready examples here. The fertilizer subsidy cost Nigeria in excess of N800bn over a period of 30 years. Only about 10% of that actually got to the farmers. The President came and put a stop to the fraud. Farmers are getting their fertilizers today and their productivity is unprecedented in Nigerias history. Billions of naira have been saved in fraudulent fertilizer transactions. It may interest Kolawole that no previous government has tackled this fraud like this administration. That is a way of fighting corruption. It will endure beyond the Jonathan administration. Another administrative measure to combat corruption is on the payroll. There were thousands of ghost workers who were on the payroll of the Federal Government when President Jonathan came to power. For years, this issue had not been addressed. We all knew that some senior civil servants were milking the treasury mercilessly. Billions of naira were being stolen yearly. However, since President Jonathans administration introduced the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), over 50,000 ghost workers have so far been identified. Indeed, over N139 billion has been saved. Now, you ask: is that not a neat and sustainable way of fighting corruption? This will endure, you can take a bet on that. To fight corruption in a less glamorous but enduring way, the President has also adopted policy strategies. When the President sought to end the waste and fraud in the fuel subsidy regime, it was opposed by the same interests that are now saying the President is not fighting corruption. Because of this unfortunate opposition, we are still wasting hundreds of billions of naira on fuel subsidy that could have been better utilised in other areas of the economy. All studies and analyses have shown that the best way to tackle the subsidy fraud in the petroleum sector is to take away the subsidy itself. The money is too much and this creates perverse incentives for the beneficiaries to continue to corrupt the system.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 12:25:27 +0000
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