Monday
June 15, 2009 |
Remember that this and other columns are available
in PDF)
**********
The far from resolved drama of the
N250 million cash which police officers reportedly discovered in a
convoy of cars belonging to Anambra State points to a peculiarly
Nigerian scandal.
The scandal’s name is “security vote.”
Nigerian officials have a penchant for taking an otherwise good concept
and bastardizing it.
Take the idea of executive immunity. In the U.S., a serving president or
governor is shielded from litigation in his or her personal capacity for
all acts and decisions that fall within the legitimate purview of his or
her office. Mark that officials are protected from prosecution for acts
that are, as a rule, both legitimate in character and consistent with
the job specification.
Corrupt enrichment is neither legitimate nor part of the tasks that
voters hire a governor or president to discharge. A U.S. governor who
dips his or her hands in the public treasury is apt to invite the ire of
taxpayers and a visit from agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI).
Last December, FBI agents stormed the residence of then Illinois
Governor Rod Blagojevich. A handsome, dashing man who briefly dabbled in
boxing, Blagojevich was apparently something of a rogue politician. His
troubles began after Barack Obama was elected president. It fell to
Blagojevich to choose a replacement for the Senate seat the then
president-elect had to relinquish.
For the governor, Obama’s seat was a bait to be used in a scheme to rake
in cash. According to the FBI, Blagojevich decided to auction the seat
to the highest bidder. In numerous taped telephone conversations, he
told aides and relatives about his plan to cash in.
Not so fast, said law enforcement agents, who arrested and shackled the
governor. They then announced a wide-ranging indictment on federal
corruption charges, including solicitation of bribery. On January 29,
2009 the Illinois State Senate voted 59-0 to impeach Blagojevich.
Were Blagojevich a governor in Nigeria, he would still be at his desk
today, gloating as if nothing was amiss. The reason is that Nigerian
“rulers” enshrined a perverted version of immunity in their
constitution. The Nigerian brand of immunity protects a governor even
when he betrays his oath of office by committing a crime. Indeed,
especially then.
If the Nigerian doctrine of immunity is weird and counterproductive, the
idea of security vote is plain wacky – nothing short of a crime in
itself.
Each month, Nigerian taxpayers hand billions of naira to the president
and state governors in the name of security vote. Each governor receives
a few hundred million naira in this slush fund said to be for security
purposes.
Bizarre as this “vote” is, what’s even more unbelievable is that each
governor is given the absolute prerogative to dispose of the funds as he
deems fit, with no oversight whatever.
That kind of license is a recipe for scandal, fraud and abuse. It’s
common knowledge that many governors, in the past and now, simply pocket
the money. If you dare to ask where the money went, you become – yes – a
security threat.
It’s been suggested that the N250 million being ferreted away by
Governor Peter Obi’s aides was the monthly security vote. Obi has yet to
offer a convincing rebuttal to allegations that, each month, he
freighted the security cash to Lagos and “voted” it into his personal
account.
To leave so much cash in one man’s unsupervised hands is to encourage
unconscionable diversion of public funds in a country where the basic
facilities that create a habitable space are lacking. Access to such
easy cash explains the desperation and violence with which Nigerian
politicians seek political offices.
Who exactly came up with this deranged notion of security vote? The
inventor of this scam deserves Nigerians’ collective scorn.
For running the world’s most powerful country, President Obama earns a
little more than $400,000. The man doesn’t have one cent of public funds
he can spend without answering to the Congress. Why then do Nigerians
permit their governors – most of them inept at their job – to cart away
the equivalent of $2 million per month, no questions asked?
In America, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a budget to enable
it to carry out its intelligence operations. Owing to the covert nature
of its work, the agency does not give a public accounting of how it
spends its money. Even so, the agency has accountability obligations,
including classified briefings to a select committee of Congress.
Nigerian politicians took from the CIA the idea of concealing how
security votes are spent. But they forgot that, in the U.S. and
elsewhere, the security funds are handled by agencies with highly
trained professionals, not handed out as largesse to politicians seized
more by greed than vision.
Nigerians should insist that security vote be expunged – voted out –
from their political playbook.
