By Godwin Etakibuebu
Permit me to start this article from a rather different route without doing any damage to the topic.
Most peoples’ disenchantment and disillusion with President Buhari’s fight against corruption is not only because of its [of the battle] lopsidedness against opposition alone but more on the myopic interpretation of the concept of the word – Corruption.
It is this base; the narrowness of the interpretation [of corruption] that the President actually got the foundation of his battle [against corruption] wrong. If the foundation be wrong what can the righteous do, remains a very wise question the Holy Bible asked.
Corruption is defined in various ways more than graft, stealing or embezzlement alone. It is wider that these thin and myopic definitions.
For example, the following are some definitions of corruption:
1. Dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery.
2. The process by which a word or expression is changed from its original state to one regarded as erroneous or debased.
3. The process of decay or putrefaction.
4. Dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people [such as government officials or police, customs, immigration, army and or other security outfits].
5. Evil or wicked behavior – depravity.
6. Decay, putridity or rottenness
7. Alteration against designed concept or path
8. Undue favour for a group or a people
9. Act of nepotism in appointment.
10. Dishonest action that destroys people’s trust.
11. Misuse of public power by those in authority.
An improbity or decay in the decision-making process in which a decision-maker creates norm different from the agreed path
Wrongdoing on the part of an authority or powerful party through means that are illegitimate, immoral, or incompatible with ethical standards.
Above are just but few of the meaning of corruption that we can run away with, for now at least, in getting into the body interpretation of the topic for the day. And if these are acceptable for the purpose of today’s discuss, we shall not find it difficult at all in accepting that President Buhari’s battle against corruption itself was corrupted, ab initio from concept, hence the difficulty of its success. It started off morbidly waxed in a moribund fallopian tube of a narrow interpretation.
Though interpretation of corruption by President Buhari; which dictated his chosen modus operandi path of battle against the monster and which equally defined the inbuilt mechanism of failure in the war, have been adequately assimilated, it is nevertheless not the main exercise of today if the topic above is to be properly followed. It shall therefore be a wiser decision to navigate this narration back to aligning with the mission of this voyage.
The All Progressives Congress, like every other political party in Nigeria, went into the arrangement of electing, or even selecting, their flag bearer for the 2019 general election, strictly in compliance with the Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC]’s requirement. This is so because the INEC remains the only Authority in Nigeria saddled with the responsibility of conducting elections by the Nigerian 1999 Constitution as amended.
And appropriately too, INEC, in anticipation of its onerous responsibility, had released almost a year ago its timetable; before, during and after, for the election and the law compels all participating entities [the political parties and we have just only 91 of them in the country as of today] to comply with the rules and regulation of the timetable.
While all of the political parties are gearing up for the contest with most of them having no ability to contest even in any capacity, the few that are big enough attracted serious attention of all on how they would run the race. And of the bigger ones, two; the All Progressives Congress and the People Democratic Party, had obviously become “first among equals” and as such expectation of their performances in the pre-2019 general elections remained highest.
It is along these expectations that things started falling out, albeit negatively for the APC. This negative report is alarming to keen observers of events in the Nigerian polity because the APC, in preparation for the events of now, first of all put its house in order, so it seemed, by electing a new Party Executives under the Chairmanship of the “once amiable” Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to replace the “fatigued” John Odigwe-Oyegun and his Executive. The purpose of the change of guide then, we were told, was to have a smooth running of the Party’s [APC] affairs in preparation for the 2019 general elections.
We are not supposed to forget in hurry that the then Chairman of the APC; though flowing against the man known and feared as “hurricane personae dramatis” the Party; the man with absolute power of selection and rejection”, in the person of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had posited the need of retaining the status quo ante of what seemed to be the best for the party in its selection of those to bear the flag by calling for extension of tenure for his Executive. This call by Oyegun quickened his “immortality” from the history book of the Party’s leadership and paved the way for the “dynamic and idea-loaded” Comrade Oshiomhole and his co-travellers “wise men from the East”.
What John Odigwe-Oyegun feared most then; though he was on the path of self-preservation politically, when he said that “this is not the time to change the Executive of the Party in view of the incoming primaries’ preparation to the 2019 elections”, has come to pass or coming to pass in view of the terrific melee that is following the nationwide primaries of the APC.
The first landing place for APC-hurricane-scatter was in Zamfara State where the INEC had made it abundantly clear that the Party in that State “shall not and would not be able to participate in the 2019 election” for reason of not been able to conduct any transparent primary and complying with the demand of the National Umpire on election matters. Though Adams Oshiomhole, the APC national chairman had boasted loquaciously [his recent trademark] that the APC would participate in the election, Nigerians are waiting to see how this can be achieved without compromising the rules and regulations of the game through the instrumentality of corruption [which the opening paragraphs of this essay dealt elaborately upon when it defined the meaning of corruption].
Many other States have fallen apart from the APC’s so-called primaries since after the Zamfara debacle so much that most of the States of the Federation may not be fielding candidates for the incoming 2019 election [for APC] or where the wound or injuries are managed to be healed, things shall never be same for the Party anymore because, seriously and in honour of our own literary icon, Chinua Achebe of blessed memory, “things of the APC have fallen apart in those States that the Centre cannot hold” anymore.
Some of those States now include Ogun, Ondo, Delta, Imo, Kaduna, Adamawa and others. The fall-out has pitched the States involved against the National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole; the Governors of the States involved against the National Chairman; those Governors against the President; some of the Governors against themselves and the Party against itself in all ramifications. How did things thus become so bad for the APC, what is that major factor that brought the ruling party to this unglamorous path of perfidy cum total self-annihilation and is there any way out without collateral damages for the party in 2019 general election?
Again, space has become constraining factor today but before l draw the curtain, let me answer one of the four questions above, and that is the one of what brought the party to this path of perfidy, with all boldness. Corruption, as defined in the beginning of this work [not as narrowly defined by President Muhammadu Buhari] brought the APC to this point of danger list.
We shall complete the work next week.
Godwin Etakibuebu; a veteran Journalist, wrote from Lagos.
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