Business terminologies like “return on investment” have also been applied in very a confusing manner to justify the ongoing broad day-light robbery in Nigeria and Africa. Curiously, a generality of our people are yet to see a nexus between “pen robbery” and armed robbery or between corruption and Nigeria’s chronic poverty. Painfully, this conceptual inadequacy equally finds expression in our anti corruption legislation and raises deep questions about how our society weighs the seriousness of offences and attach punishment.
This article argues that corruption, in present day Nigeria, is worse than treason and armed robbery. I would seek to demonstrate that the type of corruption in Nigeria, qualifies as a crime against humanity and that the failure of the current legal regime to view corruption as such may perhaps explain the reason for the unrepentant attitude of most of our political office holders and the ever growing corruption in this country. A proposal for tightening the “noose” using the sentencing tool of “life jail” for any public official that is found to have been corrupt in office would be explored.
Interestingly, life imprisonment, as a fitting punishment for corruption has been successfully applied in the Philippines, in the corruption case, involving the country’s former President, Joseph Estrada. This paper is aware that the punishment for treason in Nigeria, a lesser offence, in comparison with corruption, is the death penalty, but because of the writer’s stiff opposition to capital sentencing, life jail becomes the only acceptable middle course, despite the seriousness of this crime of corruption, which this article defines as a crime against humanity..
The link between Nigeria-style corruption and crime against humanity is not far-fetched. Article 7 (1) of the International Criminal Court Treaty, provides a definition of crimes against humanity under customary international law. Summarily, the section states that Crimes against humanity means acts, like murder, extermination, forcible transfer of a population, torture, rape, enforced prostitution when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.
Official corruption in Nigeria is systematic, widespread and it is directed against the Nigerian civilian population. It could be directly linked to all the enumerated acts above. I will illustrate this with some of the examples and leave the reader to further extrapolate. Let’s take murder and robbery for instance; the systematic and widespread robberies and murders in Nigeria today are engineered by angry youths who have been pushed to crime by the high level of unemployment.
The penalty for robbery is death and the ingredients required to prove robbery under the criminal code is simply to show that the accused stole and used violence “immediately at” or “immediately after” that act of “stealing”. What it means in effect is that people have been executed in Nigeria for “stealing” item, less than 1,000 Naira, in value, with violence. There are countless Nigerians on the death row for similar offences, and all efforts to convince this country to abolish the death penalty are yet to yield any fruit, but our so called elected Governors and legislators that have robbed the nation of millions of dollars and deprived thousands of people their livelihood, thus providing the motivation for violent crimes are free having “plea bargained”, yet we are told that justice is even handed.
The robber on the death row was not born a robber. Although, the criminologist Lomboroso had argued that criminal causation could be linked to genetic defect, he called the “stigmata”; his biological determinism thesis has long been discredited by Enrico Ferri’s deeper criminological explanation that sought to link criminal behaviour to nurture, instead of nature.
It is very possible, therefore, that the repressive socio-political and economic situation in Nigeria, caused by the massive corruption turned our youths into robbers. Unemployment and the dearth of social amenities in Nigeria are the consequence of the massive corruption that fritters our resources into private pockets. The constitutional entrenched right to life in Nigeria, does no longer make much meaning, since over 100 million people, in this country have been denied their right to livelihood. Right to life in the ears of a man or woman that is hungry and dying is at best a story told by an idiot, full of sound, yet signifying nothing.
State imposed poverty has robbed our people of all dignities with untold impact on their personalities. When Nigerians are not killed by hunger or preventable diseases, they die on the roads as they struggle to find immediate answer to their bewilderment. Nigeria loses thousands of people every year on road accidents caused by poor condition of our roads. Contracts for rebuilding and maintaining roads run in millions of dollars every year, but they end up in private accounts held in various names abroad. So, each death recorded on our roads, is death caused, to a large extent, by official corruption.
With our huge oil resources, Nigeria has the capacity to build dual road network across the country, supported by a functional rail network, but that will not happen neither would high maintenance culture be pursued because those entrusted with our collective resources would like to cut corners at the expense of the lives of their country’s men, women and children. Shamefully, many of these “caterpillars of our commonwealth”, run to Western countries, on a regular basis, to devour the beauty and efficiency which they denied their own brothers and sisters at home.
To enable us, to further appreciate the linkages, it is important that we use key development indicators in Nigeria. There is an overwhelming agreement that development is painfully slow in this country. Nigeria seems to defy all tested paradigms for understanding growth and change. One country that, development actors and scholars agree that may not attain the UN Millennium Development Goals is Nigeria. This is no doubt a paradox, as ordinarily Nigeria has the potential to surpass all African Countries in attaining these goals. The development indicators in Nigeria are scary .The poverty statistics show that 70% of Nigerian populations live on less than $1 a day, whilst over 90% live on less that $2, a day. Average life expectancy for both men and women is within the region of 46-48. Poverty actually means capacity deprivation. Many Nigerians have been deprived of their capacity to think, eat, clothe, work and live by those who swore to an oath to preserve those capabilities.
It would be very useful to think of the monies stolen by Governors, Legislators and other public “servants” in terms of schools, roads, industries and capacities, deprived. Viewing corruption in this way would graphically show why Nigeria, continues to lag behind and why it would be difficult for any change programme to sail through and impact on people’s lives positively, without first and foremost uprooting this crime against humanity. There is no country on planet, earth that can survive when 80% of the country’s annual budgets are stolen in broad daylight by the same people that are entrusted to safeguard the resources for the common good.
The Nigerian law must respond strongly to reflect our peculiar condition. Prof Goodhart defined law as those rules of conduct on which the existence of any society is based, violation of which tends to invalidate its existence. The continued violation of our corruption laws threaten to invalidate the very existence of this country. We do not need any precedence in creating a peculiar sentencing procedure to reflect our peculiar experience of how corruption has impacted on our citizens. The person that wears the shoes knows the exact spot where it pinches.
The level of severity of punishment attached to every crime is dependent on situation that prevails at certain point in time. The current financial crime regime in Nigeria is an important step forward, but a lot still needs to be done, to demonstrate a zero tolerance stance. The punishment for corruption in Nigeria does not fit the crime or the criminal. The interception of the so called plea bargain that gave freedom to some Governors in the past has turned the corruption fight into ridicule. Similar effect has been achieved by the Attorney General’s continued quibbling on subject. No one would be deterred by the way we treat our corrupt officials with kid gloves. Whilst I do not recommend that Nigeria follows the example of China in publicly executing corrupt officials, I think it is crucial that the country re-examines the mixed messages being sent out on this issue. The message that filters is that public officials can afford to steal as much as they wanted but that they must be ready to give back a fraction of their loot on the day of judgment.
The EFCC is like a midwife of our corruption revolution, but there are forks on the road to victory. To make way for the success, there is an urgent need to consider this proposal for compulsory life jail, for corrupt officials. In addition, there is a sound case for reforming our current constitutional immunity clause, to aid the corruption crusade. The pre-condition for the continued existence of immunity does no longer exist. Our electoral systems have been hijacked and the trust that credible elections generate has been betrayed in Nigeria.
In conclusion, it is important that we continue to engage the international community. The West really needs to demonstrate beyond words that there is no longer a haven for corrupt officials. There is indeed a need for a deeper reflection on the effectiveness of development Aid. Western countries should also help us in repatriating our stolen billions. The United Nation’s framework for fighting global corruption ought to be embraced by all. It may well be that Nigeria, may not need international hand outs, if this potentially great country is assisted to design and implement strategies to safeguard its resources from greedy politicians, who seem to have entered into an undertaking among themselves, to perpetuate destitution in this Africa’s most populous country, which every one seems to agree is the real test ground for the success of the UN Millennium Development Goals in Africa.
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