Bullet-proof corruption

Bullet-proof corruption
on november 06, 2013 at 2:32 am in for crying out
loud
By OGAGA IFOWODO
IT was bound to come to this. The moment our
“zero tolerance for corruption” president decided to
fight tooth and nail against the public declaration of
his assets, the moment he chose to declare instead
“I don’t give a damn!” about any such nonsense as
probity and leading by example, you knew the day
was just around the corner when a ministercould
import bullet-proof luxury cars as personal gifts to
herself.
I say personal gifts as all the facts known so far
about the “scandal de jour”, the current atrocity
before another has us foaming at the corners of the
mouth with unappeasable anger, point inescapably
to that conclusion. Unless, of course, you believe
that the said cars, which promptly disappeared from
proper custody, were meant for visiting dignitaries.
Aviation Minister, Ms. Stella Oduah
Yes, it was bound to come to the point whereall that
it would take to order, import, evade customs duties
and take possession of bullet-proof luxury vehicles
at prices so stupefyingly inflated you would think
the whole thing was a prank is for a minister to say
to her subordinate, “Do the needful.” That is all
Minister of Aviation, Mrs Stella Oduah, says she did.
And if she believes this pathetic attempt to save
face—because she has a face to save, unlike the
hundreds who have perished in several plane
crashes under her watch—then how tragic is it that
she is a minister?
I won’t bother with the shocking details of this latest
act of daylight robbery, of the unending pillage and
dispossession of the people. What would be the
point? To establish that the armoured vehicles—
BMWs, Germany’s vaunted “ultimate driving
machines”, two Lexus limousines, and more,just in
case you havebeen living in Mars for the past
month or so—were bought without the “honourable”
minister’s consent or knowledge?
That transporting visiting dignitaries of international
aviation regulation organisations from one point to
another requires armoured vehicles, as if they
would even come if Nigeria were at war, and if so to
tour the war fronts? Or that it was all the fault of due
process for failing to spot anything dubious about a
transaction whose every line item screamed
CORRUPTION! CORRUPTION! in red letters?
Or that the number and price of the vehicles—N255
million or $1.6 million for two BMWs alone—can be
justified even by a lunatic?No, the facts, such as we
already have, are sufficient to hang a dog; no need
to first give it a bad name. To my mind, the most
worrisome thing about the seemingly untameable
catastrophe of official corruption has to do with the
abject failure of President Goodluck Jonathan to
lead anything close to a war against corruption,
whatever his protestations to the contrary.
Recall, for instance, the President’s only action so
far. On learning that his minister in charge of
aviation, and,so, of air safety, had been accused of
embezzling or misappropriating huge amounts of
public funds while planes have been falling out of
our sky like so many tattered paper kites flown by
children, the latest being the Associated Airlines
tragedy of 3 October 2013, what did he, enraged,
do? Well, he set up a three-member panel to probe
the minister.
And then he proceeded on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem during which he took time from his
personal devotions to perform some official
business. (Sanctimonious officials are, of course,
part of the problem of Nigeria. Their inability to
separate the state from religion, their personal
pieties from governance, will be the subject of my
next column.)
The only remarkable thing about that action which
unmistakably expresses the President’s
incandescent rage is that one of the persons to
probe the minister, National Security Adviser
Colonel Ibrahim Dasuki (rtd), travelled with
Jonathan, while the minister to be probed had
preceded the pilgrims-cum-public-servants to
Jerusalem!It is quite possible Jonathan is
embarrassed that bullet-proof luxury vehicles are
now the poster-image of his war against corruption.
Perhaps the irony is plain to him, seeing that he has
yet to fire a single bullet, even one filled with hot
words, in this war. Rather, he has been far happier
to be a nurse, binding the wounds of convicted
corrupt politicians as shown by the state pardon to
his mentor, D.S.P. Alamieyeseigha.
But why armoured cars? Security for her many
important foreign visitors, says Mrs Oduah, though
Nigeria is not at war, but how grateful she must be
to Boko Haram! We know, however, that security
was only a crude and clever ruse, and I hazard that
this new trend among our politicians in high public
office symbolises something else: armoured luxury
vehicles as atriple-meaning metaphor for
corruption: unabashed ostentation; a sign of their
sense of invincibility, of absolute protection from
prosecution; and protection from the people whom
they so shamelessly dispossess and impoverish.
Deep down, our politicians know that a thief lives in
perpetual fear of being discovered by the owner, in
this case the masses of the Nigerian people
pauperised and dehumanised by official
kleptomania. And our politicians know that the
masses, unlike our president, give a bloody damn
about corruption, and that a day of reckoning looms.
But do our bullet-proof politicians know that no
armour is proof against the rage of the people when
they are finally roused to action?