“I have declared my assets four times. When I was governor in 1975, I declared. After being made Minister of Petroleum and as a member of Supreme Military Council, I declared. When I was Head of State and now as a President, I have also declared. I have declared my assets and all that I have four times, and you (the media) have the right to go and demand for my declaration. Instead, I am being harassed.” -President Muhammadu Buhari at a joint press conference with his Ghanaian counterpart, President John Mahama in Accra, Ghana.
It is now a matter of public record that in fulfilment of a solemn promise by the President and his deputy the duo on September 3 2015, almost a 100 days in their presidency made public their respective assets through a senior media aide with the presidency. This otherwise noble act by the number one citizen and his deputy has been roundly criticised as being fraught with a lot of ambiguities. While commending them for keeping faith with both constitutional and moral obligations by publicising their properties, it is incumbent upon us to also examine the validity of certain criticisms which have trailed the declaration and also warranted the statement above.
This article should not be misconstrued as a further harassment to the presidency but rather an innocuous attempt to illuminate on the popular aphorism that “Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well” and also to embolden the perceived idiosyncrasy of the government in matters of transparency, accountability and probity. Therefore, in order to pre-empt unsavoury reactions let me mention that I am not oblivious of a further communication that the process is not concluded yet as the appropriate agency is still expected to embark upon verification of the said assets. However, the decision to proceed with this piece as shall be revealed shortly is strictly predicated on the need to forestall potential fundamental flaws that have the trappings of a melodramatic state action by the time we are furnished with the eventual results of the declaration.
The President’s senior media aides Messrs Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu have been defending their boss with a crusading spirit. While the respective spokespersons of the ruling All Progressive Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party, appear to match each other, expletive for expletive. Thus while one party pontificate about how the President has been spending time trying to clean the Augean stables he inherited amidst commendation of the act, the PDP dismissed it as “a deceptive window-dressing to hoodwink unsuspecting Nigerians” because ‘’it is a mere list of some belongings of President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo in place of the pledge made to Nigerians by Mr. President as candidate of the APC on March 18, 2015, at exactly 5 pm.’’ Expectedly, the media have not been left out of the frenzy. In its weekend edition of Saturday 5 September 2015, the Punch newspaper portrayed an eristic dimension: “Mixed Reactions Trail Buhari’s Assets Declaration”.
We recall that the decision to make public the assets of the President, his deputy and other members of the new government was willingly broached during the peak of electioneering campaigns ostensibly to galvanise public perception of the moral rectitude of the President among the electorates. Notwithstanding the circumstances, a social contract cum moral obligation was inadvertently created which provides the impetus for critics and the opposition to yearn for a fulfilment of the promise. While the foregoing statement forms the moral plank upon which there has been a vociferous clamour for a public declaration, the succeeding paragraph encapsulates the legal authority.
By virtue of the Code of Conduct for Public officers listed in the fifth Schedule of the 1999 Constitution as amended, Part 1, specifically paragraph 11, “Every public officer shall within three months after coming into force of this Code of Conduct or immediately after taking office and thereafter: (a) at the end of every four years; and (b) at the end of the term of office; submit to the Code of Conduct Bureau a written declaration of all his properties, assets and liabilities and those of his unmarried children under the age of 18 years. It is incumbent on the President, Vice President and indeed all occupants of public offices to submit for verification their assets at the onset of their tenure while same is also expected upon the termination of their reign in office.
This is consistent with the mandate of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) which is, primarily to establish and maintain a high standard of morality in the conduct of government business and to ensure that the actions and behaviour of public officers conform to the highest standards of public morality and accountability. This sacred legal requirement is predicated on the need to forestall theft of public resources by facilitating an uncomplicated comparison of the net worth of the individual on each date of the declaration. Therefore through a comparative analysis of the worth of these individuals at both dates it is easily determinable if there exists an increment at the expense of hapless citizens. Should this be the case, valid questions bordering on how the incremental assets were acquired during the period of stewardship become germane. The underlying essence of this kind of asset declaration is to be able to establish a baseline to discourage theft during stewardship.
Indeed there is no gainsaying the fact that for a society like ours where there is an understandable reason for distrust between the hoi polloi and public officers due largely to the pervasiveness of corruption through the buccaneering tendencies of the latter over the years which makes the above constitutional stipulation absolutely welcomed by the former who bear the unfortunate brunt of financial profligacy among other numerous corrupt practices. Asset declaration as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution is not at the pleasure or leisure of public officials because it should confer on ordinary citizens the ability to determine cases of financial malfeasance and to hold public officers accountable to the country’s statutory precepts. Regrettably, the absence of such practice has vigorously exerted debilitating effects on such faculties of ethical enforcement in contemporary Nigeria, especially among the political class.
For reasons of analytical simplicity, I shall be restricted to the inherent and palpable deficiencies of the much celebrated ad-hoc declaration in comparison to what was done a little over eight years ago as well as proffer suggestions on how we can get it right at least for the sake of our future.
Some have dismissed the recent declaration as vague and grossly inadequate especially due to the brazen absence of specificity. I cannot agree less. We should be reminded that the act of public declaration of assets was eminently performed by Late President Umaru Yar Adua when just within one month of his presidency precisely on June 28th 2007 Nigerians were robustly furnished with details of his family assets. The publicised documents of the late President’s assets as submitted to the CCB revealed the following: A duplex valued at N212m at Malali, Kaduna State; multi-storey building at A8 Wuse 2 valued at N212m in Abuja; an inherited family compound at Katsina with a valuation of N105m; a N90m worth seven bedroom duplex at No. 2 Lema Jubril Close, built from personal savings in 1987 as well as an undeveloped plot of land situated in Asokoro New Layout in Abuja with a valuation of N50m.
His shareholdings in certain organisations were unambiguously declared thus: 2,000,000 units of shares in Habib Bank with an acquisition date of 1998; 100,000 units of shares in Intercity Bank Plc in addition to 100,000 units of shares of Muradi Hotels Ltd. Among the numerous details provided were 29 new cars worth N174,700,000 described as campaign vehicles and 2 old cars (a Mercedez Benz and Honda Accord valued at N6,500,000 and N350,000 respectively) both in Katsina and Abuja. Not done with the above details the late president went ahead to furnish us with the worth of his wife, Turai as consisting of houses valued at N19, 000, 000. From the foregoing, the aggregate value of the late President’s worth was determined to be N856, 452, 892 with a total annual income of about N18.7m. Here was a politician who did not inundate the electorates with promises of assets declaration as a testimony of his probity but rather considered it as a sine qua none to the doctrine of probity and transparency. Consequently, despite the huge quantum of assets in the said declaration he was appreciated for both sincerity and timeliness. Considering the fact that the current government rode to power on the pedestal of morality, it becomes even more incumbent that whatever action that is required to give fillip to its avowed war against corruption should be judiciously undertaken. When you claim to own a property anywhere, the details should be known to you and the relevant government agencies at least for planning reasons.
Likewise it is preposterous to submit to a statutory body, ownership of some physical structures without any commensurate valuation whether historical or current. The opposite is an infallible recipe for ridicule. In the same manner, one views the ownership of shares in publicly trading organisations without providing both the quantitative units and corresponding monetary values as ludicrous. However, the specificity concerning the quantity of livestock in the said declaration and the cash balance in the bank account is appreciated but same should have been done for the real estate declarations.
From the submission of the President’s SSA penultimate Thursday, even finance experts, not the least Nigerians at large will have to possess supernatural powers to be able to determine the net worth of their current leaders. Again it is admitted that, it was mentioned that verification is still on going, but this is more than 100 days for assets domiciled in Nigeria! Which brings us to another worrying aspect of the processes concerning the length of time it is takes to assemble all the required information. One shudders, if it takes this length of time for the CCB to ascertain the assets of only two individuals who are by no means the wealthiest in the land, then what happens if they were to perform the same act for the likes of Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Donald Trump or Bill Gates or thousands of other elected and appointed public officers? Unless the authorities want us to assume that the declaration submitted to the CCB have just been gathering dust over the past three months but decided to release it to beat the 100 days deadline. Methinks keeping mum on this subject pending the availability of all relevant information would have been a more plausible option than the desperate advertisement of incomplete information.
Another very critical reason why there should be full disclosure by the presidency is to embolden the anti-corruption crusade and eradicate cynicism among the citizenry because the longer it takes to comply with this self-imposed moral obligation, the greater the impetus it affords critics to ridicule the much desired fight against corruption, in the process, precipitating an erosion of the social capital required to sustain the fight against the vice. The overwhelming expectation is for the current leadership to surpass the mark set by a former president over eight years ago especially because the fight against corruption was a pivot of their campaign promises. Recall how the immediate past President was pilloried by commentators for the infamous “I don’t give a damn” on the same subject four years ago. Despite his defence that by submitting his declaration to the CCB he has satisfied the law and having done same as a deputy to President Yar Adua he did not feel obliged to make his declaration public again, yet the avalanche of criticism which trailed the above stance was quite deafening and still haunts till today.
A related area of interest is the potential latitude it confers on other public office holders (past, present and future) to flounder the practice should this process be adjudged tardy and ineffectual in the reckoning of observers.
As an ardent admirer of the President, I must concede that he has distinguished himself among the very tiny proportion of patriots in the political community, principally because he represents a prototype of the incorruptible character, a man taken with the singularity of his patriotic conviction.
In the light of this perception by me and millions of Nigerians, he should as a matter of inexorable urgency, instigate an expedition of the processes to furnish Nigerians with full disclosure of the worth of all his assets and members of his immediate family as well as both existing and potential members of the government before the simmering discontent drags the administration into unpredictable calamitous reckoning even among the expanding population of Buharists.
– Mieba Gogo-Abite, writes from Abuja, Nigeria.
This article was originally published on ThisdayLive.
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