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The Ground Zero of Corruption By Moses Ochonu
Sometimes discussions of corruption can become so abstract that they get divorced from its real life impacts. I am sometimes guilty of this abstraction of corruption. Lately, however, I have become very curious about the destructive potential of corruption; about the on-ground consequences of graft; and about the impact of corruption on the lives of regular Nigerians. I have become more sensitive to, and interested in, the opportunity cost of corruption.
In a previous article on corruption, I pointed out that the difference in the perception index of corruption in Africa and the West turns on one fact: corruption in Africa kills, literally, while corruption in the West, even though greater in monetary terms (not in absolute or relative terms), is only a little more than a social and corporate irritant. And the victims of corruption in the West are far less in number than its victims in the Third World. The social damage of corruption is also far less in the West.
The question of what Nigerians have had to forego as a result of public corruption, of the privations that result from the embezzlement, mismanagement and misapplication of public fund has become a small personal obsession of mine. Some organizations like the West African NGO Network (WANGONET) share this obsession. The organization runs the Anti-Corruption Internet Database (ACID), which, among other things, maintains a ticking corruption clock showing, by the minutes and seconds, how much Nigeria loses to corruption.
It is not enough to simply assert that corruption kills or deprives Nigerians of basic social services—both of which are fairly obvious facts. In fact, the repetition of this fact without an evidentiary backbone can itself become, over time, meaningless abstraction—distant, impersonal, academic, and discursive. Sometimes, the point needs to be driven home by putting people and structures at the heart of these discussions and by graphically illustrating the devastation of corruption.
Nothing brought this physical manifestation of corruption’s impact more forcefully to me than my recent visit to Dutse, Jigawa State.
Rural, pristine, sleepy, and rocky, the capital of Jigawa state represents in my opinion the ground zero of corruption in Nigeria. My first visit to Dutse was in 1991, shortly after the state’s creation. Since then, the state has largely remained untouched by the developmental intervention of government. A succession of military administrators and the brief civilian administration of Ali Sa’ad Birnin Kudu built foundational infrastructures of government, and laid a modest foundation for what could have been a remarkable transformation of Dutse from a rural emirate headquarters to a truly urbanized capital.
Such transformative opportunities were wasted, by all accounts, by the administration of the immediate past governor, Alhaji Saminu Turaki, leaving the town bereft of development and an infrastructural presence befitting a state capital.
Before my recent visit, I had heard that Dutse was the least developed state capital in Nigeria. I had also heard all the banal stories about Turaki and his absentee administration. By popular account, Turaki spent more than half of his two terms outside the state—mostly outside the country. One can see why. For whatever reason, Turaki kept Dutse so undeveloped that even he had to govern the state away from it, shunning its rural boredom for the cosmopolitan attractions of other cities.
When I heard the refrain “Turaki did nothing,” I was sure that it contained grains of truth. But I also noted its other signification as a political hyperbole. Well, after my recent visit I am not so sure any more that there was any hyperbolic intent in those who credit Turaki with doing nothing for–and in—Dutse in his eight years as governor. The man’s administration literally did nothing in this semi-arid town situated on the ancient trade route between the kingdoms of Kano and Bornu.
To say that Turaki is hated in Dutse would be an understatement. And one can see why. The roads of this town, if one could call them that, are either in a poor state or are badly constructed. Even the road that leads to the palatial government house (Turaki had to be comfortable in this uncomfortably undeveloped town) is a mockery of the concept of the dual carriage way. Someone told me that the contractor merely demarcated an existing road, erecting a concrete division in the middle. Turaki obviously acquiesced in the shoddy aftermath of this fraudulent contract.
Under Turaki’s profligate administration, the town received neither new structures nor a face-lift to existing ones. And this is no exaggeration. When I initially challenged that seemingly exaggerated claim, a friend of mine drove me round the entire town—a drive of about 40 minutes—showing me public structures. Most of them had been built by previous administrations and had apparently not been maintained or refurbished by the Turaki administration.
Take the state secretariat. It is an eyesore. I was appalled to see civil servants working in it. But my guide assured me that this was a secretariat only in name as Turaki had relocated most of the ministries away from Dutse to other towns in the state in an advertised effort to ostensibly decentralize the art of governance. But as one resident of Dutse told me cynically, Turaki wanted to relocate the ministries to Hadejia, Gumel, and Kazaure to better loot government fund without the national (and international) scrutiny of a state capital. He cited the relocation of the strategic ministry of finance as evidence of the governor’s true intent.
The state house of assembly building was so dilapidated that its frontal roof was hanging loose. In other states, the governors took the assembly members along on the gravy train of corruption by sprucing up their official abode. Not in Jigawa. The looting was total, and assembly members were willing and sheepish accomplices.
The most potent social testimony to the utter governmental neglect of this town is the fact that most important government officials refuse to maintain a permanent abode in it, preferring to live in Kano and to commute daily or weekly to their jobs. So neglected is this town that there is, I was told, no real market in land. Allocated lands, some dating from the era of the military, are still undeveloped. And why should the owners develop them when there are no infrastructures to support any urbanization project.
The state-owned hotel, Jigawa Hotel, is an edifice in decay. Built during the administration of Navy Captain Rasheed Shekoni, the hotel is barely functioning, and its structures are falling apart.
Nothing captures the inhuman developmental neglect of Dutse more poignantly than the reckless abandonment of the Dutse Specialist Hospital. The expansive hospital was built by the administration of Rasheed Shekoni. It was completed and equipments for its operations were fully imported by the time of the inauguration of the Turaki administration in 1999. All that had to be done was for the equipments to be installed and for staff to be recruited to operate what would have been one of the best equipped hospitals in Northwestern Nigeria.
Not only did Turaki not commission the hospital; he allowed the massive complex and the equipments to lie unused for the duration of two terms in office. When I visited, the complex was a depressing miasma of leaky roofs, rodents’ nesting holes, shrubby balconies, and heaps of unused and rusty hospital equipments. What a mindless waste!!!
Dutse radiates a rustic charm. But one must weep for the kind of corruption that has trapped it in a time warp between its medieval character and its foundering status as a state capital. Such is the absence of urbanization in this town that the only remarkable architectural spectacle, besides, of course, the sprawling government house, is the emir’s palace, whose walls are so beautifully designed that it was selected as one of the national landmarks in the so-called Heart of Africa image project of the past administration. Another building that tickles one’s aesthetic sensibility is a beautiful building etched on a rock, which houses the state FM Radio. It, too, has been left to rot, its interior a junky contrast to its beautiful exterior.
The rest of Dutse is a rural settlement devoid of the sights and sounds and the people and politics of a state capital. There is no industrial or major corporate presence. There is no major federal institution besides the federal secretariat, which makes one wonder what workers in its offices actually do from day to day in a town with little governmental presence. The people of Dutse and the rest of the state must be wondering what they have done to be accorded the constitutional recognition of statehood only to be denied its accompanying institutions and benefits.
I was told that the fate of Dutse is synecdochical of the rest of the state, and that Turaki is an equal opportunity under-developer, seeing no part of the state as being worthy of any infrastructural improvement.
The logical question to pose is: what did Turaki do with all the money Jigawa got from the Federation account in the last eight years of soaring oil prices and unprecedented revenue receipts?
Turaki, who, along with several ex-governors, is facing trial for corruption and money laundering, has claimed that he provided N10 billion for ex-president Obasanjo’s failed third term constitutional amendment effort. The veracity of that spectacular revelation will be tested as the trial progresses. For now, it must be stated that, at best, Turaki is being stingy with the truth. Jigawa received much, much more than N10 billion from the federation account during his eight years in office. In fact Turaki’s EFCC charge sheet indicates a looting spree that gulped N36 billion over his eight year tenure! And if the plight of Dutse is an authoritative guide, there is nothing on the ground to indicate that the state even got N3 billion from the federation account. So, surely Turaki has to account for a lot of money.
Some Dutse residents told me that the case of Jigawa is spectacularly unique because the state’s plight is not only a product of corruption but of a lethal combo of corruption, indifference, and mean-spiritedness. Corruption, they argue, was the single most defining feature of the Turaki administration, to be sure, but corruption thrived in an underlying atmosphere of callousness and executive insensitivity.
I came away from Dutse with a new appreciation for the on-ground, real life impact of corruption. I thought about how many people may have died because Turaki and his underlings refused to make available the few millions of naira required to install the imported equipments, and recruit and pay the salaries of staff to run the hospital. I thought about how many young men and women in Dutse have remained jobless because Turaki’s alleged corruption and the attendant neglect of the people and infrastructures of the state has kept Dutse unappealing to corporate investors and enterprising immigrants.
At the time of my visit, Jigawa State’s new governor, Alhaji Sule Lamido and Turaki had just finished trading dueling statistics on the amount of debt that Turaki bequeathed to the new administration. Which in itself is revealing; for not only did Lamido not inherit any money in the state coffers; he was saddled with a debt burden that has doomed Dutse to its current fate for some time to come. After Lamido’s four or eight year tenure, he may be able to bequeath a balanced budget or some urban transformation projects to his successor. It is doubtful, however, if he can bequeath both. And the cycle continues for Dutse, underscoring the fact that the impacts of corruption outlive its perpetrators. |