You cannot fight corruption when you can’t even define what corruption means.
… there has been no single conviction of defaulters. The only thing we have is media trial.
Nigeria is a society that does not define its own values hence the emergence of bad leaders and celebration of people with unearned wealth.
In this interview, Moffat Ekoriko, Publisher of NewsAfrica magazine, London bares his mind on issues plaguing the corruption war and the need for Nigerians to criminalize looted wealth to serve as a deterrent to others.
EXCERPTS:
How do you see journalism practice in Nigeria vis a vis Akwa Ibom State?
Journalism is evolving in Nigeria, but we are not where we should be. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things militating against its contributions to national development. Journalism started many years ago with publication like Gaskiya Tafi Kwabo. Then the early nationalist like Herbert Macaulay used media outlets to fight the colonialists. From then, we would have experienced a press more robust than it is now, problems being institutional factors. And what are these institutional factors?
First, we were not able to identify who a journalist is. But that did not look like a problem when we had the traditional media outlets like radio, press and television. Owners and editors then could screen journalists. When the social media came, the entry level came down from a million naira to perhaps a few hundreds of naira. Then every hungry fellow wakes in the morning and calls himself a journalist. All you need to do is to create a platform, give it a name and write whatever you want to. Most times, it makes it dishonourable to call yourself a journalist.
The second problem is ownership. Ownership has played a negative role in the development of journalism practice in Nigeria. We know of the phrase that says ‘He who pays the piper detects the tune’. Unfortunately when you have political pipers, the tune can be very partisan. You see three newspapers reporting the same story, so the idea of a journalist reporting objectively for an interested audience is not there anymore. You now have interested and partisan servers reporting subjectively for an audience no longer interested because they have lost credibility.
The other problem of ownership is poor remuneration of journalists. When you are hungry, you do not talk about morality. I always tell people whenever there is conflict between morality and survival, survival takes precedence, because you have to eat to live to talk of your professional ethics. Since journalists are poorly paid it is difficult for them to maintain their integrity; sometimes you do not blame owners of media houses. This is the only country people place adverts in newspapers and two to three years, media owners are still chasing them for payment.
Another factor militating against the development of journalism practice in Nigeria is that we have developed a society without values. Nobody wants to know if you are a pastor with the highest anointing. What people want to know is that you are the richest pastor. That has gotten to journalism. It has destroyed politics; it has destroyed the church even journalism. So, people are measuring their success not in terms of professional competence, not in terms of their operational accomplishments, but in terms of what they are able to acquire. We have a monetary-based value system: what counts is money, how much is in your bank account. And the system has not developed that institutional structure to ensure that a journalist has a guaranteed standard of living and a secured future.
What is the way out of the quagmire facing journalism practice?
The way out is simple: I would love the Nigerian Guild of Editors, Nigeria Union of Journalists and the Newspapers Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria, Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria, to set up a technical committee where they will ask the question how we can improve the practice of journalism in Nigeria. Some of the problems can be dealt with at the level of the profession and the media industry, but there are some you need regulations to deal with. There are some you need to work with the universities to train the type of journalists you are producing.
So, let the industry and the profession come together to chart a way forward. Once I get back to the United Kingdom, people ask me Mr. Ekoriko, what do you do? I reply that am a journalist. You see the respect they will accord me, but I come to Nigeria, and tell people that I am a journalist, they just look at me with disdain, even a Personal Assistant to a politician looks at you saying: this one is looking for N5,000 or N500, but perhaps this is the world’s most respected profession.
How can government regulate the activities of online newspapers?
I will stand against regulation. The problem we also have is constitutional. The Nigerian constitution guarantees freedom of expression, so you can’t tell a man who is writing anything that he cannot write or say it. What we need to do at the level of the industry is to identify who a journalist is and also accredit online platforms. I understand there is an organisation called Online Publishers Association and they have a strict guideline for entry. Maybe, if they come with an accredited logo that could quickly identify anyone who is a true member.
Are there prospects in the online newspapers?
Of course, there are prospects. The online newspapers can do very well, and some of them are doing well, but could be faced with the challenges online newspapers had in United States of America when so many of them came up, taking the advantage of the internet. But with the competition, so many others have fallen by the way side. Facebook, Google, WhatsApp and the rest are the few prominent and successful ones. So, many of these online platforms will die except those few good ones.
How would you describe leadership in Africa visa vis Nigeria?
Well, the problem with Africa is defining the utility of leadership. People get into office, not to serve, not to make society better; they just get into office to enrich their pockets. But, I don’t blame the leaders, I blame the followers- the society that celebrates unearned wealth can only produce bad leaders. A society that does not define its own values can only produce bad leaders. For instance, if you in the local government, ask yourself what has been achieved there in the past five years. Nothing! When I was in secondary school, I had local government scholarship. Where is it today? Why can’t they construct roads in the local government areas? Because the people elected into those offices have gone there to eat and loot public funds and because it’s not about serving the people, you now have secret cultism, thuggery and election rigging to gain access into an office.
What can the electorate do to get rid of bad governance?
Once a politician enters public office without declaring his assets and suddenly he becomes very rich, you cannot hail him. Are you hailing him for making money through his handwork or for stealing your money? The problem is that we don’t demand accountability, performance or discipline. We don’t even have a code of conduct, but until we criminalize looted wealth, you cannot have good governance. Recovering looted wealth is not what EFFC can do alone, how far can they go? They have political masters. If APC is in power, they will go after politicians in PDP, and if PDP takes over power they will go after politicians in APC.
But we the followers can criminalize looted wealth, we can treat people who drive cars they have not worked with disdain, but when we can stop celebrating them or calling them achievers, and believing that God has opened their ways of prosperity. There is nothing wrong in questioning wealth from unknown source.
What can Nigerian leaders do to evoke the spirit of patriotism among their subjects?
The question is: what has the country done for you? If your country has not done anything for you, patriotism is very difficult to evoke among the populace. A citizen in the United Kingdom can count what his/her country has done to its citizenry. But in Nigeria, you generate your own electricity and potable water; you have to enrol your children in private secondary school, because there are no functional public schools for them to attend. We don’t have a public transport system in operation, if you are sick and you don’t have money you simply die. The other day, I was shown an accident scene and it took the emergency unit about four hours to get there and 18 people were roasted alive. Can you expect patriotism from people you treat as animals? So, our leaders have a lot of work to do.
How can government stem a replay of boycott of federal allocation committee meeting by state Finance commissioners that federal government failed to account for the excess of $60 per barrel against $45 earlier budgeted for?
I think we have failed to do something constitutionally. We needed to separate the office of the Accountant-General of the federation from that of Accountant-General of the federal government. If we had an Accountant-General of the federation, he will be the one receiving the money of the federation and sharing it according to the law. But, what happens now is that the Accountant-General of the federation is also the one of the federal government. He does what favours the federal government and not the other component units. It is a constitutional problem that we have to deal with. If the federal government wants to save the money as excess crude, they should say so. There are lots of inconsistency in the government’s policies and standards.
Is corruption war properly waged by the APC government?
There is no corruption war. You cannot fight corruption when you can’t even define what corruption means. You cannot fight corruption and two years into government no single conviction of defaulters. The only thing we have is media trial – Diezani Madueke stole this or that. Then, you have someone put $43 million in a storey building and nothing happens. Right now, we are seizing Diezani’s assets, but the tragedy is this: you cannot seize proceeds of crime without proving the crime. You need to prove a crime first before seize the proceeds. On the other hand, you have crimes committed without the criminals. For example, $43 million dollars found in a flat, that’s a crime- you seized the money, but can’t you punish the criminals? Is there a society like that – which means that the crime committed itself?
Can defectors from one political party to another be seen as true politicians?
The fact is that we do not have political parties in Nigeria. A political party is an organisation of people with shared values and interest, who seek to take power in a democracy so that they can move the society in their thinking. Now what are the shared values of people in APC or PDP? There is only one shared value among Nigerian politicians- which is looting. When you see you cannot use this platform to get into political office you move to the other one. I can’t imagine a man moving from PDP to APC and APC to PDP.
How can Nigerian politicians evolve a sound political culture?
A sound political culture cannot emerge except you build a society of values. In other words, let us build a society of values and other missing items shall be given to us.
