Chief Cornelius Adebayo, ex- Minister of Communication,

and Senator Jubril Aminu mentioned in the Siemens bribery scandal.

PUNCH

Siemens’s who-is-who corrupt list

For the second week running, the country was in the news for the wrong reason. The dust over allegations that Wilbros, the US-based oil services company paid $6million bribe to key Nigerian government officials had barely subsided when it was announced on November 7, that Dan Etete, the former Petroleum Minister under General Sani Abacha, had been sentenced, in absentia, to three years in prison by a French court, for using 15million euros obtained fraudulently, to purchase properties in France between 1999 and 2000.

On top of this dirty pile came the shattering report by the Wall Street Journal last week that Siemens paid nearly 10million euros in bribes to key Nigerian officials between 2001 and 2004. The buzz in political circles last week was not who was on the takers’ list, but who was not on it. From former three-time state commissioner and one time Federal minister, Cornelius Adebayo, to his three successors in the Communications Ministry – Bello Mohammed, Haruna Elewi and Tajudeen Olarenwaju – to three-time Senator, Jibril Aminu, and several key officials of the Ministry of Communications, Siemens offered such hefty bribes that the only way the officials could overcome the temptation was to yield. Now they have come to the threshing floor and the bribe-giver is squawking like a fowl with a broken beak.

That’s just as well. If the verdict in any of these cases had been given in a Nigerian court, those at the receiving end would have levied charges of witch-hunt against the prosecutors. They would have claimed that they were victims of a plot by powerful forces who either didn’t like their guts or who simply wanted to make them scapegoats, perhaps, for ethnic reasons. As we have seen from several high profile corruption cases, ranging from the $214million SAGEM bribe scandal, involving two ministers, to the $125m PTDF scam and from the case of former Inspector General of Police, Tafa Balogun to the rogue governors, bringing the high and might to justice comes with a very high price.

But there was no way we could have climbed up the hole as the world’s most corrupt nation by simply going after the small fry. For all his mischief in eight years as president, it is to the credit of Obasanjo that towards the end of his administration, he did more than pay lip-service to the fight against corruption. General Ibrahim Babangida hardly ever used the word, corruption, in eight years when he was military president. Under Sani Abacha only anyone who could have stolen more than his record $3.5bn loot might have had a problem with the law.

Obasanjo was, sometimes, justifiably criticised for witch-hunting his political opponents. My response to such accusations has always been to focus on the merit or lack of it of each case, knowing full well that the same stick that was used to beat the housewife is reserved for the mistress. That’s why the Siemens mess makes such good reading. Two of the persons involved – Adebayo and Aminu – are so close to Obasanjo, it might have been improbable, if not impossible, to investigate them, much less bring them to any kind of justice under his administration. It’s sad that NITEL, a public telephone company that has caused the country so much grief was, at the same time, the goldmine of key cabinet officers under Obasanjo. Whether in the case of Halliburton, Wilbros – and now Siemens, the point that resonates is that when greed gets into bed with opacity, there’s no telling what monster would result.

Unfortunately, nowhere is opacity more rampant than in government business. Who knows, for example, what is going on at the Nigeria Railway Corporation where as at 2005, the Obasanjo government not only decided to invest N396billion dollars in a 25-year overhaul plan but also feverishly canvassed foreign participation without even taking the first basic step of amending the law that makes the corporation a monopoly?

Who knows what is going on at the NNPC and why, in spite of over $1billion sunk in so-called turn around maintenance in eight years, its refineries are largely moribund while the corporation gets a free daily supply of 250,000 barrels of crude oil? Who knows what really happened in eight years when Obasanjo took direct charge of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources during which time the records of crude oil sales kept by the NNPC, the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance, hardly tallied?

It is not because the US, France or Germany loves Nigeria that these countries have brought their citizens to the threshing floor. In the mid-70s, investigations revealed that over 400 US companies admitted making illegal payments in excess of $300million to foreign government officials, politicians and political parties. While the US passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to restore the integrity of the American business system, it was business as usual in many European capitals. In fact, in a practice that would have put Robin Hood to shame, some European countries actually had laws that permitted companies to deduct the cost of bribes as business expenses on their taxes!

The hubris came to an end in 1997 when American businesses that were ‘disadvantaged’ by the FCPA forced their government to obtain from 33 OECD countries the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, an equivalent of the FCPA in the US. The United Nations Convention Against Corruption signed by 38 countries, including Nigeria, has since narrowed the space for corruption in international business transactions. The combined effect of September 11, the collapse of corporate giants – Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, etc – and the relentless shrinking of the global financial system, is such that every nation is now compelled to take more than a passing interest in the affairs of its neighbours.

It is heartening that President Umar Musa Yar’Adua’s government wants to probe the Siemens affair. Given that 74 per cent of the payout or nearly $7million was pocketed by “several decision makers,” a satisfactory closure cannot be brought to the affair unless these “decisions makers” are tracked down and brought to book. Surely such a large sum of money was not paid out to unknown or unknowable beneficiaries.

The speedy response of the Yar’Adua government to probe the Siemens affair will only count for something if it is followed through all those involved made to face the full consequences of the law. With an Attorney General and Minister of Justice like Michael Aondoakaa, ever so eager for technicalities to protect powerful politicians caught on the wrong side of the law, however, doing a thorough job of the Siemens affair promises to be quite a task for the Yar’Adua government.

The world is watching.