GUARDIAN

Friday, January 25, 2008              

'We will ensure corruption does not thrive'

Remarks by President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua at a dinner organised by the Partnership Against Corruption Initiative at the world economic forum summit in Davos, Switzerland on January 23

IT is a delight to be here among CEOs of multinational companies and I have listened to the experiences shared by those who have spoken on the war against corruption. But I must say that some of your companies have been, let me not use the word beneficiaries, because corruption itself dehumanises, so you cannot be a beneficiary of an action that dehumanises the human being. But the truth is that some companies have benefited materially from corruption, while we, the governments and the nations are usually at the receiving end, because very few people benefit from corrupt actions.

In nations where corruption thrives, the vast majority are shortchanged, so the measures and the steps you are taking really require courage and I have no doubt that those companies that agree to the Partnership Against Corruption Initiative (PACI) will make their members proud, the kind of pride that comes out of solid achievement as you partner with governments and more institutions to make the world a much better place. I think everybody must commend this initiative. I, in particular am excited and I assure you that in Nigeria, PACI will receive the greatest support from the government and other public institutions.

I know from some of the examples you have given that there are various challenges, which you will face. I think these challenges can be eased if you come from the point of view that really you are partnering with governments and other institutions to ensure zero tolerance for corruption throughout the world. I appreciate your individual courage, and let me assure you that some of the challenges like you yourselves have identified are that of making sure that the code of conduct that you have outlined will anchor zero tolerance for your companies and provide for best practices. It also means you need to ensure absolute compliance by your employees, and that means you need to have a robust monitoring mechanism.

The other aspect is the fear, which those other companies, which have signed up have to overcome, that is the fear of straight and honest competition. They may feel that if I am honest and straightforward, what about my competitor who goes to do some underground dealings to commit corruption and get what is available. That is also one of the challenges you have to face. By making sure that you are involved only in clean business and you can be classified by the world as clean companies, it will reward both you and your employees and give you a reputation and honour that will be respected the world over and in the long run governments and institutions will be seeking you out to do business with.

Let me, however, add that I will like to see this initiative being vigorously pursued and publicised so that in the near future when we are doing business in Nigeria and we see a list of companies, which come for competition, we can ask, who are those companies that have acceded to PACI? These are the companies we will do business with. I think when you push forward and pursue this initiative vigorously we will reach that point.

For us in Nigeria, I want to say that until very recently, corruption had become virtually endemic. In fact, it was threatening to become a national culture and almost a new civilisation not only in official government business but also within the private sector business and you can imagine how difficult it is to fight such a system.

It reached that point that people no longer cared how anybody made his money yet I know that when I was growing up, the society in Nigeria cared. If you displayed wealth and it was through dishonest means, nobody would want to be associated with you. But we reached a situation where the means by which you get wealth does not matter anymore. To earn respect and honour, you have to make effort to get wealthy by any means, whether it is through armed robbery or whether it is through outright stealing of public funds.

But within the last five years or so, we have taken very serious measures to combat corruption. It is one of the key issues today. We established various institutions to fight corruption: Independent Corrupt Practices and related offences Commission (ICPC), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Code of Conduct Bureau and also put in place various regulations and legislations such as the Public Procurement Law, which is a law to ensure transparency and accountability in public procurement.

We have also established the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI); so we have taken a lot of measures, established institutions by law and have given these institutions by law powers to fight corruption, attack corruption and to prosecute acts of corruption by anybody, no matter how highly placed.

One of the raging debates in Nigeria today is the issue of constitutional immunity from prosecution conferred on the president, vice president, governors and deputy governors. It is a raging issue and I have confidence that the next constitutional amendment will strip these public officials of this immunity and I am personally in support of that. Another thing I want to point out is that our laws of the anti-corruption agencies make provision to protect what we call the 'whistle blower.' Anybody who detects an act of corruption can write directly to these institutions and his identity is protected and the institutions are bound by law if they find out that a corrupt act has taken place, to prosecute. One thing I have done is to give them total and complete independence of action. The institutions are directly under me in the Presidency, so when I assumed office, I called their chairmen and told them that they have total independence to go and act within the law: that is the only condition I gave, that everything they do must be within the law establishing them and within the laws of the Federation.

The activities of the anti-corruption agencies have raised the level of consciousness against corruption in Nigeria and it is quite high. What the agencies are doing has the backing of the whole nation and for the first time in Nigeria, within the last four years, highly placed public officials are being investigated, arrested and prosecuted "people that were considered before to be above the law.

Now, what are we doing currently to take this fight against corruption further? What we are doing now is looking at measures we are going to put in place to ensure that opportunities to commit corruption are reduced to the barest minimum so that anybody, any public official who commits an act of corruption will know he has done it as a deliberate attempt, not because he has an opportunity to commit corruption. And that is in the long run, what is going to sort out this problem and make it a corruption free system.

The question we ask is what makes people commit corrupt acts? And when we looked, we found that really, the system itself is weak and when you have a weak system, you have a problem of giving opportunities to people to commit corruption. I have always told those whom I have the opportunity to work with that one of the responsibilities of leadership is to protect the followers from harming themselves, therefore leaders must shoulder responsibility to ensure that they have systems that do not encourage corrupt practices, systems based clearly on the rule of law, regulations and procedures.

That is why today in Nigeria I have told those I work with that we have to look at corruption and give it a basic definition that is more comprehensive. We have to look at the system by ensuring we have regulations and procedures to ensure that only the criminal can commit an act of corruption. It's just like in your house, you have $100 and you place it anywhere. It takes great discipline on the part of the housemaid, your own child and other people not to be tempted because they already have the opportunity, with someone probably thinking that if he takes $10 out of the $100, he may not be caught. But if you put the money in a locker and lock it and go with the key, then somebody has to make a deliberate decision to break the locker and take the money. That is the responsibility of leadership; you must not have a situation like the first one, you must provide the second scenario, where for people to commit acts of corruption, they have to go out of their way knowing fully well that if I do this, the system is such that I am going to be detected. But if the system is so loose that detection is not easy, then more and more people are tempted to commit acts of corruption.

One of the measures we are going to take, apart from the work that anti-corruption agencies are doing, is to have corruption monitors. These monitors will be trained in the art of investigation. They will have access by law to the asset declaration forms of public officials, they will have access by law to their accounts so that highly placed public officials will be monitored, their assets and properties. This will ensure that the monitors follow what they are doing in terms of acquiring illegal wealth while in office.

Another measure that we are going to introduce is that all violations and disrespect for due process will be sanctioned and prosecuted. We have a situation in which people award contracts without caring whether they have enough money to complete the project and because of this, there are lots of abandoned projects all over the country, in fact some going into billions of dollars. This is the kind of disrespect for established regulations and procedures that feed corruption. The other effect of this is that last year alone, one agency could not settle bills presented to it by a contractor worth N55 billion, because they didn't have the funds, yet they went ahead to award the contract.

Now what you have in most cases is that because an agreement has been signed, government will be compelled to pay an interest running into billions of Naira. So you can see the devastating effect and these are acts that are being committed all the time in various agencies. Now the decision to fight corruption properly and have respect for law and order and due process will now make such acts of omission or commission punishable by law, and that will clean the system and make sure that whatever business dealings government enter into, you have the ability to abide by the covenant you signed.

In fact, that is the path of honour, not only for any government but also for companies that are operating in Nigeria. Personally, I would have disrespect for a company that would enter into a commitment it doesn't have the capacity to honour.

Finally, let me say that it is also important that as leaders, whether of countries or companies, we must lead by example and make sure we always do the right thing.

QUOTE

We have to look at the system by ensuring we have regulations and procedures to ensure that only the criminal can commit an act of corruption. It's just like in your house, you have $100 and you place it anywhere. It takes great discipline on the part of the housemaid, your own child and other people not to be tempted because they already have the opportunity, with someone probably thinking that if he takes $10 out of the $100, he may not be caught. But if you put the money in a locker and lock it and go with the key, then somebody has to make a deliberate decision to break the locker and take the money. That is the responsibility of leadership; you must not have a situation like the first one, you must provide the second scenario, where for people to commit acts of corruption, they have to go out of their way knowing fully well that if I do this, the system is such that I am going to be detected. But if the system is so loose that detection is not easy, then more and more people are tempted to commit acts of corruption.

UNQUOTE