Must read article of the day : Dasukigate and Buhari’s dilemma - which direction is this heading to.

WHETHER President Muhammadu Buhari likes it or not, he will have to grapple with a huge dilemma in the weeks ahead in his continuing war against corruption. On one hand, he acknowledges that if

corruption is not tackled, it will be impossible for the country to make progress. As he put it during the campaigns, if Nigeria does not kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria. He is right. He can’t afford to go on with the mindset of business as usual. Fortunately for him, he is as stubborn as an aurochs in the pursuit of causes he passionately believes in. He is, therefore, pursuing his quarries with a relentlessness that is befuddling to his opponents, particularly in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Because the war is yielding fruit, and many high-profile cases are daily being uncovered, to the sordid amusement and entertainment of the grieving public, President Buhari appears encouraged to make the war virtually the single most pressing obligation of his presidency.

Yet, on the other hand, by prosecuting the corruption war wherever the trail may lead, the president has opened a can of worms so pervasive and so putrescent that it may be difficult to arbitrarily close the lid at any point, let alone determine where and how far the worms will travel. So, damned if he does not fight corruption, and damned if he does. The suspicion is that fighting corruption at all, not to talk of how President Buhari is fighting it, will in the long run consume everybody. The president has not paid attention to such squeamishness. His resolve, he believes, will never be tested by the fear of where the trail would lead. He in fact seems determined that should the trail lead to his family, he would come down upon the offender with a sledgehammer. But sooner or later, his resolve will be tested; what is not clear at the moment is how he will respond.

The first casualty concerns of course the much-publicised case of the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.) to whom is attributed a cocktail of benumbing corruption cases. He is accused of superintending an arms deal in excess of $2.1bn wherein much of the money was funneled to other sundry and unrelated uses other than arms purchase. The government presents a picture of an arms bazaar where rather than arms being bought and paid for, the Office of the NSA (ONSA) concocted a slush funds bazaar that squirreled money into the accounts of the immediate past government’s loyalists and party officials. The list is expanding by the day, and the amount squirreled away mindboggling and provocative.

President Buhari’s persistence appears, however, to be paying off. As the list of those involved in this and other crazy deals grows, it appears to grow only in the direction of PDP’s big wigs. It makes sense, but in a perverse way. Under the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, the main beneficiaries of contract awards were naturally members, sympathisers and leaders of the then ruling party. Any war against corruption by Dr Jonathan’s successor will invariably rope in essentially those who were the leading functionaries of the PDP. This also naturally triggers the accusation that President Buhari is deliberately targetting the PDP, with the mischievous intention to decimate or castrate the opposition. Whether that is the intention or not, and it seems it is not of course, the opposition will suffer from that collateral damage. They supervised the contract bazaar; they will suffer from the consequences of that undisciplined and offensive way of dishing out patronage.

But therein lies one of the dilemmas the president will be confronting soon. Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State has been hysterical in accusing the president of decimating or persecuting the opposition. His hysteria is a face-saving ploy. A huge percentage of the mindless distribution of public funds is believed to have gone into the reelection campaigns of the PDP at the presidential and governorship levels. If Mr Fayose and other PDP officials are shouting from the rooftops, it is feared they are motivated by self-preservation, for none of them is free of blame. But whether the slush funds went into politics or not, the president will not be deterred from prosecuting the war. And if he is not deterred, as indeed many PDP leaders have charged, would he feign ignorance of the fact that his own election and the election of many governors on the platform of the ruling party did not resort to the services of huge public expenditure to procure their victories? To what extent then will he be ready to strike at the heart of his own party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), when or if the trail leads remorselessly in that unexpected direction?

Chairman emeritus of Africa Independent Television (AIT), Raymond Dokpesi has also been caught in the widening gyre of Dasukigate. He is charged in court with money laundering totalling some N2.1bn. His defence is that it was a publicity contract duly applied for and approved by the Jonathan presidency. Former Sokoto State governor, Attahiru Bafawara, who also dumped APC for the PDP, is also sucked in. Many other highly placed PDP leaders will soon be drawn into the red gullet of the war, some of them certain to be bloodied and bowed. For instance, former Finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is increasingly looking like she will be invited to clarify a number of financial transactions carried out under her watch. They will all cry persecution, but both the adamant President Buhari and the scandalised public, relieved that the massive rot is being uncovered, will not care a hoot. But what of when the shoe is on the other foot?

Perhaps the greatest dilemma President Buhari will confront will be what to do with ex-president Jonathan. Virtually all the trails in the arms deal and other fund transfers lead to him. He is mentioned as the final approving authority, with the delicate line of difference between approval and fraudulent application greatly obfuscated. Already, the president has described as betrayal of trust the unseemly transactions that took place within the purview of the $2.1bn arms deal. He will find it difficult to continue to ignore requests by investigating agencies, if they come, to interview the former president. It is not clear whether the anti-graft and other security agencies will desire to invite the former president, as other countries do; or whether they will visit him to take his deposition. But to pretend the former president can stay aloof, or occasionally issue short expiatory statements, is looking increasingly farcical and untenable.

If the relevant agencies invite Dr Jonathan or visit him to take his deposition, it will set a precedence, a precedence the Ijaw will find strange, deliberate and insinuating. They will recall how former military head of state Ibrahim Babangida did not as much as dignify the Justice Oputa Panel with his presence when he was invited. The Ijaw have indeed already argued that the North and the Southwest malevolently conspired to rob their son of a second term in office, and hinted that that electoral defeat humiliated him and his ethnic group. The coronation of Dr Jonathan in 2010 gave the Ijaw and the South-South a feeling of belonging; but his reelection loss, they said morosely, aborted what should have been a complete and comprehensive integration of the Ijaw and southern minorities into the idea of, and oneness that, Nigeria theoretically represents.

Hauling Dr Jonathan before a panel of inquiry is justified, given the scale of the atrocious financial heist perpetrated by many of the suspects already incarcerated or about to be prosecuted. Whether after given his word to Dr Jonathan before the polls that nothing untoward would befall him should he lose, and that he had nothing to fear after vacating office, the president is at liberty to renege on his promise is anyone’s guess. What would the president do should pressures mount to arrest and prosecute Dr Jonathan, especially when none of the thieving former heads of state was ever hauled before a tribunal or a regular court? The coming weeks will test President Buhari’s understanding of justice.

More, the weeks ahead will determine whether having let the genie of anti-corruption out of the bag, President Buhari can direct, restrain and constrain where the chips may fall. During the campaigns, when Candidate Buhari was fishing for endorsements, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, tongue-in-cheek, made reference to the rot that also undermined the financial integrity of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) then headed by President Buhari as its chairman. The former president said he invited President Buhari at the time and showed him the report, and then asked if he benefited in any way from the sleaze. Chief Obasanjo said he dropped the report because he was satisfied with Candidate Buhari’s answer that he benefited nothing from the morass in the PTF. The ongoing investigations are already spiralling out of orbit, and may hit any of the former presidents, including Chief Obasanjo. Will President Buhari be capable of breaking the mould, damning the consequences, and unfettering the anti-graft agencies to carry out their duties without let and hindrance? President Buhari may be closer to that defining moment than he imagines.

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