11 May 2008 |
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Pat Utomi has earned the respect and admiration of many Nigerians. Resolute, cerebral, and principled, Utomi models the character traits that are universally desirable. He epitomizes what Nigerians could be in an unfettered economic, political, and intellectual climate. It is precisely because he embodies and articulates the aspirations and desires of many Nigerians that what he says matters. He has earned the right to influence public debates and the national mood through his truth speaking. But public intellectualism and activism comes with a burden: consistency. Utomi reportedly recently said things that do not interface with the noble prescriptions of his career of public critique and political activism. He reportedly questioned the wisdom of probing the allegation that the Central Bank under Charles Soludo’s governorship invested a dizzying $462 Million in an ill-defined venture called African Finance Corporation (AFC). He is reported to have dismissed the inquest into the murky transaction as “backward looking” at a time when, as he put it, the nation needs to move forward on the path of nation building. The temptation is to dismiss this as a classic instance of elite solidarity, unworthy of broad extrapolation. But the plausibility of this extrapolation is exactly what makes it disturbing. That such an unwavering apostle of accountability and transparency appears to have been seduced by the appeal of Soludo’s intellectual charisma, a shared ideological kinship, and possible personal friendship invites a deep examination of how intellectual inconsistencies are forged by quotidian relational considerations. I have always assumed, perhaps naively, that the task of national restoration ought to transcend ephemeral associational proclivities. Critics and public intellectuals routinely eviscerate politicians for putting solidarities of politics and mutual gain above accountability and the public’s right to know. Unfortunately, Utomi seems here to be similarly protective of a fellow academic, intellectual, and bureaucrat—urging, as politicians often do, concealment where revelation is desired. Why is Utomi in a hurry to cut Soludo slack? Why the curious willingness to clear exculpatory space for Soludo even though he is reported to have told members of the probe panel behind closed doors that he made a mistake and that they should, as young people, understand and forgive his youthful exuberance? Why the exceptionalism?
We absolutely should not be cutting anyone slack in the name of looking forward or not "looking backward" (whatever that means). I argued in another piece that the rhetoric of "moving—and looking—forward" is a significant impediment to the kinds of resolutions we need in many areas of our national life—resolutions that should be unsparing and total. Okey Ndibe has similarly decried this narrative of moving the nation forward and ignoring the regenerative power of resolution, restoration, restitution, punishment, and closure. Often, the notion of looking forward is advanced as an alibi for giving some people a break, and to rationalize taking a holiday from the moral cleansing that is required in the polity. There is obviously an element of showiness and diversionary theatre in the ongoing probes, especially since punishment and restitution do not seem to be their objectives. For what they are worth, however, they satisfy the public's right to know how state resources have been (mis)used.
One expects nebulous rationalizations of malfeasance from those invested in the status quo. It is depressing that men of conscience and intellect like Pat Utomi have become participants in that discourse, perhaps without realizing how it undercuts their own advocacy and sets us back in our desire for accountability. When voices of moral influence adopt the escapist rhetoric of forward-looking, they set a negative, cynical agenda for public activism. How can you embrace your future without resolving the baggage of your past? Unless Utomi sees a clear path to the future outside the resolution of the problems of the present, one must reject his commentary on Soludo’s AFC travails. Not because his visionary preoccupation with the future is not admirable, but because no cartographic logic can lead you to a desired destination from a problematic point of departure.
Looking to the future sounds great. But when that future stands mortgaged to the pilfered resources of today, only a scrutiny and rectification of today’s errors can chart a path forward.
There is another sinister incarnation of this narrative of forward-looking. It resides frustratingly in the domain of anti-corruption. Those of us who recommend a total, uncompromising war against corruption and argue that selectivity is not inevitable but a strategic choice of complicit, pretentious politicians are called naive. We are told that such a puritanical attitude towards corruption is impractical, that it would bring down the entire Nigerian edifice. We would be losing the forest to save the tree. We are told that the Nigerian elite—in all its professional and ideological diversity—is complicit directly or indirectly in the national cesspool of corruption. A puritanical approach would be counterproductive, even nihilist. Selectivity, we are told, is thus a paradigm of necessity and pragmatism, not a disguise for insincerity and hypocrisy.
It is this type of thinking that authorizes the culture of exceptionalism and selectivity that have become normalized as standard anti-corruption methodologies. It is the reason why efforts against corruption and other vices of governance are unabashedly mediated by the loyalties of personal relationships and interest-based politics. It is the reason why a cloud of impunity hovers over
This kind of impunity is implicated in the emerging AFC scandal. Soludo’s financial misbehavior concerning the matter of the AFC was an outgrowth of the wholesale disregard for constitutionality and due process of the Obasanjo era. These vices were rooted in a sense of impunity that comes from knowing that selections and exceptions are twin operational doctrines in
The AFC scandal highlights two main phenomena that are worth outlining for further discussion.
First, there is a growing sense that expertise, often inflated and oversold, buys those who donate it to government immunity from scrutiny and reproach. How dare you question the integrity of Soludo, the great engineer of the revolutionary banking policy of consolidation? Never mind that the jury is still out on the costs and benefits of consolidation. In this larger narrative of obsequious and pedestrian deference to men and women of expertise, the matter of the misapplied $17 million and the larger issue of the illegal withdrawal of $462 million from the CBN becomes nothing but a tiny, irrelevant asterik of quotidian error in an otherwise distinguished career of public service.
It is not only Soludo that has benefited from this problematic obsession with showy intellectualism and the intimidation of expertise. Attempts to scrutinize the conducts and public careers of Okonjo-Iweala, Ezekwesili, El-Rufai, Ribadu—all of them mythologized as epitomes of brilliance and courage in Obasanjo's putrid administration—have drawn rebuke and unsavory charges.
The logic is simple but flawed. Competence and “performance” inoculates a public servant against moral assessment. Obasanjo benefited from this logic, for a time at least. He often said the right things publicly and conscripted the service of people who projected competence and “performance.” Nigerians fell in love, smitten by a dangerous mix of gullibility, awe-inspiring jargons of expertise, and naive expectations. They gave Obasanjo a pass. He knows what he’s doing, went the narrative. Signs of Obasanjo’s congenital incompetence and corruption were missed because the seduction of competence, expertise, and the rhetoric of “performance” took hold of the public’s imagination. And their vigilance took flight. This infatuation didn’t wear off until Obasanjo left power. Probes have since unearthed scandalous, myth-bursting evidence of the collective incompetence and cowardice of Obasanjo’s experts. Yet inordinate public infatuation with expertise and competence persists.
The canonization of perceived competence and performance bestows hubris on the object of such public valorization. Take El-Rufai for example. In the last few weeks revelations of his corrupt land allocations and revocations have come to light. We now know that he demolished houses for political reasons; sold houses and plots of land to himself and members of his family; made lavish land allocations to Obasanjo; victimized innocents and legitimate land holders; and oversaw a policy of executive rascality during his tenure as FCT minister. Yet, El-Rufai has arrogantly refused to own up to any wrong doing, let alone offer apology or regret for his abuses of office. From where else could such inexplicable narcissism spring other than the public narrative of El-Rufai as a competent, courageous, and thus infallible public servant?
Soludo is another example. Only a man deified as an irreproachable repository of economic wisdom would withdraw $462 Million from the coffers of the Federal Government without so much as a concern for the backlash of such a brazen act of fiscal recklessness. He, too, was relying on the exculpatory and mitigating efficacy of his intellectual capital. He was counting on the public perception of him as a competent and “performing” bureaucrat. Because many Nigerians believe that competence is atonement for the moral sins of public office, and are, for good measure, suckers for Soludo’s vulgar display of intellectual self-assurance, there was no reason for the nation’s number one banker to fear. Competence—or the public perception of it—is a formidable defense against allegations of corruption and moral turpitude.
Second, there is the related social idiom of elite infallibility. We are quick to erect myths and narratives of infallibility around public servants and members of the elite who demonstrate a modicum of intellectual curiosity and professionalism in a general environment of mediocrity and intellectual barrenness. We take this to such extremes that it denudes us of our ability to stand away and objectively evaluate the moral conduct of those we have so naively lionized.
We refuse to put the accomplishments of these men and women in perspective. We do not demand accountability and moral competence from these mythical icons of competence and “performance.” By the time they falter, partly because the myth of infallibility has gone to their heads, we are too far gone in our devotion to recognize their failure let alone have the courage to call for their investigation and prosecution. Utomi’s deplorable statements indicate that even voices of moral clarity like him can be seduced--and overwhelmed--by this cult of competence.
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