Repositioning African professionals for good governance: A task for African leaders – Dr. Muiz Banire

Just of recent, I ventilated my view on the knotty issue of treatment of ‘politically exposed persons’ as it affects the quality of leadership in Africa (See my column in The Daily Sun Newspaper of 5th September 2024 “The western conspiracy against good governance in Africa https://thesun.ng/the-western-conspiracy-against-good-governance-in-africa/”). In that intervention, I examined the rationale behind the declaration of public officials as politically exposed persons. The essence of such declaration, by way of recap is, essentially to monitor and track the finances of public officials in and out of office in order to detect instances of corruption and abuse of public office. Undoubtedly, public officials are often exposed and prone to temptations while in office while equally being capable of abusing their offices. The truth, however, is that such corruption and abuse of office, as globally recognized, is not peculiar to any particular country or continent. Certainly, it is a universal phenomenon. As a notorious fact, the words, ‘corruption’ and ‘abuse of office’ are not of African origin. The words evolved from the western world due to the need to aptly capture and characterize the misconducts involved in by their citizens. This does not imply that the variants are not in existence in the African or Nigerian vocabularies.

To validate the assertion above that corruption and abuse of office is not peculiar to Africa or Nigeria, few examples from the developed world will suffice. In the United States, we still recall the William Jefferson corruption case; the watergate scandal and the Tennessee Waltz case, to mention but few instances in that country. In the United Kingdom, part of the reasons that led to the emergence of equity in the justice sector was corruption that had swallowed the common law courts way back in the 16th Century. In recent times, scandals, such as the Greensil which involved former Prime Minister David Cameron compromising the office for Greensil capital; Owen Paterson matter, involving the breach of paid advocacy rule, which ultimately consumed several public officials including several senators, representatives, commissioners and board members. The essence of this short adventure into those foreign jurisdictions is to demonstrate the universality of corruption and the global uniform attempt to curtail the vice.

However, the way and manner most public officials perpetrate corruption is as if they possessed immunity against their corrupt acts. Although in Nigeria, by way of example, chief executives of government organs are shielded from consequences whilst in office, but out of office, when they ought to be accountable, they appear still immune as most attempted prosecutions often end up in a circus show. Even where public officials abuse their offices or positions, attendant consequences are usually in the nature of soft landing, with no deterrent effect ultimately. This is unlike in most other progressive societies in which once there is mere indictment, resignation from office automatically follows. In China, it is death sentence as recently shown in the case of a Central Bank chief that was sentenced to death.

Here, it is then the public official regales in celebration and grandstanding and his community of perverse victims would award him chieftaincy titles. As remarked above, it is in recognition of the dire need to tame corruption globally that the global action towards curbing money laundering was taken, and the offshoot of which is the development of the concept of politically exposed persons, otherwise known in other international fora as ‘senior foreign political figures. The declaration of the treatment of such public office holders is often a function of the financial regulations of the countries. The essence of such instrument is to command the monitoring and surveillance of such public officials’ financial transactions. Certainly, the intendment of the enabling instrument is not to stigmatize the public officials and place absolute ban on their financial transactions, particularly internationally. The obligation, therefore, placed on contacts with such public officials is to be wary and exercise caution in dealing with them.
The import of this is just to enhance their due diligence as they are considered a potential high risk. The adoption of the concept however has not been free from discrimination, either in terms of tenure, or the mode of application. In virtually across the western world and other progressive countries, the tenure hardly enures beyond five years after office. Where such is not, a fixed period is applied to the categorization. It is only in the African continent that the tag appears to enure in perpetuity. The acronym is, ‘once a PEP is always a PEP’, the import of which is that African public officials continue to be victims of the offices they occupy even while out of office and innocent of any atrocity. This is the lot of African public officials. The other aspect, as stated above, relates to the discriminatory treatment of such erstwhile African public officials, rated along their counterparts in the western world and other nations. The African subject continues to be penalized for occupying such offices while his contemporary enjoys global recognition for such services.

No international organization wants to transact with such public officials, not even in terms of mere banking. They are considered a threat always. The net effect now is that most African professionals and competent hands, including those in the diaspora, evade and avoid invitation to serve in their countries’ public offices. This, undoubtedly, is a disservice to the drive for good governance in African countries. As I said elsewhere, this is the hypocrisy of the west against the African continent. Deceitfully, the same western countries are the apostle of good governance by mouth. They commit African countries, by way of loans, to the development of good governance infrastructure while on the other hand, they shoot down and scare out their best implicitly from driving those offices. No wonder across Africa, we continue to witness the population of the public offices with charlatans, imbeciles, neophytes and scavengers.
What is the essence of structure without content?

Meaningless. Let us even pause for a moment to evaluate the success of the doctrines in real practice, is it really achieving the objective it sets out to achieve? ME THINK NOT! As Chinua Achebe wrote in ‘Things fall apart’, “Since the hunters develops the capacity to shot without missing, the birds have developed the capacity to fly without perching”. Since the concept was introduced, public officials globally have developed alternative means of looting and laundering the loot of office without trace through so many schemes. The least of all these is the use of proxy, directly or indirectly. Hardly do public officials make an unusual lodgment into their private accounts nor that of their relatives again. They will rather use proxies that are relatively distant and unknown to the system, or operate an anonymous or fictitious accounts under one guise or the other. Only in infinitesimal number of instances were such accounts traceable.

At times, the investments are into securities or real estates that are equally not easily attributable to them. Monitoring of such public officials’ accounts is therefore mostly a hoax, a complete waste of time in contemporary period. Rather than continuously applying this archaic and anachronistic mechanism, why not retract, and allow the freedom to transact while mounting robust surveillance and monitoring. Technology, to a large extent, has even made such intrusion easier. The proposition reminds of the effort to track a criminal with no fixed address, it will be a herculean task to apprehend him than one with a contact address. The world is dynamic as nothing is static in life. You cannot continue to do the same thing in the same way and expect different results. I am not aware of any study that has shown that the mechanism has reduced, in any significant manner, corruption in public office. My view, therefore, is that we need to ambush the corrupt public officials through the liberation of the financial space. Subjective application needs to be promoted and personalized treatment adopted on the implementation.

The truth is that most international institutions, particularly, financial institutions are too lazy to conduct proper or enhanced due diligence, and as such, are pedestrian in their approaches. This is coupled with the fact that they are unwilling to take any risk, even calculated, as expected in any business. For African countries, this is very important to agitate as billions, if not trillions of stolen funds from Africa, are lodged in foreign bank accounts through proxies, or fictitiously end up in other economies, particularly in instances of sudden deaths of the corrupt officials that have deposited the funds. Where such are traceable to a specific public official, even after death, as in the case of Abacha, the affected country may not be able to track the fund and recover it into her economy easily. The message from the discourse is firstly that African countries need to rise us in unison against the discriminatory application of the mechanism of politically exposed persons. This is crucial to attract our best into the governance of the various African countries. Uniform approach, as it applies to officials in the western world, needs to be applied if good governance is to have any meaning in Africa.

This is a way of advancing the progress of the countries. Except we insulate our best from this invasive mechanism, they will continue to desert the country’s governance, thus impairing the progress of the countries. The international community must be sensitized and made to realize that demonizing the African public official, even in instances of innocence, is unprogressive and against the promotion of good governance in these countries. Not all African public officials are corrupt and the innocent ones must be spared. They must stop using the same brush to paint all public officials. The worst aspect of the continuous retention of the discriminatory practice is the extension to family, immediate and extended families that are, at times, innocent. The fact that a parent of a successful young man once occupied a public office must not constitute an impediment to his progress. I have seen instances of such innocent children’s progress impaired through the undue closure of their accounts, or prohibition or prevention from financial transactions. When has it become a crime that a person’s parent was an occupier of a public office? These are injustices that the country and the continent need to address urgently.

Why should my occupation of a public office be a liability to my child? Of importance also is the need to promote traceability by allowing direct dealings by public officials. All that is required is that the public official declares his assets before and after occupying public office. It is needless to state that such false declaration usually attracts stiff penalties, particularly where the monitors and the enforcers are upright. With such methodology, tracing is made easier. This certainly does not discount surveillance of other modes such as proxies and investment in tangible and intangible assets. In concluding, I urge African leaders alongside other stakeholders to take this as a serious assignment towards assuring good governance in their countries and preserving their resources. African leaders must deprecate and condemn the attitude of destroying the image of their countries and citizens abroad. The urge to always disparage must at all times be resisted. Your country and citizens are not the worst on earth. All you need is to be upright as a leader and set a good example.

Through that you can revolutionize your country. No foreign country can help you reorder your country. Developed countries never wish the developing countries well. This is the fact that must constantly be borne in mind.