It was sadly déjà vu at the House of Representatives committee hearing on the capital market. This uncanny similarity with other probes (FCT land allocation, power sector, privatisation, fuel subsidy) was on many fronts. There was the holier-than-thou posturing of legislators, betrayal by disgruntled management staff and the pot-calling-kettle-black scenarios.
Following the request of the chairman of the probe committee, Herman Hembe, who had cast aspersions on her competence, the Director-General of the Security and Exchange Commission, Ms. Arunma Oteh, came to the hearing with her credentials.
Why does it seem that intelligence and high academic attainments are not enough in the mix of qualities needed for stellar performance in Nigeria? What is it in our environment that makes it impossible for intelligent and patriotic technocrats to succeed? Is integrity the missing element or is the system programmed against integrity?
Before Oteh, other brilliant patriots had served their fatherland. But not all of them were able to escape the insidious tar of the Nigerian system. Many people of integrity have fallen by the way side in our country’s treacherous system. It is a system where every in-coming chief executive is lured into partaking of the forbidden fruit of corruption by the bureaucrats who are supposed to advise him. They do this in self interest as the compromised boss will be hard put to block their own heist thereafter. We see this happening with the SEC DG, who was indulged by her sitting executives, to go against extant government regulations on accommodation and the perks of office.
The usual practice is to welcome the new chief executive with outlandish courtesies and tell him he is the new lord of the manor. Then he is shown the unofficial windows open to him to subvert checks and balances.
A battery of local and foreign tours are lined up for the chief executive as welcome pack. Un-utilised funds are brought to him to be shared at the end of the year. If he nurses any compunction, he is simply informed that “that is how it is done here.” Only very few chief executives can look this gratuitous offering in the face and decline. Those ones are labelled ‘difficult’ and ‘stubborn’.
In Oteh’s case, she was indulged to stay indefinitely in the nation’s most expensive hotel and notified of her full compliment of four cars. Even royalty will be jealous. How many official cars does the British Prime Minister have in his pool for a Nigerian public servant to have all of four?
But personalising these revelations will be missing the point. Oteh’s case is typical. The rot, like a circular from the Head of Service, is service-wide. One needed to see the reactions of many in government offices who were following the hearing on live television. The general feeling was “una neva see somtin.”
An angel sent from heaven to Nigeria’s public service on a rescue mission will not be welcomed back to heaven after his duty tour. This is why construction companies who have worked in Nigeria are not welcome in other African countries and Ghana is being very careful in choosing which companies to admit into her nascent oil industry. Surely, Nigeria’s corruption is like the sun that sheds its light on all satellite bodies.
One cannot therefore write off a nation’s tribe of geniuses based on that nation’s self-inflicted attenuations. When Singapore needed to develop under Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, he assembled his nation’s brightest minds with he himself being a first class Ivy League alumnus. Even when some of his cabinet members did not deliver, it was on the leadership front because brilliance and charisma are not synonymous. The fact that Singapore could move from Third World to First and Nigeria could not is enough proof that the fault does not lie in our human capital but in the environment of endemic corruption.
The on-going hearing with Ms Oteh at the centre further clarifies the on-going debate among life coaches about the relative contribution of the three core factors of success in leadership. It had been universally proven that knowledge, character and environment contribute 10 percent, 40 percent and 50 percent, respectively to leadership excellence.
Therefore, Nigeria must reform the environment before people of exceptional intelligence and skill can be successful in the public service in particular and society in general. When the three factors are further probed, it will be discovered that environment also influences character. The 40 percent allocated to character is further eroded by environment. This explains the paradox of our policemen who go on foreign missions and excel only to come back to the country and not be worth a kobo in reputation.
The paradox inherent in reforming the public service lies in the fact that by its hierarchical structure, any reform is bound to be executed by its selfsame targets. Sabotage is therefore guaranteed. The ‘coup’ on tenured service for directors could succeed because it was kept under wraps until presidential approval was secured. Even at that, it was viciously fought.
Newly-appointed chief executives of MDAs should undergo a mandatory orientation period of at least three weeks duration before resumption of duties. This will enable them get a better handle on the intricacies of the public service, their powers, entitlements and limitations.
On its part, the leadership of the National Assembly should self-censor and peer-review its membership by implementing a code of best practice in oversight functions which have become euphemism for soliciting and ransom-taking from MDAs.
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