The Right to Be Forgotten: A Gift to Nigerian Politicians

By Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

While attention is centered on the issue of committees and panels on what to do with the family of corruption, I stop to offer some useful pieces of advice to Nigerian politicians on how this corruption issue should be resolved. I don’t want to mention names; I would have loved to see fathers of the land like Atiku and Tinibu and some selected former governors with impeccable integrity record like kwankwaso, Fashola and Nyako to be on the jury committee to help in hearing this case. 

Already Peace Committee and War Committee have been formed, panels which are occupied by community and religious leaders established to discuss how to go about this saga, who should be probed and from which date the probe should commence. Should it start from the beginning of the 18^th century, that’s from the ancestors of Queen of England during their colonization of Nigeria, or should it start from around 1960s onward when Nigeria got her independence?

There’s so much contradiction and contention but there is a point of consensus between these committees upon which an agreement is reached. That corruption is deep. That it constitutes a huge stumbling block to development. That corruption is not bastard nor created itself. It has mother and father and even relatives. Everyone believes this.

The impasse of the  argument is mainly on how to treat the fathers and mothers of corruption. Some members of the other table on War Committee say that it is high time to start doing something about corruption but to unearth files from 1975 will be mismanagement of precious, scanty time and can detract  attention from the work at hand. Some of the patrons of corruption in 1970s have already made their footprint difficulty traceable.  

I once travelled with my uncle to Kaduna to attend a weeding of a family member some seven years ago. We were passing through Ahamdu Bello Way when I saw a big mansion with posh cars scattered around. That was my first encounter with flagrant and lavish display of wealth. I asked my uncle if the place was an automobile sales point. No, that is not - it was an event taking place in Umaru Dikkos’ house and now lapse of time from 70s to date can now legitimize Umaru’s loot.

What has happened recently diminishes the intensity of what happened ten years ago, let alone twenty or thirty years. Gods are emerging every day in the political scene. Who is Dikko now in the province of corruption and theft in the face of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala or Diezani or Maina Waziri?  Many politicians are grateful that they are lucky to be part of the recent governments and not in a regime long time ago, say Shagari era for instance. You may know the reason yourself. Nigeria has got to catch up with the rest of the world but there is the need to look at immediate past and do something.

The other Peace Committee members  counter-argue that the issue of charging suspected individuals who served in the last regime should be forgone even when it is clear that corruption and stealing have indeed been perpetrated like paying seven hundred million dollars as consultancy fee to a foreign firm in preparation to build a bridge and still there has been no bridge, the hundreds billion dollars looted from security budgets, the 20 billion dollar allegation unremitted to the Federation Account, the brazen theft of crude oil, the NIMASA and NNPC mess and whatnots.

The most effective way of eliminating drug abuse is to legalize it. What the Peace Committee faction is agitating, in loud and clear terms, is the re-echo of the axiom of the cardinal principle which says that stealing is not corruption and vaguely seeking the ‘The Right to be Forgotten’ which advocates that when events have become past they are irrelevant and should be forgotten.  

Rehabilitation of Offenders Act says that after a certain period of time which many criminals and convicts have spent, the information regarding them should be forgotten. ‘The Right to be Forgotten’ will allow a person to “determine the development of their life in an autonomous way, without being perpetually or periodically stigmatized  as a consequence of a specific action performed in the past.” They can demand data controllers to remove certain articles that feature their names on the internet in order to assume a silent role in the society.

In line with the above dimension, Abacha should be forgotten for dying at a right time when Nigerians were in dire need of democracy. Obasanjo should be thanked profusely for accepting to be Nigeria’s president for eight years and Nigerians owe him apology for curtailing his intention to amend the constitution and extend his term to third tenure in office.  IBB should go to Heaven for resigning as a military Head of State after cancelling June 12 election. Abdussalami should also go to Heaven for keeping his words in 1999 to hand over power peacefully to democratically elected president leading us to forgive his Hilliburton affair. 

‘The Right to be Forgotten’ covers all this.

Now I seem to take side in this argument.  The difference between one group from another is that while one has the desire for the continuation of collecting loan and looting the loan and emptying the state treasury,  the other has the desire to see where the monies have gone and what are the projects being executed.

I simply can’t understand the kind of patriotism some people have for this country when they say the idea of war on corruption and stealing should not be broached. One man, who has benefited from the same mandate, should be forgiven for handing over power peacefully as though he has done a favour to Nigeria. You will understand the kind of pain many Nigerians are sustaining in their struggle for good governance from the Nigeria’s psychology and its inability to understand the content of civic education being released daily, modules after modules, to liberate Nigerian minds and hearts from the mental poverty programmed by the vulturistic grip of the opportunistic leadership. People whom you think are supposedly perceptive would certainly make your blood pressure rise when you discover that they maintain primitive mind and retrogressive thinking, believing that we should be grateful to some of ‘our good leaders’  even if they ‘stole all the money in the world’ and defending  them on ethnic or religious line. Thieves in our faith and community that can’t even donate or rehabilitate a classroom, hospital block, or build public water system to ease the guilt of their loot and make it look like  productive corruption. Even doing this is not justification of stealing public funds.

As citizens, we shall always subject the power structure to constant and sustained pressure and scrutiny, demanding good governance and accountability. Some changes will not happen so soon but keeping silence will mean accepting the existing situation, it means we are okay because what we don’t grumble about does not count. Apartheid would not be defeated if the section of South African oppressed and marginalized communities folded their arms and kept silent in hopelessness.  

I am always fascinated with this fact that guard who sleeps over in a college, living there for long, day in day out, despite being so close to the classrooms could not be given certificate because sitting at the doorstep does not carry him to the classroom.  We have got to do something to make things happen. Changes start from the little grumbling and conversation we do in our places.

Everything starts at a certain time and this is the time, though belated, that the war against corruption should start. Now the gap between the Third world to the First is one heaven interval. If much ado is given in fighting corruption then the gap between development and underdevelopment will keep increasing too many heavens. When do we expect to progress to be able to have basic things as good road, education, healthcare etc, from which funds the politicians loot?

This fight is beyond a single individual, it is Nigeria’s business because it is our collective wealth that has been looted. We shall rally our support around anybody who sets the stage.  We have been in perpetual defeatism and absolute hopelessness by the inability of the past leaders to fight corruption. This is not to say that certain individuals shall be conferred more privileges on them than others and should be spared on account of political affiliation. We will love to see all corrupt persons treated on equal terms. Lagos pig is no more than Bayelsa and Rivers goat and Katisna donkey. All animals are equal.

On technical ground, courts have washed a number of people with scented soap of their petrified odor. Now Femi-Fani Kayode is as pure and fresh as untrampled dew, Timpere Sylvia was acquitted by the nation’s anti-corruption agency some months ago this year, and one Diepreye Alamieyeseigha enjoyed presidential pardon even when he was clearly convicted by British court in the last regime. Many are awaiting quittance. The list goes on and on, and these people wish to enjoy “ The Right to be Forgotten” to lead a private life in silence. Atiku in particular, has kept so low his profile that we don’t hear him these days. We say amin to this, let them all go to oblivion and their phone will no longer ring.  

“The Right to be Forgotten” does more harm than good for when we talk of rehabilitation there is the sense of damage in the first place about persons with unsavory past. For your information, even if your name is deleted from the digital world, it won’t be a total erasure of memory or rewriting of history, there will always be a digital and mental cache resurrecting horrendous conjecture of horrible images in our mind upon hearing your name as a thief.  Like when I hear A, B, C or X, Y, Z, nouns and adjectives, abundant meanings and interpretations always fill my mind.

(@abubakarsulai13)