BRITAIN AND NIGERIA ARE ''FANTASTICALLY CORRUPT''

British Prime Minister David Cameron

At all times, the British always put their agenda as an empire over the interests of the colonies whose peoples they treated as subhuman. The British laid the faulty foundation for Nigeria’s political wobbly evolution and Nigeria’s present ignominious profile of corruption, national security fragility and rickety social cohesion or lack it. One hundred and two years ago, for selfish considerations, the British decided to couple together separately administered protectorates of Southern and Northern Nigeria into one entity and called it Nigeria without sparing a thought as to the sustainability and survival of the Frankenstein that it created.

India and Pakistan were a little luckier.

But to the disappointment of the British, it is now 56 years after the British left what it felt was a time bomb. There is still Nigeria, a country that defies all logic: one of the most religious countries in the world, yet one of the most corrupt; a country in the league of those with the happiest citizens and peoples; one with the highest concentration of educated African elites, including African Diasporas anywhere in the world; yet Nigeria is one of the most chaotic countries to live in.    

Post-independence Nigeria has remained under a neo-colonial economic framework of which Britain is an active player.  Britain has continuously done business with the Nigerian political elite of all stripes, turning a blind eye to their sleaze and corruption. History would have reminded Cameron that the first major election ever organized by the British in Nigeria was rigged by the British in favor those who did not irritate them in the independence struggle. By that singular act, election and census rigging became an art of political wisdom among Nigeria’s ruling elite. How about the British looting of sacred Nigerian traditional artifacts and cultural treasures, a practice that has made looting of national treasury a strategy of state craft among Nigerian political elite and ruling class.

I am not readily inclined to the temptation of blaming everything wrong with Nigeria and Africa on the colonial past, but there are instances when we are required to embark on a brief and abridged tour of history in order to remind ourselves of some basic facts. David Cameron’s recent remark is one of such instances. Elsewhere, I have captured the British legacy in a post independence Nigeria. It is not one that Cameron and his diminished empire could hypocritically loathe without a sense of guilt and complicity.

Here is what I wrote then:

“Forging national unity has been a perennial challenge to Nigeria’s evolution as a country. Since independence from Britain 56 years ago the country continues to weather severe existential storms that strike at its very core. These storms make national cohesion and political stability largely elusive. They include: a bloody civil war in the 1960s; decades of corrupt military dictatorships; perennial inter-ethnic distrust; occasional religious strife and political insurrection; minority and resource rights agitation, and a trademark corrupt political and ruling class”.

The least Britain could do is to recognize its historic and ongoing complicity in Nigeria’s dismal profile and take steps to purge itself. President Buhari has rightly, in my opinion, said he would not demand an apology from Cameron.  After all, the Prime Minister was right in his observation.

However, the President is correct to insist on the repatriation of Nigerian assets starched away in Britain, a country that is not only an important and historic architect of Nigeria’s corruption but also the single greatest beneficiary of that corruption on historic and ongoing scale. Aside from repatriation of Nigerian assets, Cameron is in a position to ensure that Britain partners with Nigeria in any way possible to have one less “fantastically corrupt” country from the face of the planet. If Britain enters into such partnership, its vast allies would follow. That would be a win-win for Nigeria coming from the anti-corruption summit in which Cameron accidentally showcased and insensitively scapegoated Nigeria in what may be one of the increasingly habitual public relations disaster and undiplomatic gaffes of his long running residence in Downing Street.


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