Fakery and light in Nigeria

First, an important note: The manifestoes of Nigeria’s political parties, which have been attached to them on the website of INEC throughout the Fourth Republic, have disappeared.  For anyone looking for the manifesto of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), here is a saved copy.  The question, especially for Nigerian journalists, is: what is INEC cooking?

October 3:  I was startled when I saw the Premium Times headline, “INVESTIGATION: The fake professor leading a Nigerian university.”

It is a well-researched story about a widely known Nigerian whose professional and academic credentials were questioned by the newspaper.

His name: Anthony Kila, the pro-chancellor of Michael and Cecilia Ibru University.  Although he has profiled himself as a well-educated and widely travelled jurist, professor, scholar, accomplished professional, author, public commentator of repute, and publicly presented himself as a “Jean Monnet Professor of Strategy and Development,” the newspaper said it “found that he was never awarded the academic rank.”

Mr Kila has rejected the report, affirming that he will defend his honour in court.  MCIU has since suspended him. 

The Kila story broke two days after Nigeria’s National Day, October 1, President Bola Tinubu arriving in time from his contradictorily named “working vacation” to offer a bland speech. 

But did you notice that it was not his speech the world was focused on?  It was on the courts, indeed on fakery, as in fake certificates or professors or claims.     

Around the world, the mass media was riveted on the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, whose activities have come under scrutiny over allegations of irregularities involving Adeniyi Adeyemi.

Yes, that one.  “Fake it till you make it,” the New York Times tagged it, reporting the hearing at the Federal High Court in Abuja, “Man Charged With Running Phony Government Agency.”

Reuters chose a different adjective: fictitious.  In South Africa, The Times described it as “a case that has exposed gaps in the checks governing the country’s public institutions.” 

GMA News published it in The Philippines.  Online, Alltimepost published it in Boston.  Out West in Los Angeles, so did Breibart News. 

The stories that circulated around the globe on Nigeria’s National Day had been gathering steam for months.  Arab News in Saudi Arabia.  Xinhua in China.  Outlook in India.  ABC News in Australia. 

Consider this: Nashville, Tennessee, is nearly 900 miles from New York City, and Kingsport and Johnson City are nearly 300 miles from Nashville.  “Fake It Till You Make It” appeared in both Kingsport and in Johnson City. 

Of course, at home, the media was awash with angles of the story.  The Punch.  Vanguard.  Premium Times. 

Curiously, even the ICPC, the local agency that Mr Tinubu tasked with investigating the PFIPC, celebrated itself, citing a Center for Fiscal Transparency & Public Integrity report. 

I am a fan of CeFTPI, but ICPC, as I have reported before, is a questionable anti-corruption organisation.   Otherwise, in what world is an organisation “transparent” which announces to the media that it has discovered that government officials paid in full for a certain hospital project FIVE times, with the hospital never being built, without identifying the hospital or the suspects?  So, what other cases has the ICPC yet to explain or disclose to the public? Two?  Two hundred? 

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How fake, then, is the ICPC?  Chairman Musa Aliyu, who made that allegation over one year ago, has since then resisted Leadership’s FOI requests to provide details. 

But far and wide, the PFIPC reporting spread.  Financial Times.  The Guardian.  It continued throughout a summer in which Mr Tinubu himself returned to the headlines amid ongoing legal proceedings concerning requests for the disclosure of his official records in the United States.

The BBC noted that the Nigerian leader wanted to know how the fake agency was set up in his own office.   So did the Washington Examiner and The Associated Press, which also explored a second fictitious agency in Mr. Tinubu’s office. 

And then, hours after Mr Tinubu’s National Day address, he told a US court that Nigerians should be ignored: their interest in his background does not justify the release of his FBI records. 

Tinubu’s lawyers made the astonishing argument in an amended response filed before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the continuing Freedom of Information Act case of Aaron Greenspan.

This is effectively an employee asking his employer to renew his contract while opposing the disclosure of information sought by the employer. I would be laughing, too, were this a comedy.  Tinubu is demanding to learn how an alleged bogus agency was set up and thriving, occupying offices, opening bank accounts and meeting with diplomats but does not want Nigerians who he is and how he arrived at the same office. 

He is ordering investigations into fraud in that office but does not want those who voted for him to question where he has been.  Tinubu wants to know all about that small agency at his feet but does not want Nigerians who may yet vote for him to know who he is. 

This would be untenable at any other time, but in an election year, it is an open insult of Nigerian voters.  Tinubu must earn renewed public trust, not merely collect it.  His resistance to disclosure underlines age-old questions about personal accountability just as the alleged fake agency raises questions about the competence of the government he leads.

The Nigerian leader is entitled to make whatever lawful privacy arguments American courts permit. Nigerians are equally entitled to decide that a president seeking another four years must offer more than arguments for keeping information from them.

The electorate’s question about Tinubu in America remains legitimate: what do the remaining records establish, why is he so desperate to conceal them?

This test of credibility is paralleled by the PFIPC.  How did an agency the presidency says it never created pass through the machinery of government?  Who checked its authority and who approved its requests?

These questions have entered international reporting. While foreign headlines do not determine Nigerian votes, they expose how far the damage to confidence has spread.  A Nigerian leader’s continued opposition to the disclosure of his tracks presents terrible optics that are even worse for Nigerian democracy and citizenship.

A second term must be earned through candour, competence and accountability.  Sadly, Tinubu’s additional troubles come at a time that governance of Nigeria is in shambles, the government flailing on insecurity, corruption, and the economy. Every budget is now extended into the following year, with no clarity as to who is doing what, when and with what resources, or what constitutes accounting, reporting or auditing.

Witness the NOIPolls published in September: Public approval of the government dropped five percentage points from a year-high peak of 54% in July to 49% in August.  And that was before Mr. Tinubu returned to the please-hide-me US headlines. On October 1, only an abysmal 28% described Nigeria as moving in the right direction.

One year after I explored the subject of public trust, we have come full circle ahead of the 2027 elections.  It is time for the light in Nigeria, and we do not need to prove a new criminal offence to withhold a new electoral mandate.