We need an apology from our Chartered Accountants!

by Eze Eluchie

Large scale corruption is perpetuated, not usually by physical stealing or movement of cash, but by a deft manipulation and adjustment of funds, usually by crafty (mis)representation of figures or accounting procedures and provisions.

It thus ordinarily follows that one group which might probably have helped to perpetuate the horrendous depletion of Nigeria through corruption and dubious money keeping and financial practices are our Accountants.

From the quasi-criminal certification, as vibrant and thriving concerns that our major Chartered Accountancy firms routinely stamp on the Annual Returns Booklets of firms and financial institutions which later collapsed after hapless citizens expend their life savings in shares on such moribund entities, to their willingness to collude with International oil conglomerates and those entrusted with our oil revenues to short-change the Nigerian treasury; from the creative voodoo accounting common place with our public sector which makes it easy for billions of Naira to vamoose from vaults without trace, to the depletion of our pension funds which makes it clear to most Nigerians who have labored in the public sector that their labor has been in vain as they look forward to very bleak retirement; our Chartered Accountants have been most unfair to the Nigerian contraption!

As part of the process of national reconciliation, it will be wonderful if this professional body, some of whom have gone ahead to occupy exalted positions in our contraption, were to come out and apologize to Nigeria and Nigerians for harm and pain caused us all.

I was thus thrilled to learn that a man who is in a position to render such an apology on behalf of his colleagues, and who is considered as the 'Doyen of the Accountancy Profession in Nigeria' and who has contributed enormously to that sector of our collective ruin is still alive and could hopefully voice the much needed and reconciliatory apology on behalf of his 'professional children'. Pa Akintola Williams, whose Accountancy firm, founded in 1952, and has played a pivotal role in all the issues described above and more recently in the scam perpetuated against hapless Nigerian share/stockholders in Cadbury Plc and the equally hapless British shareholders of Cadbury Schweppes Plc where bogus accounting practices caused financial losses in the millions to innocent investors who relied on the 'professional expertise' of our Chartered Accountants, has certainly lived through the ages and is best suited to proffer the much needed apology.

No doubt, the Doyen has retired from the profession at the time his 'professional children' executed some of these scams, but the firm used to perpetuate the rot, still bears his name and he still receives royalties therefrom. There is also no doubt that, out there, there are a lot of Chartered Accountants who, like the Doyen, discharge their responsibilities conscientiously in compliance with the highest dictates of their noble profession - the malfeasance of the bad eggs and the inability of their professionals disciplinary authorities to cleanse their body of bad eggs, has brought odium to their lot whilst pauperizing our country.

As we wish the 'Doyen of the Accountancy Profession in Nigeria' who recently celebrated his 93rd birth anniversary last August more years in good health ahead, he is humbly urged to on behalf of the thousands of  Chartered Accountants in Nigeria issue an unreserved apology to Nigeria and Nigerians for harm caused. Only such an apology will justify the several accolades that have most likely been lined up to be showered on the Doyen at an appropriate time in the near future.

Picture: Pa Akintola Williams

Partisan CSO's and Activists: A worrisome development for our polity

by Eze Eluchie

At the political realm, it has always been clear that since our pretense at independence from our colonial overlords in October 1960, a very dangerous dichotomy exists in Nigeria, a system that has tended, over the years to elevate mediocrity above excellence, leading to the confinement of our contraption in the very sorry state it presently find itself.

In all those years, Civil Society Organizations and those portrayed as ‘activists’ had created a very necessary semblance of a contraption still interested in cohabiting and coexisting as a unit and  finding common grounds to address issues.

Events in the past couple of weeks are beginning to reveal some elements of the CSO’s, or rather those amongst the CSO’s who seem to have the wherewithal to buy media presence, these purported ‘activists’ are likewise fractured and divisive as their political brethren or perhaps even worse as they are able to camouflage their dubious partisan nature by a mien of objectivity.

A contemporary issue that has highlighted this unfortunate scenario is the arrest of two children of the Jigawa State Governor, Sule Lamido, for laundering/diverting over Ten Billion Naira of Jigawa State funds into private accounts. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has detailed that the sums involved are presently lodged in private accounts traceable to the two urchins and their father, Governor Sule Lamido.

This coming on the heels of the indifference the CSO community and ‘activists’ to the monumental fleecing and public thievery which has continued across the various States of the federation, particularly Lagos State (which is mentioned here because of the enormous wealth inherent therein and the use to which such has been put, {Forinstance see:  http://ezeluchie.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-4-billion-naira-us-24-million-bail.html })

The loud silence that has greeted the fleecing of Jigawa and Lagos State’s (amongst others) from the ordinarily vociferous ‘anti-corruption activists’ is deafening!

Juxtaposing the silence on the Jigawa State imbroglio with the lynch mob which evolved over the purchase of ‘bullet-proof’ vehicles by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria/Aviation Ministry, involving the sum of approximately one-quarter of a billion Naira, less than one-fortieth of the amount involved in the Jigawa scam, one cannot but wonder if the two events took place in the same solar system, talk-less of the same country.

The loquacious ‘activist’ attorneys, disgraced former federal legislators, organizations with penchant to petitions the United Nations Security Council over mundane issues such as when the President coughs, the several partisan CSO’s and others who journey alongside them, who took to the streets threatening and blackmailing every public office imaginable over the ‘bullet-proof’ vehicle issue have eerily gone comatose in the face of much larger looting.

Is reaction to large-scale corruption based on partisan and or ethnocentric considerations? Is the ethnicity or the political affiliation of the suspects in the corruption cases above highlighted instrumental to 'CSO' and 'activists' reactions?

May I remind all that large-scale corruption irrespective of who perpetuates it, has served to debase us, pauperizing our being, prostituting our youth, desecrating our heritage and mortgaging our future, as such we cannot afford the present despicable and reprehensible two-faced approach CSO’s appear to be confronting the issue with.

The only thing worse than corruption is to pretend to be tackling it in a corrupt manner.

From the Federal to the Local Council levels, from the ruling party to all opposition parties, corruption and corrupt tendencies exists and we should address this societal scourge equally wheresoever it is identified.

This coming on the heels of some 'activists' with well known partisan affiliations who use the instrumentality of their 'CSO's' to serve as domestic election 'monitors' and 'observes' and thereafter proceed to announce preconceived notions as results of such 'elections monitoring' or 'observations' spells truly worrisome times for our contraption.  

As CSO’s, we represent, perhaps alongside with the military, the last threads holding our contraption together. If we allow our vision and purpose to be diluted by partisan and or ethnocentric coloration's, we risk irrelevance and the accompanying odium associated with it, in addition to hastening our contraptions descent into a bottomless abyss.

A look at other territories where large scale conflagrations have erupted and that abyss has been attained, such as Syria, Afghanistan and Congo DRC, will inform us that when the “cookie crumbles” everyone is affected. We should get our acts together and do what we have to do to salvage the contraption from its free fall.

A holistic restructuring and renegotiation of our contraption will go a long way to address these schisms.

Picture: Nigeria's beautiful colors.

US 'exceptionalism' revisited.

by Eze Eluchie

In the wake of the United States seeming preparedness to embark on unilateral military actions against the Al-Assad regime in Syria over the chemical weapon attack in some suburbs of Damascus, when U.S. President Barack Obama had cited 'America’s exceptionalism' as constituting sufficient mandate for such military response, there had been an outcry of sorts from diverse quarters questioning such self-ascribed 'exceptionalism'. Some had argued that under the concept of equality of nations, it was dangerous for any one state to ascribe to itself the toga of 'exceptional', as such may give rise to quite negative and dire consequences for entire humanity. 

Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who was then basking in the euphoria of having proffered a temporary solution to the Syrian chemical weapon attack crisis, a solution which offered the Syrian regime a face-saving exit route from imminent disaster and at the same time portrayed the American regime as uncharacteristically ambivalent, sounded the most potent rebuke to the American claim at 'exceptionalism' by cautioning in an op-ed letter to the American people published in the New York Times, that: "it is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation."

Quite truly, there could be negative consequences from any people perceiving themselves as exceptional, as illustrated by Adolf Hitler’s portrayal of Aryans as a super-breed of mankind which said categorization served to found efforts at extermination of the Jews and other races deemed to be against the interest of the purported ‘supreme breed’, during the Holocaust. Care must thus be taken in defining 'exceptionalism' to avoid imparting in any population, a negative  feeling of superiority over others, which could be latched upon by warped minds to unleash hurtful acts against the rest of mankind.

When one however adopts the liberal interpretation of 'exceptional' as connoting 'extraordinary', 'uncommon', 'out of the ordinary', 'rare', 'unprecedented', 'unexpected', 'surprising' and 'peculiar', it becomes pertinent, in assessing Barack Obama's claim to 'exceptionalism' of the United States and its peoples, to compare that countries response, conduct and role in contemporary global situations with that of other countries.

In the course of the past decade, the spate and scale of natural disasters, across the globe has been increasing, with mind numbing consequences on the populations where such catastrophes occur. Mankind seems to be under attack from nature. Disasters such as Tsunamis, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Typhoons, Droughts and a plethora of other natural calamities, have left millions dead in their wake and caused unquantifiable damages and destruction to property and livelihoods.  From Indonesia to Chile, Iran to the United States, Ethiopia to Haiti, Turkey to China and now the Philippines, landscape altering disasters have served to remind man of how susceptible he is to the awesome forces of nature.

In all these disasters, irrespective of the ethnicity, race, religious inclination, official ideological leanings or other peculiarities of the victim-countries, one country has always taken leadership in terms of rendering assistance, providing much needed emergency medical services and supplies and leading in rescue and recovery efforts. At great costs to itself, this same country, though it has its own domestic economic and poverty problems, and while other equally endowed countries tend to ‘look after their own’, goes the extra mile to render a timely helping hand to cushion the devastating effects of natural disasters on the people so affected. That sounds like exceptional to me.

The ongoing massive deployment of United States resources and expertise, inclusive of the Air-craft carrier USS George Washington with its entire fleet of support ships and personnel, hundreds of thousands of relief supplies with accompanying expert volunteers, to assist victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, during a period when countries which are geographically more contiguous to the disaster area either pretend not to be aware of the scale of the disaster, or take into consideration ideological/ongoing disagreements with the victim-State, or secretly look forward to large scale American intervention again seems indicative of exceptionalism.

Whilst well endowed neighboring countries to the Philippines, particularly China on the one hand, which has notoriously refused to deploy its 14,000 ton, state-of-the-art hospital ship (‘Peace Ark’- which is one of the biggest of its kind in the world) in assistance, and unnecessarily and perhaps childishly appearing to base its miserly, and probably insulting, financial assistance to the victims of Typhoon Haiyan on a preexisting territorial dispute with the Philippines, and good old Russia on the other, slyly looks in the other direction away from the Philippines; a country from across the ocean takes leadership. This again is indicative of exceptionalism.

Some may advance arguments that such ‘exeptionalism’ is undertaken with the thought of long term gain – well, tell that to the people whose lives and being has been saved by the timely arrival of much needed assistance. Of course there should be reward for good deeds. If international relations between States were predicated on doing good with the intention of getting rewards in future, the world would be a far better place than what it is today.

As we commiserate with the victims of Typhoon Haiyan and the entire population of the Philippines, one can only hope that more countries will try to be as exceptional as the United States. 

Picture: Devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan