Opinion: Buhari’s Second Term and the Bogey of Corruption In Public Institutions By – FIDELIS NWANGWU
Civil society and civic-minded organisations in the private and public sectors – have a strong moral responsibility of ensuring that our government is kept true to its much avowed statement on fighting corruption, especially when allegations against high public officials have become public knowledge.
Recently, a civil society group, Coalition Against Corruption and Bad Governance (CACOBAG) and its chairperson, Toyin Raheem, in an open letter to the president, alleged that the DG of the NBC, Mr. Modibbo Kawu, with the support of the chief of staff to the President, Mr. Abba Kyari, awarded several radio broadcasting licenses to his private media consultancy known as Word, Sound and Vision (WSV), and to other companies some of which were not even on the original list sent to the president for approval by the NBC. In addition, it is equally claimed that the names of a number of organisations on the original application for private radio licences were subsequently swapped with those of others when the approval came through
The allegations are deeply disturbing, and again clearly casts a huge cloud of doubt capable of further undermining President Buhari’s administration claim to anti-corruption, when a public official can brazenly award his much sought after public resources to his own company, is definitely a clear case of abuse of office.
At the time, the director general of the NBC, Mr. Modibbo Kawu is facing subsisting indictment on fraudulent payments to undeserving firms by the commission, fresh allegations of broadcast license racketeering at the Commission appears to establish a disturbing pattern of deep abuses of official privilege.
A few weeks ago, Premium Times newspaper, published a report of how the DG of NBC, alongside senior government officials, including the chief of staff in the Presidency, Abba Kyari and minister of information, Lai Mohammed, allegedly conspired to to pay N2.5 billion to a private company, Pinnacle Communications, on the Digital Switch Over (DSO) in the nation’s broadcasting platforms, on the recommendation of the DG of NBC.
As Premium Times, in its report of April 24 put it: “The payments in May 2017 to Pinnacle Communications Limited by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) have now been deemed fraudulent by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC). The agency had also brought charges against four individuals, including the director-general of NBC, Modibbo Kawu.”
The facts of the investigation revealed that huge chunks of this massive payment subsequently found its way into the personal account of the managing director of the company Pinnacle Communications and that of a Bureau De Change, for onward conversion into foreign currencies, indicates a fairly familiar Nigerian narrative of the trajectory of kickbacks and illicit returns from government contracts.
That the same public official who is being currently prosecuted along with others in court by the ICPC over the mentioned N2.5 billion fraud case, remains in office as the substantive chief executive officer of the NBC in a situation that appears morally tainted, unethical and a clear breach of public service rules, as well as the code of conduct for public officers. Nwangwu, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja
