THIS NONSENSE MUST STOP

Dr. John Abaelu is now nearly 80 years old but you can literally feel the lump of bitterness in his throat. He was the first Nigerian Managing Director of Chase Merchant Bank. When we talk the images in my head are same as when I finished reading the manuscript of the autobiography of the first Group Managing Director of the NNPC Chief FRA Marinho. All speak volumes about the cost of impunity in Nigeria. Abaelu and Marinho are two dignified decent and well educated professionals who now enter the autumn of their being questioning the nature of the contract between the citizen and the state in Nigeria and the reckless use of power by agents of the state to destroy careers and damage lives. When Abaelu was hounded with innuendo and outright lies and a gullible media and blood thirsty citizens cheered like the mob at the hanging of ‘witches’ in ancient Europe, I wrote, 30 years ago, in an Oped in the Guardian titled: ‘Chasing Shadows at Chase’ asking for evidence on the insinuations that led to Abaelu’s suspension in a saga that caused the Chairman and CEO of the Chase Manhattan Bank visiting from New York more than mild embarrassment. Since Abaelu, I can name dozens of bankers, in rounds of purging and ‘reforms’ have been sacrificed to the gods to appease the egos of power or to make way for the plans of power to abuse the property rights of others. In each round of what I like to say has made the bankers’ alumni association “the graveyard of living dead embittered by the injustice, they have experienced, we create another sense that the industry is where you get paid well until you are called out like in the days of Roman Gladiator to greet the emperor thus: those of us about to die salute you. The resurrection of this matter of the living dead and those who passed on carrying a curse they wish on our land, especially on the ease with which we become a lynch mob, in ignorance, like the crowd at Aluu 4 lynching came to me recently in faraway Canada. At an event of Nigeria – Canada forum marking Nigeria’s 53rd independence, where I spoke, following an impassioned opening address by the Nigerian High Commissioner, Ojo Madueke, a banker who started his career in Nigeria and had a ringside seat watching official power play asked a question. He had seen demolishing of the defunct Progress Bank of Nigeria, where he worked, before emigrating to the Saskatchewan province in Canada, and wondered where Nigerian politicians and the security agents they use, remorselessly to damage others, so they can get their loot, get their conscience from. Even though he was neither a target nor an interested party as such, observing what happened with the inquisition on Progress Bank was so traumatic for him, he left the country. I probably disappointed him when in response I did not go after the conscience of politicians and security agents but after a citizenry that does not educate itself enough to see through the legitimacy burnishing facades, to the real motives of political actors and the media so easily corrupted, or too lazy to educate itself, to report intelligently. We went through several generations of quality bankers who are in the wasteland of anger, mere collateral damage on the path. From the Abaelus, to the Iyayis, Ememes, Nnachetas, Odebodes, Ebongs; a trail of the unfairly harmed suggested that lawyers chasing profit in collaboration with evil could actually make out better organizing the victims for a class action suit against regulators which would not only make them money but also advance the cause of justice and institution building. I also was quick to note that these punitive expeditions of power against professionals, whether it be the purge of the civil service in 1975/76 that caused ruin we are yet to recover from, or the assault on bankers that led the one that left town and moved to Regina in Canada’s Saskatchewan province have added up to a human capital deficit which leaves Nigeria prostrate at the bottom of the Human Capital index, position 114. I am persuaded that many of those who have inflicted such backwardness on us all are not wicked. Most do it because they lack a proper perspective on the true effect of their conduct. It is also important to note that pointing to regulatory risk is not to disregard inappropriate conduct of professionals like bankers which also harm the sector. My view on this matter, expressed for years, is that there are traditions from cease and desist orders to requests to boards to remove executives that are implemented used around the world to achieve results. There is no place for deliberate malfeasance but there is also a recognition that risks are the business of banking and risks can go south. If bankers fear to take risk economic expansion could be significantly hampered. True enough, if their risk appetite is not controlled by some systems or guided by clear strategy they could constitute an impediment also, to economic expansion. American courts have come to recognize that as the case of FDI against Washington Mutual Bank executives in 2011 illustrates well, that prosecuting people for taking risks, the reason they were hired, is problematic. This matter is surely one for the National Conference. Citizens’ rights cannot be willfully abused because they chose to be associated with an industry such as banking. So when a person in power feels his part of the country lost out in "banking reforms" and decides to make his family's stake in a bank as the basis for punitive expedition against all the interests in that institution we cannot pretend it is administrative housekeeping. It must be seen a political genocide in a financial context that threatens institutions of property rights and the potential for investments in the country. The response must be massively political and people must not be allowed to hide under regulatory umbrellas. This is why this subject is a matter for national dialogue. If people from one part of the country are routinely slaughtered in another part of the country, that is serial genocide and needs to be escalated to an international criminal court. If power is used to deny the property rights of others, creating an alumni, as is the case of banking, of people in a graveyard of the living dead, that is the moral equivalence of serial genocide, and should also be escalated to an international court. This is one of the reasons I disagree with AU leaders about the ICC. There emergency meeting to get the ICC to back off. I was one of its passionate advocates and recall with satisfaction how I made a case for it, one cold winter morning of 1997 before editors of that great newspaper; The Christian Sconce Monitor, in Boston in January 1997. They said it would never happen, but months after, the Rome Treaty was reality and that International Criminal court has come to stay. Let it be deterrence for those who abuse the rights of others. Its place is a necessary part of globalization, with global norms and the need for global platforms of accountability. One thing is clear, the biggest challenge before Nigeria is containing the use of power by the state and its agents against the weak individual or groups of citizens. Even the use of policing and property approval powers against top notchers of the PDP, as they disagree with aspects of their political party arrangement, illustrates this point. It is here that the genius of the Noble Laureate Douglass North, in his interpretation of how institution that sustain development, emerges. Those PDP Governors who had abused power in relation to weaker citizens see how it can be used against them and ultimately see the logic of a level playing field which brings the nonsense of abuse to manageable limits thus reducing uncertainty, the object of my 1998 book. Indeed Fr. Paul Irikefe in his just published book: ‘Why Nigeria is not working’, begins to address some of these issues. Ultimately, the trouble with Nigeria is that it has a power elite that pretends to be where the world is but refuses to be modern because it suits very primordial interests. As Olufemi Taiwo argues convincingly in his book of same title, Africa must be modern. The challenge of regulators is a challenge of modernity, of a society of the rule of law and not of exception for those near power and impunity against those not loved by power. In that 1998 Book: ‘Managing Uncertainty’ I tried to show its impact on firm strategy and competition and in the 2006 book Why Nations are Poor, I made effort to extend its effects at the macro level. We cannot continue like this. Progress is hampered by impunity disguised as reform and lives badly managed by such cheered on by an ignorant public as supported witch doctors who left twins to die cruel deaths less than a century ago in these climes. So if we must be as William Wilberforce said of the slave trade and Mary Slessor said of the killing of twins, I say of these punitive expeditions to damage professionals so personal interests in the sector can be served: This nonsense must stop. Let us go to the national conference and speak truth to each other on this matter. Pat Utomi, Political Economist and Professor of Entrepreneurship is founder of the Centre for Values in Leadership.