There is a shocking paradox, a bewildering moral hypocrisy, at the heart of President Bola Tinubu’s leadership. On the one hand, he is actively prosecuting previous public officers for corrupt practices, claiming to have secured over 7,000 convictions since he came to power three years ago. Yet, on the other hand, he presides over a moral cesspit, where ministers routinely abuse power and act with utter impunity, where some are so powerful they can literally get away with murder, protected by their fealty and sycophancy to the president, where governance is utterly devoid of transparency and accountability, and where conflicts of interest are so blatant, with a total blurring of public and private interests. These malfeasances are the subjects of this intervention, but we must start with the ongoing “fake” agency saga.
When the story broke recently, my first reaction was: where else in the world would such a thing happen? Where else would a “phantom” agency walk its way through the machinery of government and even penetrate diplomatic fortresses and yet have no legal basis for existing? Where else, except in mafia-run countries? Such a thing can only happen in a country that has reached a moral nadir, where the fish rots from the head down, where the ethos of public service and the norms of propriety in public office are totally non-existent.
