Buhari: Continuing The “Too Big To Convict” Anticorruption Sham
The first corruption prosecution of President Muhammadu Buhari’s reign has succeeded. The former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration Safety Agency (NIMASA), Raymond Omatseye, has been sentenced to five years in prison for his orchestration of N1.5bn contract scam. Omatseye got what he deserved; every guilty man and woman should be punished according. Well, not quite. The process that led to the conviction precedes this administration. Then this success is actually a major failure of anticorruption when considering the political economy and ethnic dynamics of Nigeria, a massive sham. The prosecution / conviction of Omatseye suggests a pattern of ‘ethnic ease’ adopted by several Governments of Nigeria (GON); the smaller the ethnicity of a corrupt official the easier it is to convict him or her and vice versa. (more…)