Understanding the conflict of interest debate, by Uche Igwe

When a few weeks ago, the Senate resumed discussions on a probable amendment to the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act 2004, many of the citizens were outraged. The Act empowers the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal to collect and verify asset declaration forms for public office holders and prosecute those who fail of comply. Asset declaration is a mandatory constitutional provision for all public officers including members of executive, legislative and judicial arms of government. Activists, civil society organisations, opinion leaders, and the media including social media activists came out in a united opposition to and total condemnation of the proposed legislative action. In many ways, the people who revolted against the Senate were right and I stand with them.

However, I think we can still find a way to look at that action beyond the current brouhaha in the country. World over, constant review of laws has become an important part of every growing democracy. Especially in Nigeria where most of our laws were either inherited from the colonial masters or the military era. What was probably wrong was the timing of that action. At a time like this when the CCB Act is being tested through the prosecution of a high profile senator, it was only natural for Nigerians to become very suspicions of what came across as a hurriedly proposed amendment.  Even the response of the legislators themselves did not help matters. How they quickly beat a retreat and suspended the proceeding around the amendment confirmed the suspicion of many that there might be other motives for their action. By bowing to the pressure, the senators, in my view, acted as if they were little children caught with hands right inside a candy pot.


For me, the substantive conversation around what constitutes conflict of interest in our public serve is one that we should have. An online dictionary defines conflict of interest as a situation that has a potential to undermine the impartiality of a person because of the possibility of clash between the person’s self-interest and public interest.  Now, I wonder if today we decide to assemble 20 educated Nigerians in different rooms to write about what they think constitutes conflict of interest whether they will say the same thing.


When we talk about conflict of interest, there is this assumption that someone either deliberately or inadvertently has gone against what is seen as public interest. No one has bothered to interrogate what constitutes this interest we freely refer to. Can we say that there is anything like public interest in Nigeria? I mean a set of interests that an Igbo man in Onitsha will agree with, just as an Ijaw man in Yenagoa, or a Kanuri man in Borno, Fulani man in Katsina, Yoruba man in Ogbomoso and others.


If you say public interest, then I will ask you, which public do you mean? Do you mean the interest of the majority party? Do you mean the interest of the minority party? Do you mean the interest of a voter or a taxpayer? Do you mean the interest of a dominant ethnic group or that of the vocal “twitivists” and social media commentators? Are we talking about the Christians or the Muslims or both? Are we talking about the old or the young? Are we talking about the donors or the so-called friends of Nigeria?


Others will prefer to call it national interest, really? Is there anything like national interest in Nigeria? Who articulated it? Which institution is promoting it? Is it the Department of State Services  or the Nigeria Police or the military? Can someone point at any government institution that a cross-section of Nigerians can accept to articulate an interest or set of interests which will be seen to be fair to all?


My point here is that even at the very core of our institutions, you notice there are diverse interests yet to be reconciled. How then can we keep pretending that there is anything like national interest? If there is no consensus about what constitutes national interest, then how can we competently establish when there is a conflict with it? Let us get it clear. Stealing public money has nothing to do with ethnicity.  But we come from a country where someone who is a “corrupt” public officer to some people is regarded as a “king” to others.


I have looked at the CCB Act 2004 with the eyes of a lay man. I can see why many people believe (rightfully) that asset declaration is a key part of it. Useful as that may be, there are many other haziness we cannot overlook that warrant further review. For instance, when the law says that those who seek to be members of the Bureau must be those with proved “unimpeachable integrity”, what does that mean? Is there a process of conferring someone with such a title or is it just a whiff of the media or the vocal minority? There is a lot of caution here. Why must we continue to promote words derived from external prescriptions and received wisdom divorced from our contextual realities?


The law further states that every public officer must declare his or her assets upon resumption of public office – including those of his wife and children above the age of 18. It also says that such public officer must do the same after four years and at the completion of his or her tenure. Now, if we have to apply this law commonsensically, how many politicians and public officers will survive it? I argue that no public officer has yet complied fully with the Act. Those who have so far declared their assets have done something great and started the compliance process which will wait till the end of their tenures to complete. It is either that we are ready to apply these laws strictly, fairly and equally across board, or we could set a standard that we can meet and take an incremental approach by raising the bar for the future.


The CCB Act 2004 is a useful piece of legislation but the ambiguities in it provide opportunities for arbitrary interpretation, discriminatory enforcement and politicisation. That corruption is a very sensitive political issue in Nigeria is known to many. There is a surge of legal populism that is creeping into our justice system which puts judicial officers under pressure to look beyond the letters of law in their pronouncements.


At the risk of oversimplifying these issues, do conflict of interest and corruption mean the same thing? We must note that while every corruption requires conflict of interest to happen, every conflict of interest does not automatically mean that corruption has taken place. A former Minister of Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji, saw his interests in Geometric Power come in conflict with his interests as a public servant and resigned. Did that automatically make him corrupt? Just like many of our laws, a conversation around it is important to develop a consensus on some of the important issues they raise especially in the anti-corruption arena.


I say this because if we must sustain the efforts against corruption, then we must ensure that a majority of the citizenry is carried along in a way that stands the test of time. That our democracy is dynamic must reflect on issues like that. The timing for the action may be wrong, but that does not reduce the action to a completely useless venture.


Whenever the tides of the current contentious litigations on the CCB Act settle, as they surely will, we can begin to have a debate that could provide the Nigerian people some clarity, consensus and shared understanding. The impact of such an action will outlive the current set of actors on the arena and provide a compass to generations yet unborn.