Last week, the president told journalists in Accra, Ghana, that he had declared his assets four times since 1975 and challenged journalists to investigate and dig up the records of his various declarations using the requisite law. “I have declared my assets and all that I have four times, and you (the media) have the right to go and demand for my declaration. Instead, I am being harassed,” the President Buhari was quoted as saying.
I hope President Buhari was not expecting Nigerians to clap in adulation for his quadruple asset declarations. The president was only doing what the law required of him as a public officer. If he occupies public office a 1,000 times, he has to declare his assets 1,000 times.
As a journalist, am more interested in the president invoking the notion of investigative journalism. For the sake of profession and country, this is one challenge the media should take seriously. For example, it would be interesting to see what President Buhari declared at various stages of his public service vis-à-vis his latest declaration and his job and income during the same period.
Of course, the issue is not as simple as President Buhari presented it. That is why this is as much about him as it is about institutions. We know full well that if we invoke all the laws of the country, including the Constitution and the Freedom of Information Act (FoI), the CCB will not act unless it understands the body language of the president.
I don’t think anybody is seeking to “lynch” President Buhari over his asset, but what is worth doing is worth doing well. If am not mistaken, when former President Umaru Yar’Adua declared his asset publicly on June 28, 2007, a month after he was sworn in, he presented his liabilities, the value of all his assets (including household furniture) and those of his wife as well as source of money.
We must appreciate the apprehension of Nigerians. Ours is a nation desirous of real heroes and heroines, one in which existential confidence is perhaps at an all-time low, in part because of the banditry of past rulers. During the reign of General Ibrahim Babangida, the joke was that if the dictator said “good morning” to you, you had to step out to confirm it was really morning. And former President Goodluck Jonathan was forthright enough to tell us that he did not “give a damn” about asset declaration, confirming what many – with apologies to Garba Shehu – expected of him as president of a country like Nigeria: the wholesale looting of the treasury!
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