Fake Agency Ding-Dong: The Dog-Goat Praxis (III)

Grenfell says complexity must not become an alibi. The Grenfell Tower tragedy illustrated how responsibility can become dispersed across a bewildering network of contractors, regulators, suppliers, managers and public authorities. When too many institutions are involved, everybody can point somewhere else. Complexity becomes an alibi. Nigeria's federal architecture faces the same danger.  IPPIS may point to personnel records. Personnel offices may point to ministries. Ministries may point to agencies. Agencies may point to the Budget Office. Financial platforms may point to authorising institutions. The Treasury may point to approvals. The OSGF may point to another department. And somewhere between all those pointing fingers, public money disappears. The forensic audit must therefore resist the bureaucratic sentence that has buried many scandals: “That is not our responsibility.” Complexity cannot become immunity. A complicated system still contains identifiable responsibilities. The challenge is to map them.

And now we arrive at the largest goat in the Nigerian compound; i.e., the taxpayer as the final goat. When a ghost worker receives a salary, the taxpayer pays. When a fictitious or unauthorised entity accesses public resources, the taxpayer pays. When weak controls permit payroll fraud, the taxpayer pays. When government platforms fail to reconcile data, the taxpayer pays. When billions are spent correcting failures that should have been prevented, the taxpayer pays. And when powerful actors escape while expendable officials bear the consequences, the taxpayer suffers a second injury. The first injury is financial. The second is institutional. Trust decays. Citizens begin to believe that public accountability is theatre. Investigations become rituals. Suspensions become performances. And the announcement that “heads have rolled” becomes less a symbol of justice than an indication that the system has found somebody expendable. Thus, the taxpayer becomes the final goat. The dogs eat. The goats are suspended. And the citizens pay for the entire zoo.

This is why Tinubu's forensic audit must not end as another impressive government announcement followed by an impressive government report and, finally, institutional amnesia. Nigeria has produced reports. Nigeria has established panels. Nigeria has inaugurated committees. Nigeria has uncovered ghost workers. Nigeria has discovered fictitious projects. Nigeria has announced recoveries. Nigeria has suspended officials. Nigeria has promised reforms. The critical question is always: What happens after discovery? The forensic audit must produce more than a catalogue of wrongdoing. It must produce structural correction. A definitive register of federal entities. Clear legal identities. Traceable authorisation. Continuous reconciliation among government systems. Effective segregation of duties. Reliable identity verification. Auditable digital trails. Independent oversight. And consequences proportionate to actual responsibility. Most importantly, the final findings must not disappear into the same bureaucratic fog the audit was created to disperse.

And so the controversy continues to ring like a bell. Ding-dong. ICPC discovers an alleged fake agency. Ding-dong. Officials dispute the description. Ding-dong. The promoter alleges sabotage. Ding-dong. Permanent secretaries are suspended. Ding-dong. The Presidency says the investigation is not complete. Ding-dong. A comprehensive forensic audit is ordered. But the bell will not stop ringing until the most important questions are answered. Who actually constitutes government? How does government know its own? Who is independent enough to audit the government? Who authorised access? Who controlled the systems? Who benefited? Who had the power to prevent the failure? And, when the findings finally arrive: Will the dog answer for what the dog ate? Or will Nigeria once again gather the goats, inspect their teeth and announce that justice has been done?

The dog-goat praxis underpinned by the Igbo proverb has now travelled from the village square into the digital bureaucracy of the Nigerian state: Nkịta richaa nsị, eze eree ewu. When the dog eats excrement, the goat's teeth decay. When the dog eats, audit the compound. But President Tinubu's forensic audit introduces another necessary question. Perhaps the problem is not only the dog. Perhaps the compound itself requires investigation. Who built the fence? Who controls the gate? Who keeps the register? Who has the keys? Who can enter without being recorded? Who can acquire an official collar? Who can access the feeding trough? Who knows the holes in the fence? And who has been quietly benefiting from the confusion? That is the deeper purpose of a forensic audit. Not merely to discover the dog. Not merely to punish the goat. But to understand the compound. The fake-agency controversy may ultimately prove to be more than a scandal about one disputed office. It may expose a deeper crisis of institutional identity. Fela's satire warned of an Unknown Government. The controversy asks whether an unknown government can exist inside the known government. The proverb warns that the medicine man should not cure himself. And the dog-goat praxis warns against transferred consequences. Together, they produce the central test of the Nigerian state: Can government know itself honestly enough to diagnose its own failures, independently enough to expose them, and courageously enough to ensure that consequences finally travel back to those responsible? If the answer is yes, the forensic audit may become a turning point. If the answer is no, Nigeria will discover another fake entity. Another investigation will begin. Another headline will proclaim that heads have rolled. Another set of goats will be assembled. And somewhere inside the government compound, another dog will be eating. And heads will keep rolling. 

Whose head? The head of the dog that ate? Or the head of the goat whose teeth merely began to ache? That is the question. And until Nigeria learns to make accountability travel back to responsibility, rather than downward to vulnerability, the ancient Igbo proverb will continue to describe the modern Nigerian state: Nkịta richaa nsị, eze eree ewu. The dog eats. The goat pays. And the wrong head rolls. Prince Adeyemi and Prince George, alongside the suspended directors in the OSGF, now inhabit the theatre of “heads rolling.” Their ordeals underscore the global grammar of scapegoating: find a visible head, suspend it, and declare accountability served while the architecture that enabled the failure remains intact. The forensic audit must therefore establish not merely whose head can roll, but whose head should roll. For, as the Igbo proverb reminds us, Nkịta richaa nsị, eze eree ewu: when the dog eats excrement, the goat's teeth decay and the wrong head rolls.

The dog-goat proverb now reveals its final victim: the taxpayer as the final goat. The goat is not only the suspended permanent secretary. It is not only the civil servant wrongly accused. It is not only the official sacrificed to save a superior. The ultimate goat is the Nigerian taxpayer. When a ghost worker receives a salary, the taxpayer pays. When a fictitious entity secures a budget line, the taxpayer pays. When money moves through loopholes in government platforms, the taxpayer pays. When a fraudulent office occupies public facilities, the taxpayer pays. When government spends billions conducting forensic audits that effective controls should have made unnecessary, the taxpayer pays. And when the powerful escape while the expendable are punished, the taxpayer pays twice: first in money, and then in the loss of trust. That is the widest meaning of: Nkịta richaa nsị, eze eree ewu. The dog eats. The goat pays. And sometimes the goat is an entire country. 

The latest presidential directive does not end the fake-agency controversy. It expands it. The original question was: Was there a fake agency? Then came the counter-question: Was it really a project office? Now comes the systemic question: How many institutional loopholes made the controversy possible in the first place? And that is where all the historical dots finally connect. Sophocles warns against punishing the messenger. The biblical scapegoat warns against transferred guilt. Dreyfus warns against institutional certainty without truth. Stalin warns against the convenience of simple villains. Shakespeare warns about the distance between authority and consequence. Abu Ghraib warns us to inspect the barrel as well as the apple. Challenger reminds us that responsibility must rise with the power to prevent. Bhopal teaches that immediate failure and structural failure are not the same thing. Wells Fargo follows institutional pressure behind individual action. Grenfell warns that complexity must not dissolve accountability. And Nigeria's forensic audit adds the final contemporary lesson: A state must periodically audit not only who is inside its systems, but how its systems decide who belongs inside them.

In the final analysis, the Igbo proverb remains the analytical spine; yet, Tinubu's forensic audit has now supplied the missing institutional question. Perhaps, the problem is not only the dog. Perhaps the compound has too many holes. Perhaps, the gate has no register. Perhaps, nobody knows how many animals live inside. Perhaps, one animal has learned how to wear another's collar. Perhaps, the feeding system has been connected to a ghost. And perhaps, the goat has been paying for all of them. That is what the forensic audit must establish. The investigation must still identify individuals who committed crimes. The guilty must not hide behind the phrase “systemic failure.” But systemic failure must not be used to hide the guilty either. The two inquiries must proceed together. Who did it? And: How was it possible? 

Until Nigeria answers both questions, heads may continue to roll while the holes remain in the compound. And then, after the next scandal, another dog will eat. Another goat will pay. Another headline will announce: “Heads Roll.” But ConnectingDots must ask the question that survives the headline: Did justice roll with the heads or did the dogs simply find another hole in the fence?