At a public lecture recently in Lagos, the talk on the sideline drifted mysteriously from the topic of the day – The Nigeria of My Dream – to the fight against corruption and all its adjunct tendencies. The debate started on a low note with some participants hailing the Buhari administration while yet another group countered that what is going on is not a fight against corruption but a war of attrition by one political party against its major challenger. Soon, the talks assumed a feisty, fiery fury drowning what was once the louder voice of the lecturer.

Heads began to turn, eyes riveted in the direction of the growing noise in the hall. The lecturer stopped as he had lost the audience that was once under his spell. The debaters now have the floor, their voices rising and rising; husky, raucous twaddle inside one of the halls at Oriental Hotel, one of the preferred event centres these days in Lagos. Yet, a smaller group in the debate waxed sarcastic, insisting that what President Muhammadu Buhari is doing is nothing but selective fight against corruption.

And herein is the crux of the matter. No sane Nigerian would kick against any effort by any government to tame corruption. The C-word is the author of the nation’s many woes. It is okay that the President is raging at corruption and those Nigerians and institutions that got their hands mired in the putrid pot of graft but the manner he is going about it leaves a trail of smog on it. Buhari, some Nigerians argue, is not sincere in the fight against corruption.

One of the reasons adduced by this category of Nigerians is the case of Halliburton bribe-for-contract scam involving high profile Nigerians. Halliburton is one issue in the anti-corruption war that would never go away until it is resolved. It is a well-documented global scam that put further smear on the nation’s already dour image. Halliburton is an American company with an affiliate firm at that time called Kellogg Brown & Root LLC (KBR).

In February 2012 after many years of investigation, a former chief executive officer of KBR Incorporated, Albert “Jack” Stanley, was sentenced to 30 months in prison by a US court for his role in the decade-long Halliburton bribery heist in Nigeria.

Top Nigerian government officials (some now dead but many others still alive) were, under the scheme, allegedly offered bribes totalling $180 million by Halliburton to enable it win $6 billion Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) contracts.

“The misconduct here was serious, ongoing and deeply hurtful,” U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison said in February 2012 before handing down Stanley’s sentence, which also included three years of probation.

Earlier, Ellison gave a former KBR consultant, Jeffrey Tesler, a 21-month prison sentence for acting as a middle-man to channel bribes to Nigerian officials on behalf of KBR and three other members of a Portugal-based consortium called TSKJ.

Tesler, then 63 years old, a consultant and lawyer, pleaded guilty almost a year ago to one count of conspiracy to violate and one count of violating the US bribery law known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). He faced up to five years in prison on each count and had already agreed to forfeit almost $150 million as part of his plea agreement. The same Judge Ellison sentenced another Briton, Wojciech Chodan, to probation for taking part in the bribery scheme when he worked at a unit of KBR. He too had cooperated with the investigation and got a light sentence in return..

The US government officials said Stanley misled federal investigators for four years before he fully revealed the details of the case. And details of that epic corruption case are well known to Nigerian government officials including the Presidency, the anti-crime agencies and those who should know.

Bribe-for-contract all over the world is a huge financial crime; paying $180 million bribe to get a contract of $6 billion is no joke. It does not speak well of both the giver and the receiver. When the bubble burst, the US government, ever responsible and responsive, dealt with the matter squarely and fairly, using the instrument of the law. US investigators shuttled between US and Nigeria, even to the United Kingdom. They burrowed into documents, interrogated those associated directly and remotely with the crime including top Nigerians.

By the time the investigation was over and the facts presented before Stanley and Tesler, they knew the game was up. Till this day, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has the damning evidence to nail those Nigerians involved in the mess in the same way the US government dealt with their citizens (individual and corporate) who violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). That is what a responsible government should do.

Since 2012 when the last shadow of the Halliburton heist was rested and sent to jail in the US, Nigerian government has pretended that Halliburton scam never existed. Government officials have carried on as though the convicted US officials gave bribes to themselves. In law, both the giver and receiver of a bribe are culpable. But in the case of Halliburton, the Nigerian receivers of the bribe are free men. They have been part or friends of all governments.

Sadly, these Nigerians that the US officials gave bribes and they accepted to win contract in Nigeria are friends and part of the Buhari government. They are the ones urging the President to intensify the anti-corruption war. What a paradox? And what impudence!

I am not taken in by the tomfoolery of EFCC that it is currently studying the Halliburton file. That is story for the pigs. A court of competent jurisdiction has adjudicated on this matter and convicted certain persons who admitted offering bribe to Nigerians. All that Nigerian authorities need do is to duly apply for the court papers and all the relevant documents in which clearly identified Nigerians were named, and pronto, these papers shall be given to them.

If President Goodluck Jonathan was too nonchalant and too weak to take action, Nigerians expected Buhari, a self-confessed puritan, to make Halliburton its take off point in his fight against corruption. No matter how many people you hound to jail over the Dasukigate, the case of Halliburton in which person who are vicariously friends and admirers of your government were indicted sticks out like a sore thumb. The US government is smarter than we think. They know the Halliburton crooks. They see them hang around Mr. Buhari, even admonish him to prosecute the corrupt. And they cannot but be amused.

But we are fighting corruption. And Halliburton is not corruption. It is just a case of hallucination, something common among Americans. So, critics of Buhari should take a chill pill as it were. To them, I say: Sssssh! Buhari is fighting corruption and he does not like distraction.

• First published in Sun newspaper of Sunday May 1, 2016