High-profile arrests by the EFCC in the investigation of official corruption in Nigeria have followed a script that has become wearisomely familiar. I need cite no specific instances. The attentive reader can doubtless come up with several that make the point unambiguously.
First, the news media are briefed comprehensively by officials familiar with the case but who cannot be identified because they were not authorized to make the damning disclosures that then go on to resonate on the front pages and in the headlines for subsequent weeks, while providing coarse entertainment in the feral media.
Even in summary, the charge sheet is a litany of crimes and misdemeanours on a scale almost beyond belief – almost, because Nigerians have come to expect nothing less than the worst of their officials. In fact, if there is one thing that unites vast segments of the Nigerian public, it is the belief, indeed the expectation, that their officials will always gravitate toward all that is ignoble and not of good report.
Then comes the arrest a few days later, staged with critical solemnity for the news media, especially television, which measures news salience by the extent to which an event translates into dramatic pictures. Looking grim and woebegone, the suspects usually are serenaded into the precincts of the EFCC by its uniformed officials.
Another layer of officials, suitably armed, keeps the rear, apparently to deter those who might be thinking of sabotaging the proceedings. Yet more officials take positions to the left and the right of the suspects, boxing them in.
The officials look sober for the most part. There is no swagger in them, no hint of the triumphalism you would expect to perfuse such a setting. It is almost as if they are labouring under a painful necessity.
But make no mistake about it: This is serious business. The EFCC officials are respectful. But you cannot overawe them with any claim to bigmanism. As if to make that point emphatically, they may often keep the suspects in custody, pending formal arraignment where an unabridged list of the crimes and misdemeanours is read out.
The charges go to confirm what many Nigerians have always believed of their officials, namely, that they are grasping, self-absorbed, larcenous to the point of obscenity, and insanely acquisitive. Even among those usually inclined to keep an open mind or show cool indifference, one could sense quiet outrage.
“Have the suspects no shame?” you could almost hear them say in pained resignation. “What will they do with all that pillage? Just how much do they need to feel contented?”
After the usual courtroom skirmishes, the trial finally starts. Soon enough, it begins to appear that what had seemed an open-and-shut case is nothing of the sort. The suspect has in his corner some of the finest legal minds that money can buy, no pun intended. The prosecution, on the other hand, is typically led by attorneys of lesser specific gravity.
And in an encounter in which seniority counts for much and opposing junior counsel as well as the presiding judge often feel obliged to defer to senior counsel, the EFCC finds itself at a disadvantage, and not just in psychological terms. Its attorneys were probably still in diapers when many of the counsel on the other side entered law practice.
As the trial gets underway, it is usually the prosecution that is seeking adjournment after adjournment, evidence that the case had been rushed to court, without the painstaking marshalling of probative evidence required for successful prosecution.
More evidence of a rush to court surfaces when the prosecution requests leave of court to withdraw the charges so as to amend them and re-file new material later. Such requests unduly prolong the court process, resulting in justice delayed.
The case wends its way through the system, and judgment day finally arrives. But it is thrown out because it was filed in the wrong court – a court that had no business entertaining it.
This verdict has been delivered so many times that it raises some troubling questions. It may well be that the officials filing the cases could not figure out the right court the first time, and still cannot do so after losing their cases on the matter of jurisdiction, hardly one of the most recondite issues in legal practice.
But that would raise the far more troubling issue of whether the cases were filed deliberately in courts with no jurisdiction, with officials subverting, for any number of reasons, the very cause they were employed to pursue. What does this say about the supervisors at the EFCC?
When corruption cases are not dismissed for want of jurisdiction, they are often set aside because the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, usually another indication of a rush to court, or of a deficit in prosecutorial skills.
Halfway through the case, the prosecutor may settle for a bargain whereby the public official on trial pleads guilty to a lesser charge that may not involve jail term but allows him to keep much of the ill-gotten wealth that lay at the heart of the prosecution.
In the end, amidst its loud barking, the EFCC does very little biting.
This is not the way to fight official corruption.
Until the authorities can assemble, train and retain formidable prosecutors who can hold their own against the smartest defence attorneys, and until they can equipped them with the latest investigative tools in accounting, auditing and computing, the fight against official corruption will not be won.
Assembling such a team cannot be done overnight, to be sure. But the time to start is now, with our universities as the recruiting ground.
The finest products of these institutions – those graduating with First Class or Second Class Upper – in law, accounting, computer science, and foreign languages, will constitute the pioneer corps of some 1000 federal prosecution units.
After selection through a highly competitive process, they will be sent abroad for further training, including a year’s attachment to some of the finest prosecutors who have brought organised crime elements to heel in Italy, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, India, Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Mexico, Australia, and South Africa.
On their return, they will be deployed across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. They should be placed on special salaries that take into account their prized skills as well as the risks that flow from the job, and insulated from the political pressure of any kind. They should enjoy security of tenure until age 70, subject only to good conduct and a record of successful prosecutions.
Until prosecutors have at least the same skills and a scheme of compensation comparable with or superior to that of attorneys in private practice, until they are equipped with the most advanced tools for carrying out their work, the Nigerian state, even under a new administration with the best intention will never gain the upper hand in the war on official corruption.
