The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Insecurity, service chiefs and mass hysteria

    Insecurity, service chiefs and mass hysteria

    Olakunle Abimbola

    “After all,” quipped the roguish Brother Jero, ”it’s the fashion these days to be a desk general!”  That was Jero’s closing wit in the play, Jero’s Metamorphosis (1973), by Prof. Wole Soyinka.

    Indeed, it was the era of “desk generals” (a vicious pun on the Police desk sergeant, perhaps?) — Nigeria’s first romance with military rule; when ruling generals needed not go to war to attain that rank; yet were so contemptuous of “bloody civilians”.

    With the return of democracy — 21 years and counting — and a stress on more accountability, the scorned “bloody civilians” of yore are busy having own back on the “useless generals”, in the Boko Haram North East front.

    From parliamentary galleries, to street corners, to the sensation-loving conventional media, to the wild, wild social media, explosive global volcano of rumour and hate, the clobbered generals are receiving a brutal hiding.

    It’s the sweet revenge of “bloody civilians”!

    The poor metaphor for this ruthless tanning, of the army, are the service chiefs.  The casus belli is wide-spread insecurity.  For that, they are fit devils on the cross!  Mass hysteria never had a more justified driver!

    Yet emotions, running violent and wild, could be evidence something is seriously amiss.  But who cares?

    The conventional street wisdom, avid and passionate, is clear: sack the service chiefs and, open sesame, the security challenges would vanish!  How, for God’s sake, can the president be deaf to such “sure banker”, to borrow that betting lingo?

    In truth, the security situation is dire.  But that doesn’t automatically equate it is worse, compared with the past.  Still, that won’t gather much traction with an emotive response — and understandably so, for man is, extremely so, a pain-avoiding animal.

    It is in putting issues in correct contexts, therefore, that Philips Agbese, a security expert and human rights researcher, came good, on Yori Folarin’s This Morning (TM) show, of July 24, on TVC.

    The issue was Boko Haram and sundry insecurity problems, and the clamour to sack the service chiefs.  Yori and co-host’s opening gambits appeared steering the discourse towards the regnant blame game, that always portrayed the generals, in that troubled front, as no more than glorified leaches and nitwits.

    But then came in Agbese, who redirected the issues.  At the end of it all, the two hosts appeared less gung-ho to dish out blames. Though there were no immediate feed backs, viewers too must have been better informed on the complex and intricate security challenges; on which the public might not have had enough information to make definitive conclusions.

    That is what the media should do in troubled times: shed more light on issues for better public understanding; rather than join the emotive orchestra, yelping and swearing, yet proffering no reasoned solution to the roaring problems.

    So, how exactly did Agbese intervene?  Nothing novel.  He just did what should be a media routine (but sadly a very rare exception), of rigorously dissecting Boko Haram yesterday, today — and projecting what tomorrow might look like, if the issue were clinically analyzed.

    Long and short: the solution lies less in the dramatic hiring or firing of service chiefs and allied personnel, for immediate popular but pyrrhic cheers.

    Rather, it is in a systemic overhaul of a security architecture, which though has stalled Boko Haram, is faltering against its free-wheeling by-products: banditry, cattle rustling and kidnapping, especially in the North.

    On Boko Haram qua Boko Haram, even Abubakar Shekau, with his most fanatical terrorists, would admit it’s well past glory days; when a hitherto ragtag terror cadre worsted Nigerian troops, grabbed territories, and hoisted, with panache, Islamist flags.

    Beside grabbing territories and re-naming communities, were routine bombings (of which the United Nations Nigeria office in Abuja was a prime victim), among others: mosques, churches and motor parks; not discounting dashing suicide bombings.  Each of all these Boko Haram reserved its right to unleash, as it damn well pleased!

    That all that is now history is no accident.  As Agbese pointed out, defeating that phase was the deliberate but unsung work of some military strategists.

    Indeed, the terror war’s media coverage is so adversarial you could be permitted to think the Nigerian media does classic war propaganda for the terrorist enemy: sensationalize terrorists’ triumphs, downplay military gains, and on the balance, pass down the (deliberate?) hysteria that “nothing” has been done!

    Indeed, that TM show made a glib reference to the Chadian late 2019 exploits against Boko Haram, that made Abukabar Shekau cry; suggesting Nigeria failed to finish off the job.

    Blissfully forgotten, however, was the open secret of Nigeria’s chief of army staff (COAS) joining his troops around Yuletide 2019, and equally giving Shekau a bloody nose, with many Boko Haram commanders either slain or surrendering.

    But for that timely reminder by Agbese, TM would have left an unbalanced account, even if both events were public knowledge.

    Nevertheless, that was typical of the near one-sided narrative, by a clearly piqued media, solely blaming the “useless” military, “corrupt” generals and their commander-in-chief, for the unsatisfactory state of things.

    That is hardly a crime in a democracy.  But it costs the troops dearly in morale; and helps prolong the terror war, which ironically the fretting people people want ended.

    Still, that media attitude is symbolic of that Nigerian penchant to point fingers, instead of owning a problem and contributing own quota to solving it  — a point Agbese brilliantly made.

    He challenged the respective stakeholders, in the theatres of war (communities, politicians, the media, etc) and Nigerians generally: has everyone  put in own civic contributions, to match — and back — the military’s terror war effort?  Hardly!

    Besides, security or lack of it is no static matter.  Rather, insurgencies are dynamic — volatile, even — so much so that as you face down a phase, you must be a step ahead of the unseen enemy, in intelligence gathering, planning and execution.  So, you’re prone to setbacks.

    But if terrorists’ gains (most of them occasional) are orchestrated, and military victories are downplayed, as routine and unimportant, you give the impression you’re stuck in a rut.  Sprinkle in media sensationalism, and the image you get is eternal Armageddon!  That is hardly fair on the efforts of the troops and their commanders.

    Still, do all these indicate the security situation is satisfactory?  No.  Are they an apologia for the military and other security forces?  Definitely not!

    Cold analysis: Boko Haram is morphing into banditry, kidnapping on hitherto safe major expressways, cattle-rustling that plague the rural economy, and even massacre of peaceful and defenseless  citizens.  These high crimes must never be admitted as a sick “new normal”.  So, the authorities must raise their game,

    But the solution can’t be unbridled hysteria, powered by scapegoating, cresting in the orchestrated roar for the sack of service chiefs.  Sweet hysteria is no substitute for hard thinking.

     

  • Matters miscellaneous

    Matters miscellaneous

    By Olatunji Dare

    It is miscellany time again, when this column tries to attend, with broad strokes and in short takes, to a glut of occurrences, lest those who make the news and those who consume it feel ignored.

    The point of departure has got to be the death, at the unripe age of 25, of Flying Officer Tolulope Arotile, the first Nigerian female helicopter combat pilot, in a freak accident heard around the world.

    Accidents are formidable things. They happen even to the most cautious and the most prepared, at the least likely moments and in the least likely places. A person who can swim across a river churned by strong currents may drown in a bathtub.

    I know a man who ran over and killed his young son while backing his car out of the garage, unaware that his little boy had followed him out of the house. Thousands of children are killed in this manner every year in the United States and across the world.

    From the official account, the accident that claimed Tolulope Arotile’s life would seem to belong in this category.  She was walking along a road at the Air Force Base in Kaduna when her high school contemporary driving in the opposite direction – with two other contemporaries of Arotile’s as passengers — suddenly recognised her.

    Excited at seeing a former school mate who had succeeded so admirably in a rarefied field, he put the car in reverse gear and revved up with the aim of catching up with her and giving her a befitting Nigerian greeting.

    In the event, the car struck and killed her.  The reader deserves to be spared the numbing details.

    At first blush, the account seems too pat.  The sequence of events cannot easily be dismissed as trifling coincidence.  Yet, there is plausibility in that account – much greater plausibility, it seems to me,  than in the conspiracy theories that have been woven intricately around the matter, some of them grounded on the wildest conjectures and going back to the dawn of creation.

    Beyond stirring ethnic passions and animosities, they serve no purpose.

    But the account also raises some troubling questions.

    It has been established that Arotile had been summoned by phone, barely two hours before her tragic end, to the Air Force Base, in Kaduna.  She had the day off, and was reluctant to go to the Base.  But her sister encouraged her to go, and personally dropped her off there.

    Who was the caller?  Where was the caller at the time of the accident?  Why did he or she summon Arotile?

    To what particular facility was Arotile headed at the time of the accident?

    Was the area monitored by CCTV or other electronic security device? Where are the tapes?

    Besides the persons named in the official account, were there other persons – eyewitnesses in particular?  What was their recollection?

    Did the authorities make a map of the accident scene, a first crucial step in such circumstances?  Why was no such picture furnished with the official account of the incident?

    What the public has been told so far points to an instance of culpable homicide.  But given the unsettling gaps in the narrative, the authorities must pursue every lead to unravel that matter and squelch the conspiracies swirling around it.

    Anything less would be unworthy of Flying Officer Tolulope Arotile who, by her courage, skill, valour and commitment in a field dominated by men, wrote herself into our hearts and minds, and into Nigeria’s history.

    In other news: 

    Ever since Senator (as he then was, and has since ceased to be) Dino Melaye threatened on the floor of the National Assembly to ravish a fellow distinguished Senator and wife of one of the nation’s leading political figures and was not called to order nor censured, that body has come to be regarded as a place where anything is not merely possible but everything is actually permissible.

    Recent disclosures before the Assembly’s oversight committees suggest powerfully that it is not about to turn its back on its well-earned reputation.

    A Minister who couldn’t keep his hands to himself gets by way of reward a “dirty slap,” presumably on one of his fattened cheeks, from the object of his concupiscent desire, the winsome chief executive of one of the parastatals under the Minister’s portfolio.

    The scorned Minister strikes back in an ad hominem riposte – or in justification — disclosing that the lady in question has, or has had, four husbands, the implication being that she must be fair game.

    To do maximum damage, he leaves entirely open the matter of whether the marriages were consecutive or concurrent. If consecutive, nothing in our laws forbids them.  If concurrent, that would constitute polyandry, which our laws and custom categorically forbid.

    I gather that the nation’s chief law officer Abubakar Malami (SAN), not one to allow the most tangent breach of the law to escape his watchful attention, has set up a special investigation panel to look into the matter with a view to bringing charges.

    The Assembly abruptly closes shop, and the presiding officer has the mic turned off when proceedings reach the point at which the harried Minister was going to reveal the true names and identities of members of the Assembly who had plundered through unfulfilled or partially fulfilled sweetheart deals the resources of an intervening agency under its supervision

    “It is okay.  It is okay,” the Assembly chorused.   Okay not to reveal the names, that is, and conflict of interest be damned.

    Since the return to a species of democratic rule in 1999, the oversight function of the National Assembly consecrated in the Constitution has morphed into a form of racketeering, a cover for extortion and manipulation.

    During one of  the re-run gubernatorial elections in Ekiti State, the chair of the Assembly’s oversight committee on elections and a ranking senator from one of the political parties contesting the race was found directing operations in the collating room of Independent National Electoral Commission.  Asked what he was doing in such a sensitive setting and at such a sensitive time, he replied calmly that he was performing oversight duties on behalf of the National Assembly.

    If the chair or any member of the Senate’s oversight committee on banking and finance were to be found today lurking in the vaults of the Central Bank or the Mint, you can be sure that he will have a ready answer: oversight duties

    They are already richly rewarded for a raft of duties, pseudo duties, and non-duties. To them, too much is never enough.  They believe, with Oscar Wilde, that nothing succeeds like excess.

    Still in the news:

    A great many of our compatriots, among whom I count myself, have been skeptical of Kogi Governor Yahaya Bello’s proclamation that his domain has been, and remains, a no-go area for the malignant coronavirus.  It can never touch him nor anyone in his domain, he has been insisting.

    It is true that you cannot be in the same space with him (they call him “little napoleon” behind his back, I gather, more in derision than admiration) unless you are decked out like Lagbaja.  It is time to drop our knee-jerk skepticism and take him at his word.  After all, he has been nothing if not unyielding.

    Since Kogi State is now and forever hermetically sealed to the corona virus, it does not need the N100 million grant that the Federal Government is set to award each state to contain and combat the pandemic.

    Bello has accused other states of conjuring up cases of coronavirus disease for the purpose of fraudulently collecting federal money and is on record as having vowed not to follows their despicable example.  So, why pile him with money he has not asked for and does not need?

    We are confident that His Excellency the Valiant Conqueror of the coronavirus, and withal a man of honour, will forcefully reject the blandishment.

  • Aketi’s Humpty Dumpty

    Aketi’s Humpty Dumpty

    By Olakunle Abimbola

    For the second time in three weeks, Humpty-Dumpty looks an irresistible parallel for Aketi’s pre-election Ondo, as in Fayemi’s mid-term  Ekiti (See “Ekiti’s roiling progressives”, July 5).

    Is the Aketi Ondo order then primed for a great fall, like Humpty Dumpty in the nursery rime?

    Don’t bet on that, for politics is no game for the faint-hearted.  But the theatre of the absurd, now on the Ondo front, is humbling enough.

    Imagine Sunday Abegunde aka Abena, who did the political equivalent of the poetic Solomon Grundy, that rifled through life in seven short days!

    Abena bolted from the Rotimi Akeredolu government as estranged secretary to the state government (SSG), parachuted himself to a radio, and started speaking in tongues, about a “lost” election that nevertheless produced a governor, of which he himself, munching an SSG bounty-turned-sour-grape, was complicit!

    To be sure, he would eat crow, hit by the stark reality that his wild emotions had flung him inside a ditch; and he repudiated, with equal excitability, his earlier claim of an election loss, with a glorious collective win, though for the ultra-”ungrateful” Aketi.

    But how can an ex-SSG boast such infantile, if not outright irrational, temper?  Is the Aketi order, united or divided, all whims and caprices?

    Well, Abena isn’t quite replicating the Olusegun Mimiko feat of exiting as SSG to sack the late Olusegun Agagu, after a prolonged post-election litigation.

    He swears fealty to one of the APC aspirants.  But wherever is Abena’s next destination, he would appear a sad study in self-demarketing.

    Or the case of Deputy Governor Agboola Ajayi, a gangling poster boy of unfazed opportunism, if ever there was one?

    Herr Ajayi stormed out to the rival PDP, clutching tight the Deputy Governor office he won as APC candidate; even daring the legislature to impeach him, if they had the numbers!

    Then, after the governor tested positive for COVID-19, he issued a 21-day ultimatum for a power hand-over, the morality (and compassion) of it all be damned!

    What schadenfreude — that English German import for malicious joy, nay jeer, at someone else’s misfortune!

    But for the governor’s timely COVID-19 bill of health (a political deus-ex-machina, as they do in Greek classical drama?), Ondo would by now have been battling a constitutional crisis of rotten moral provenance, among other needless distractions.

    Or how else do you push the defecting Ajayi power-grab, with all its rotten moral baggage, relying on the letters of the Constitution?  Yet, that Constitution’s same spirit Ajayi’s galloping opportunism has viciously raped, cantering across the partisan isle, aloft with a stolen good, yet demanding a wild cheer?

    To be fair to Ajayi, however, it’s the tale of opportunism gives, opportunism takes — the most serious singular plague ravaging this polity.

    Ajayi departed PDP because an opportunistic Mimiko, then an embattled, plotting and entrapped governor seeking post-power relevance, junked his Labour Party (LP), landed in PDP, and hijacked the party’s structure from the “natives”, like Ajayi.

    Now, can you blame the return of the native to his darling PDP, if he could just stroll across the partisan aisle and corral the deputy governorship — when what fetched him that diadem was no commitment to any party principle, but his electoral box office appeal?  Opportunism gives, opportunism takes!

    Now Aketi growls Ajayi’s nomination was a mistake — is it now?  When did the scale fall off the governor’s eyes?  That brings the discourse to the governor himself.

    With all due respect, Governor Akeredolu, though a legal silk, has exhibited little power gumption, talk less of wisdom, these last three years.

    Ripples is not quite close to the Aketi gubernatorial court, so this view is at best speculative.  Yet, the governor appears, from afar, a possible victim of what you may call the Rehoboam syndrome.

    Remember the Bible that records King Rehoboam as victim of “useless young men”, whose misadvice condemned Solomon’s son, David’s grandson, to kissing 10, out of 12 tribes, in his father’s kingdom, bye-bye?

    On FB, Ripples once stumbled on a discourse, with some neophyte, canonizing Aketi as foremost among the South West “new breed leaders”.

    Ripples weighed in and told the guy — one Delta-born University of Ibadan graduate who claimed he had lived in Ibadan all his life — that he lacked the dynamics of Yoruba politics to make such a claim; and should stop shooting breeze, thus distracting the governor.

    But in jumped another — the original serenade of the post — insisting the Delta guy was right on the money; and that Aketi was the best thing to happen to humanity, since Adam left Eden!

    The exchange turned rather nasty, as the Aketi advocate became aggressive and abusive, just to prove his point.  Later, Ripples would find out he was one of the governor’s most visible factotums.

    He could well be earnest, of course; speaking out of genuine conviction.  Even then, could such honest zest have negatively impacted Aketi?

    How come, just after three years, Aketi appears lacking in tact to midwife the crucial political elite consensus, for the smooth-sailing of his power encore?  Or is the ultra-cantankerous Ondo politics to blame?

    Even then, if you can’t hold together your immediate locality, how can you pass the muster for an extended terrain?  So long for flowery FB claims!

    The relationship between the governor and Prof. Robert Ajayi Boroffice, Ondo’s sole sitting senator, is rather interesting.

    Just suffice to say the three-time senator is not unlike the once rejected pillar that morphs into the major cornerstone, from the intrigues that surrounded the 2019 elections, which saw Ondo losing two senators to the rival PDP.

    Yet, from the “reconciliatory” sound bites, the senator is talking tough, demanding the governor’s apology, and insisting on nominating Aketi’s running mate, among four other tough conditions, to back the governor.

    That range of demand has even drawn a sharp rebuke from inside the Unity Forum,  the intra-Ondo APC pressure group, determined to give embattled Aketi a good run for his money!   Yet, the senator was virtually fighting for his political life, in the run-up to the 2019 election, for lack of gubernatorial support!

    The point here is not a saint-versus-sinner scenario.  Hardly is anyone either in politics, that ruthless determination of who gets what.  The governor and the senator have own good and bad points.

    It is rather to remind the governor — and indeed, other office holders — that power, though most visible, is the most useless, in political relationships.

    Yeah, power (especially gubernatorial power) does great transactions, in sweet political pork.  But even that becomes useless the moment power fades or stops — or whoever does sweetheart deals without cash?

    If he survives this roaring crucible, Aketi should learn more to leverage tact and influence, instead of projecting raw power.

    Indeed, influence is the gold standard of sustainable politicking.  That marked respect for peers in power, builds a post-power paradise, made only possible by influence.

    Still, the Ondo APC should know that it’s cheaper and better for a sitting governor to get a second term, except if he is a total disaster.  That is, of course, without prejudice to aspirants’ democratic rights to contest the governorship ticket.

  • Raping Niger Delta

    Raping Niger Delta

    By Gabriel Amalu

    Even while awaiting the forensic audit, the gory details of the criminal waste in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), can be likened to an incestuous rape.

    Of course, the Niger Delta region since the discovery of hydrocarbons in Oloibiri has become a victim for continuous gang-rape by multinational oil companies and their collaborating local administrators, which have ruled Nigeria.

    As tragic as the abuses of the Niger Delta region by outsiders may be, it is benumbing that those allegedly involved in the NDDC heist are persons from the Niger Delta.

    In a region were poverty is cavorting on the streets, I find it difficult to understand how persons from the region who are in positions of authority can, instead of working assiduously to develop the region, agree to convert a special purpose vehicle, created to accelerate development in the region, into an ensemble for corruption.

    Indeed, like in Ayi Kwei Armah’s: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, the NDDC, despite the laudable objectives, for its creation, has so far, turned out a monumental disaster.

    In Armah’s novel, the great expectations an independent Ghana portended never materialised. Such is the tragedy of the Nigerian state, of which the NDDC is a microcosm.

    Unfortunately, we appear to live in a nation, where those who refuse to accept bribe, as a normal way of life, like the protagonist in Armah’s novel: The Man, may be forced by the actions and inactions of government, to rue their determination to reject graft.

    Between the Minister for Niger Delta, Senator Godswill Akpabio, and the former acting Managing Director of the Interim Management Committee (IMC) of the NDDC, Dr. Joy Nunieh, one of them is a liar.

    The liar, in connivance with some other top officials of the NDDC, like their predecessors in crime, has engaged in an orgy of debauchery, against the interests of the region.

    This paper last Saturday, came with a screaming headline: “I was pressured to spend N10b as Christmas ‘Gifts’ says Nunieh”.

    At a hearing, before the House of Representatives, Nunieh went ahead to list a catalogue of impetuous heist in the NDDC, allegedly under the present Interim Management Committee foisted by Akpabio.

    Of course, Akpabio, has likened Nunieh, to the biblical woman with many husbands, with the challenge of identity at the resurrection; while Nunieh, has in turn, alleged that she slapped Senator Akpabio, when he tried to come on her, in a licentious manner.

    But while the claim of sexual harassment of Nunieh is bad, the imagery of NDDC is that of a woman, gang-raped, but without the ability of dealing the assailants, at least, a dirty slap, like Nunieh allegedly did to Akpabio.

    With the Niger Delta region unable to stand up to the rapists, many thought the much advertised forensic audit of NDDC ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, would salvage what was left of the agency’s dignity.

    But alas, Nunieh, claims that no forensic audit is going on, because, the procedural requirements have not been put in place.

    Those who she claimed allegedly received N13.6 million, for consultancy on the construction of ‘infant Jesus’ must be soullessly fearless.

    If the allegation is true, the culprits did not worry that the real Infant Jesus may specifically ask them to account for such a perfidious claim.

    Such sinners. And the Bible said, the soul that sinned shall die. Of course, not the death, all humans shall face, but eternal damnation in hell.

    Who will save the Niger Delta? This time, I am talking of saving them here on earth, since the hereafter, is of no consequence to her traducers.

    While the Buhari presidency had shown a heightened interest in the fight against corruption, the regime’s recent ‘vote of no confidence’, on Ibrahim Magu, the arrow head of EFCC, set up specifically to fight corrupt practices, means that the regime is not winning the war.

    A look at the NDDC (Establishment etc.) Act 2000 shows that former President Olusegun Obasanjo had lofty intention in creating the commission.

    It was conceived to be populated by the representatives, of the nine-member oil producing states, and in particular, persons from the oil bearing areas of the states.

    Mention was even made that the position of the chairman will be rotational, in other to make the commission inclusive.

    In Part II of the Act, the functions and powers of the commission were provided, and they are lofty.

    The commission is entrusted with the power to: formulate policies and guidelines for the development of the Niger- Delta, area;  conceive, plan and implement, in accordance with set rules and regulations, projects and programmes for the sustainable development of the Niger-Delta area in the field of transportation including roads, jetties and waterways, health, education, employment, industrialization, agriculture and fisheries, housing and urban development, water supply, electricity and telecommunications;

    The mandate also included to: identify factors inhibiting the development of the Niger-Delta area and assist the member states in the formulation and implementation of policies to ensure sound and efficient management of the resources of the Niger-Delta area.

    The bumbling commission is also expected to: assess and report on any project being funded or carried out in the Niger-Delta area by oil and gas producing companies and any other company including non-governmental organisations and ensure that funds released for such projects are properly utilised.

    One of the most idealistic endeavours of the commission is the mandate to: tackle ecological and environmental problems that arise from the exploration of oil mineral in the Niger-Delta area and advise the federal government and the member states on the prevention and control of oil spillages, gas flaring and environmental pollution.

    The funding model was statutory, and heavy. From the federal government:  the equivalent of 15 per cent of the total monthly statutory allocations due to member states of the commission from the Federation Account; and from the oil and gas companies, three per cent of the total annual budget of any oil producing company operating, onshore and offshore in the Niger-Delta area, including gas processing companies; while from the ecological fund, 50 percent of monies due to member states of the commission from the Ecological Fund.

    With these provisions, it was envisaged that the commission will help cover the shame of the Nigerian nation, which turned the principles of true federalism on its head just to steal the resources of the Niger Delta region.

    But instead of offering wrapper to the naked region, NDDC officials, are allegedly into an incestuous orgy, with the naked Niger Delta.

    If the government of President Buhari cannot make the rapists pay, perhaps, the real Infant Jesus may strike.

     

  • At the passport office

    At the passport office

    Olatunji Dare

     

    EVEN without the discontinuities spawned by the Covid-19 pandemic, obtaining a Nigerian passport through the prescribed procedure was always fraught.

    Visit any passport-issuing office in Nigeria, and you will find a seething, murmuring crowd of applicants who had been on the scene every working day during the previous week, the week before that, and in all likelihood the week preceding that, and are yet no closer to obtaining the prized document than they were the day they first set foot on the precincts.

    It is not a task for the faint of heart, or the go-it-alone individual, no matter his or her dexterity in navigating all the bureaucratic hoops. Nor does it matter how punctiliously he or she is in filling out the application form.

    It helps if you have a powerful sponsor, know, or can relate to, a key official in the chain who can see the matter through.  If you don’t, the next best thing is to hire a consultant–pardon this necessary dignification – a riff on James Thurber – since we are discussing a momentous issue – who knows the territory inside out:  how the place works, who reports to whom, which palms to grease and how to grease them without leaving fingerprints, and whom the officials trust to deliver without fuss and without ceremony.

    You are virtually guaranteed to obtain your passport the very next day.

    If you don’t have a powerful sponsor and cannot hire a consultant, then you will need luck of the rarest kind or spiritual intervention or both to obtain a passport months after filing.

    Your application may be complete and valid in every material particular, but what if the official who should handle it is perpetually not on seat, or is on leave of absence for the next three months and nobody else in the house can handle your application, since it belongs in a very special category, and only an officer who belongs in that rarefied rank can handle it.

    Unfortunate indeed, but the application cannot move until the officer returns.  You understand, Madam?

    Another scenario:  Everything is shipshape, Madam, as shipshape as can be. There is just one small problem.  Fewer than 100 passport booklets are available at this time, and the office has to practice extreme rationing until a new consignment arrives.  It may happen tomorrow or next year, we just don’t know.  With Covid-19, nothing is certain anymore.  Nothing is given.

    Contemplating these prospects, delivered with critical solemnity by the contractor, the applicant for a passport is reduced to asking rather diffidently whether it meant that nothing would avail.

    But contractor and applicant know deep down that, in Nigeria, something always avails.  They strike a bargain, and the passport that had at some point seemed like a forlorn quest becomes a splendid actuality, to the satisfaction of all the parties concerned, visible and invisible.

    Why do passport seekers submit to this ordeal when they could head to a certain locale within shouting distance of Lion Building in central Lagos and within hours, obtain, on their own terms, no questions asked, and no “go come,” official passport as genuine as any such document ever issued by the Nigeria Immigration Service?

    Because they know no other route?  From lack of capacity to embark on that route?  From an abundance of patience?  From respect for the law and due process? From fear of the consequences if the whole thing came unstuck?

    On to you, graduate students in sociology and social psychology. Something tells me that if you explore these questions with the rigour they call forth, you are more than likely to add a footnote – or even change one – in the literature on the Nigerian character.

    To return to my theme:  obtaining a Nigerian passport on foreign shores is just as fraught.  The process is clean – antiseptically so.

    There is almost no human contact until you appear for the “interview” for “biometric capture.” The process is electronic, online.

    In the United States, they seem to have farmed it out to an Indian-owned entrepreneur who apparently runs some other business or businesses on the side.

    You wish they had contracted such a sensitive matter to a Nigerian, and that the site was not so quick to lure you to other sites to purchase some junk merchandise or service.

    But that is small matter compared to the unhelpfulness of the Chancery in Atlanta, Georgia.  For an application filed in January, they give you an interview date for April.

    They say you can ask for another date, but when you do so on a dedicated email platform, they tell you curtly that your request has been received.

    You follow up and call a number indicated on the Chancery website.  The phone rings and rings and rings, until a recorded voice tells you that the official you want to talk with is not available and that you should please leave a message.  But before you can do so, the same recorded voice tells you that the mailbox is full and is accepting no new messages.

    You call every day for one week running: same result.

    In desperation, you take a chance and write a very courteous letter to senior official at the Chancery telling him of your experience and asking if he would kindly help sort things out.  He does not give you the benefit, nor the courtesy of a reply.

    I was about to write to the Head of the Chancery when the Covid-19 conflagration paralyzed virtually all transactions of an official or commercial nature.

    On the Mission’s website, the April interview date has now been replaced by “Not available.  Please contact Embassy/Mission.” But the Chancery has remained singularly unresponsive.

    The only human contact I have had at the Chancery was with a clerk with another service unit.  He was courteous, told me I had called the wrong number, but seemed eager to help.

    Then, he launched into a long lecture on how the Mission was overwhelmed, and why the waiting for passports was so long and the appointment date could be changed only in the event of a death    in the family, which, God forbid.  But in the event, a death certificate, duly authenticated by a designated authority, had to be attached to the request for the change.

    Seriously.  I am not making this up.

    Previously, to obtain a passport, you only needed to attach two copies of your picture to the application form and sign on the dotted lines.

    They said the arrangement made it all too easy for persons engaged in syndicated crime to obtain multiple passports and to give Nigeria a bad name.

    By requiring applicants to appear in person for “data capture” at the point of issuance, the authorities could be sure that the passport belonged to the person whose name and picture appear on it and to no other, so the authorities claimed.

    Nigeria is the only country I know that insists on this arrangement which inflicts needless financial, physical and emotional pain on applicants.

    That is reason enough for discontinuing the policy. But there is more.  The stipulation does not work.  It serves no useful purpose.

    You can still have as many Nigerian passports as you can pay for, and under as many names as you fancy.

    The United States passport is, next perhaps to its $20 bill, the most widely counterfeited document in the world.

    Yet, you need only supply two pictures with your completed application, and sign on the dotted lines before an official at the local post office to obtain a passport.

    You are not required to travel outside your place of residence.  And the document is mailed to your home within weeks.

    Our level of organisation, I grant, is not cohesive enough to permit that kind of arrangement.

    But an arrangement that inflicts wanton financial, physical and emotional pain on passport seekers is a cruel abuse of Nigerians and their citizen rights.

    Now is the time to end it, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, Honourable Minister of Internal Affairs.

     

  • Rumbles in the Niger Delta

    Rumbles in the Niger Delta

    Sanya Oni

    I got this WhatsApp message from a friend from the South-south as reaction to the roforo fight between Minister of Niger Delta Godswill Akpabio and the former acting managing director of the NDDC Joy Nunieh.

    His words, rendered in Ibibio which he subsequently interpreted, came to something like– you do not deploy the same hand used to catch a fly to catch a bee.

    By this of course he meant that his former uncommon governor, by his earlier opportunistic insinuation that his now out-of-favour NDDC amazon was not only a shrink case but a wayward one, has figuratively laid an egg!

    He was in essence saying that had the uncommon fellow taken the popular Ibibio proverb to heart, he would have restrained from casting the first stone, when as it now seems to be the case, that his abode, a gilded cage is glass-encased!

    On the other hand, Nigerians are supposed to figure out what the elegantly coded riposte by the former Acting Managing Director of the NDDC Joy Nunieh meant by the so-called Plan B and what it means to ‘come up on the Port Harcourt girl’ as indeed the place of the ministerial slap in the messy tango!

    Such is the tragedy that has befallen a people that their age-long misfortune has not only been reduced to one of contest between two oversized egos, but is on the verge of being eclipsed in the choreographed inanities.

    But then, this is to be expected in a country where corruption is regarded as staple and one which shame has long taken flight.

    President Muhammadu Buhari obviously meant well when September last year, he ordered a forensic audit into the operations of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDCC) covering the period 2001 to 2019.

    Citing persistent criticisms of the operations of the commission, the president had observed that what was on ground in the South-south region did not justify the huge resources that had been made available to the agency.

    He told the delegation of South-south governors’ an obvious truth: “With the amount of money that the federal government has religiously allocated to the NDDC, we will like to see the results on the ground; those that are responsible for that have to explain certain issues.

    “The projects said to have been done must be verifiable. You just cannot say you spent so much billions and when the place is visited, one cannot see the structures that have been done. The consultants must also prove that they are competent.”

    That was the big idea. What Nigerians didn’t bargain for was the inelegant contraption called the interim management committee (unknown to law) – a solution that has since proven worse than the original disease.

    The result: two acting managing directors all in the space of eight months and billions of naira in contracts for all manners of purposes under the sun.

    (Never mind that a huge chunk of the contracts fell short of the requirements of due process and appropriation).

    And someone is still wondering why the old virus has not only mutated but metastasized?

    The question is whether things couldn’t have been different. Remember, the NDDC was until October last year, under the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF).

    In moving it to the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, the president had told Nigerians then, that the measure underscored his administration’s “commitment to enhance the living standards of (our) communities in the Niger Delta, through coordinated and appropriate programmes’’.

    Recall also that the president had in the same October forwarded the list of his nominees to the NDCC Board which the Senate, had expeditiously confirmed.

    In a move that surprised not a few, some powerful forces would convince the president that an interim cleansing job was not only needed but that the job could not be done while a legally and properly constituted board was in place!

    Between the president’s good intentions and the riotous, putrefying process, they can only now shudder not just at the wide gulf but the debasement of the idea.

    Before now, the OSGF was said to be too busy tending to other cabinet office matters leaving the vultures in the commission to unleash mayhem; now Akpabio thinks little of treating the interventionist agency as anything more than a reward for loyal service hence the anarchy loosed on the commission!

    Nigerians are certainly familiar with sundry acts of impunity by those elected or appointed to serve the rest of us.

    We have heard revelations of NDCC headquarters building that would not be connected to the public electricity grid, because, it is alleged, the vendor supplying diesel for the commission’s generators is the girlfriend of one of the top guns in the ministry.

    Of contract-splitting and other acts of monumental corruption. Including the charge that funds meant to pay tuition for Niger Delta students studying overseas were paid into the private accounts of some IMC members.

    However, Nigerians luckless to have put up with Minister Godswill Akpabio’s testimony at the House of Representatives committee sitting on Monday could only come away with the feeling that the Buhari administration has substituted one principality for another monstrosity.

    Or how else could one describe a situation in which one powerful minister’s word was not only law, but could, through guile manipulate the entire FEC going by the revelations at the House panel sitting?

    Thanks to the House public hearing, it ought to have dawned by now that the president, not least the Federal Executive Council, was sold a dummy on the issue of forensic audit.

    That the IMC contraption could have ranged from being an instrument of ministerial gerrymandering or control but certainly nothing of the so-called intendment.

    Which explains why the minister, being the alpha and omega of NDDC would, on the strength of a dubious presidential authorisation, assert the privilege of appointing the forensic auditors, ensuring that everything about the transaction from pre-qualification to issuance of award letters to forensic auditors was overseen by his office; to add the greatest farce of all, ensuring that procurement was done in lieu of the appropriation!

    Thanks to PMB’s delegation by abdication, ministerial outlawry could not have been more perfect, or complete.

    These are certainly interesting times, both for the country and the good people of the Niger Delta. But then, the story is an old, familiar one.

    From OMPADEC to NDCC, Nigerians are only too familiar with the activities of the soldiers of fortune holding the Niger Delta region to ransom.

    One sample is the 657-kilometre East-West road project, awarded in 2006 by the Obasanjo administration, stretching from Calabar in Cross River State to Warri in Delta State initially valued at N726 billion which remains undelivered till date.

    Yes, the president means well; unfortunately, only a President Buhari could have imagined that the contraption birthed in a fit of ministerial conceit and iniquity, would deliver a spotless NDDC. It won’t happen.

  • Magu’s troubles: The state of play

    Magu’s troubles: The state of play

    By Olatunji Dare

    “We have been there before,” not a few Nigerians would have said with more than a touch of cynicism, having regard to the dismissal of Ibrahim Magu, most recently chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    Weren’t his predecessors in that office – Nuhu Ribadu, Ibrahim Lamorde and Farida Waziri – hounded out in roughly the same circumstances by panicked political officials concerned that the threesome were pursuing their remit with an excess of zeal and fearful that the layers of protection they had woven over the decades to  cover up their corrupt dealings might be yanked off?

    So, they struck first.

    From their strategic positions in the legislature and the higher bureaucracy, they waged wars of attrition to frustrate, distract and undermine the EFCC.  With help from compromised media outlets, they planted in the public consciousness and embellished at every iteration and reiteration information designed to discredit its chief executive and its key operatives.  It is as if they were following the old boxing maxim that if you kill the head, the body will die.

    None of the officials left the agency on his or her own terms.  None received even a grudging commendation for achievements ranging from the modest to the substantial on a mission ranked among the most dangerous of national assignments.  Each departed damaged by a trainload of scurrilous allegations – the more scurrilous, the better; let them prove the charges false, or shut up and put up.

    Magu’s on-going predicament is at bottom a variation on an old theme. Even so, the differences between how his predecessors were sent packing and the bureaucratic cum pseudo-judicial torture to which he has been subjected, especially this past fortnight, are startling.

    I exaggerate, but not by much, when I compare the manner of his arrest to a kidnapping.  He was on an errand when security officials, armed for lethal combat, besieged his convoy, re-routed it to the Presidential Villa and hauled him before a Presidential Investigation Panel (PIP) which immediately slapped on him a battery of charges ranging from criminal breach of trust to incompetence and “insubordination.”

    His trial had begun in earnest, before a panel assembled in secrecy by the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), reportedly with the backing of President Muhammadu Buhari.  Since his arrest, he has been held in detention by the police.

    It is notorious that Buhari had been under tremendous pressure from key figures in the National Assembly, business barons who operate on the principle that nothing succeeds like wheeling and dealing in public contracts, and by some so-called politically exposed persons who command vast wealth of dubious provenance.

    Buhari appeared to be resisting these loud, well-orchestrated demands.  When Magu’s term ended, he did not name another official to replace him. But he did not nominate Magu for fresh term nor extend his tenure, perhaps fearing certain defeat in the National Assembly.  And so, by design or default, Magu remained in office, lulled into a false sense of security – until they came for him.

    The trial, beg your pardon, investigation, is being conducted in an atmosphere of intense prejudicial publicity.  Hardly a day passes without some new elements added to the Magu’s alleged misdeeds in office.  A visitor to Nigeria might indeed be led to believe that Magu has been the trouble with Nigeria since he took office if not much earlier, a personification of the corruption that is synonymous with Nigeria’s international profile; an official who, given a remit to check official corruption, turned it into a licence to transfer public assets to himself and his cronies on a scale almost beyond belief.

    There is something almost Kafkaesque about some aspects of the proceedings.  Effectively in captivity, Magu has had no access to material witnesses and documents that would enable him respond to the charges he is facing.  Even Magu’s attorney, Wahab Shittu, has complained that he has had no access to the panel’s terms of reference, without which he cannot represent his client robustly.

    As I have noted, the battery of charges is truly formidable.  It is not a rushed job, and certainly could not have been prepared overnight.  The attentive public has a right to assume that the allegations would have been painstakingly investigated before they were parlayed into substantive charges.  And from there, the logical recourse would be to a court of law.

    Instead, we have a panel whose brief, it must be supposed, is to investigate the allegations and determine their validity.  And then, what? Recommend a substantive trial if it is satisfied that the established facts warrant prosecution, or in the absence of such a determination, dismiss the charges.

    In the United States, it belongs in the province of a grand jury that makes this kind of determination. Our body of laws makes no provision for such an institution.  But I have it on the authority of the Attorney-General that the special investigation panel is fully backed by our laws.  That may well be the case.

    But is the whole thing, not just another judicial fudge, one of the many that have dogged the tenure of one of most inventive and intensely political attorneys-general (shades of ROA Akinjide, without the forensic brilliance) of the federation ever.  Making sweeping, categorical charges first and investigating later does not accord with the spirit of our laws.

    Nor do our laws permit any official to be a judge in his or own cause, as the Attorney-General appears to be doing.  Of the six members of the investigating panel, two are from his office and report directly to him.  At least one other, is a department over which he has jurisdiction.

    One cannot assert categorically that the panel is rigged, despite Malami’s scarcely-veiled resolve to see the back of the former EFCC chief.  But the whole thing raises questions of fairness, and of due protection under the law.

    Nor does the appearance of a conflict of interest end there.  One of the charges levelled at Magu is “insubordination” to the Attorney-General.  That makes the whole thing appear personal – and petty, too, it is necessary to insist.  Even in the elastic mandate Malami claims, at what point did Magu’s “insubordination” to a superior in a bureaucracy governed by the General Orders and administrative rules morph into a penal crime?

    As the Bard might have said, the man doth complain too much.   And he doth overreach, too.

    To lend a veneer of respectability and legality to the proceedings, they trotted one of Nigeria’s most respected jurists, the Hon Justice Isa Salami, out of retirement, and named him chair of the investigative panel – the same jurist that a posse of powerful political figures who share Malami’s world view had tried to destroy in a sustained campaign of calumny, besides which Magu’s current ordeal almost seems like a compliment.

    It is with great pride that I number myself among a handful of influential media figures and well-regarded legal scholars who defended Justice Salami’s honour and integrity at every point, culminating in his rehabilitation and in his being restored to his rightful place in our judicial history.

    Something tells me that Justice Salami will have satisfied himself that the panel has proper legal standing, and had agreed to serve from a sense of duty.  But there are duties and there are duties, and I must say, with all due respect, that he should have in this matter exercised a finer sense of discrimination. He should have advised that Magu be brought to trial before the regular courts based on the indictment, without the mediation of an investigative panel.

    We must hope that this troubling expedient does not go on to constitute a precedent.  The panel is not exactly a kangaroo court but in concept if not in practice, it bears striking resemblances to one. Magu should be granted bail and, together with his attorneys, granted access to all the human and documentary material he needs to respond to the grave charges he faces.

    Nigerians, even those suspected of high crimes, deserve better.  So does our fledgling democracy.

  • Magu an orphan

    Magu an orphan

    By Gabriel Amalu

    Is the federal government’s war against corruption in Nigeria no longer the causa proxima for the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime or what? Or is that Nigerians don’t trust the government in its fight against corruption? Since the news of Magu’s detention, interrogation, and now substitution, at the instigation of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, broke, I have been watching to see whether some Nigerians or in the least the self-styled anti-corruption groups would rise up to his defence.

    Could it be that these groups, really don’t buy into the fight against corruption, or is it that they never trusted Ibrahim Magu, in his avowed determination to wrestle corruption to the ground? How come there are no protests over the sudden clampdown on Magu, as we saw, when President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, initiated the duplicitous process to force out the first EFCC anti-corruption czar, Nuhu Ribadu, in December 2007?

    Of note, a cursory look at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (Establishment) Act shows that the chairman of the commission has no security of tenure. Section 3(1) of the Act provides: “The chairman and members of the commission other than ex-officio members shall hold office for a period of four years and may be re-appointed for a further term and no more.” The above provision makes for determinable tenure, without security.

    By the provision of section 3(2) of the Act: “A member of the commission may at any time be removed by the president for inability to discharge the functions of his office (whether arising from infirmity of mind or body or any other cause) or for misconduct or if the president is satisfied that it is not in the interest of the commission or the interest of the public that the member should continue in office.”

    By that provision, it is presumed that the chairman of the commission can be treated like any other member, with respect to cessation of membership of the commission. So, under the EFCC Act, a president can remove the chairman of the commission for a whimsical reason, or for no reason at all, considering the subjective nature of the powers granted the president under the Act.

    In Magu’s case, however, the president has opted to exercise his powers after due diligence, following the allegations of misconduct levelled against Magu, by the AGF, Abubakar Malami (SAN). He set up a presidential committee headed by a retired President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Salami; a man who suffered untold humiliation in the hands of his colleagues, over allegations proven to be spurious.

    According to reports, Salami has promised to be fair in the assignment. Without prejudice to the administrative enquiry, some of the allegations against the EFCC chairman are rather tenuous, unless there are underlying factors not in the public domain. One of the allegations is insubordination to the office of the AGF, who wrote the petition, against Magu.

    While the powers of the AGF, is enormous under the 1999 constitution, the EFCC Act, in my humble view does not contemplate that the chairman of the commission should take orders from the office of the AGF. Any claim of insubordination, should only be of significance, if the chairman is working at cross purposes with the directive of the president, who is the overall boss of both the EFCC chairman and the AGF.

    Considering the clear intendment of the Act, the EFCC is scheduled to be reasonably independent, in the war against economic and financial crimes. So, should an AGF, for instance, engage in a financial crime, the commission should be able to investigate and prosecute such an AGF. Again, without prejudice to the specific act of insubordination complained of, against Magu; the EFCC should be independent enough to investigate any member of the executive, just as it can investigate any member of the legislature or the judiciary.

    A comparison of the EFCC Act and the Independent Corrupt Practices & Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) Act shows that the chairman of the ICPC has a secure tenure, unlike the chairman of the EFCC. Yet, these two commissions are geared to help the country fight the scourge of corruption, and both organisations, were established by President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, about the same period. Interestingly, the EFCC has by its action proven to be more proactive in the fight against corruption, more than the ICPC.

    Section 3(7) of the ICPC Act, provides that the chairman shall hold office for five years in the first instance, and members apparently for four years in the first instance. On security of tenure, section 3(8) provides: “Notwithstanding the provision of section 3(7) of this Act, the chairman or any member of the commission may at any time be removed from office by the president acting on an address supported by two-thirds majority of the senate praying the he be removed for inability to discharge the functions of his office (whether arising from infirmity of mind or body or any other cause) or for misconduct.”

    Magu, like his predecessors, will be booted out, ignominiously, unless a miracle happens. On its part, no ICPC chairman, has been sacked before the expiration of his tenure, as far as I know. Comparing the productivity of the two commissions, many would give thumbs up to the EFCC, as being more proactive in the fight against corruption, within and outside government circles. Again, between the two agencies, the EFCC is more feared. Could that fear be, because they often employ strong-arm tactics, or is it because of their determination to fight corruption?

    Perhaps, the lawmakers should consider, whether there is a connection between the hyperactive performances of the chairmen of the EFCC and the more matured disposition of the chairmen of the ICPC, and the security of tenure. Could the hyperactivity be an effort to retain the plum job, or is it the calibre of persons who the respective Acts provides, should be appointed to head the two different commissions. Many who have been maltreated by the EFCC would wish Magu, an immediate repose from the plum position. But there are those making a song and dance of Magu’s predicament, without minding their celebrated immorality.

    As the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, would have said, the complaint about the wrongheadedness or even highhandedness in the war against corruption is corruption fighting back. I shudder that there is not a whimper, in defence of Magu, one of the poster boys, of the Buhari’s administration in the past five years. Could there be more than meets the eye, in the unfolding Ibrahim Magu’s saga?

  • Magu and PMB’s anti-graft war

    Magu and PMB’s anti-graft war

    By Olakunle Abimbola

    Want a sure, straight and quick-fire path to Golgotha?

    Follow the trail of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) chairs, past and present: Nuhu Ribadu, Farida Waziri, Ibrahim Lamorde and now, Ibrahim Magu.

    All appear fated to willy-nilly nailing to the cross, like the Christ Jesus in place of Barabas.  Yet, their office was conceived to help drain Nigeria of sleaze.

    Even then, with the holy venality of the Olusegun Obasanjo era that easily consumed Ribadu at the earliest juncture of the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Presidency; and President Goodluck Jonathan’s sheer travesty at fighting corruption, creating a regime of notoriously voracious “yam eaters”, that in turn threw up indifferent EFCC chairs, Magu’s path would appear the goriest so far.

    Though a poster boy of an administration that makes anti-corruption its most fundamental plank, flaunting the near-ascetic President Buhari at its head, and a near-saintly Pastor-Lawyer, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo as No. 2, the institutional support for Magu would appear very suspect.

    If that cannot be completely confirmed by his “eternal” acting chairman status, with the refusal of the Senate to confirm his chairmanship, his rather shabby treatment, since his latest odyssey started on July 6, reinforces just that.

    A rather dramatic DSS (or is it conventional Police?) “arrest”, later denied and dubbed “invitation” (even if apparently forced — a sure contradiction in terms), nevertheless climaxed in an after-probe detention for nights on end.

    The embattled Magu is facing an administrative probe, but bail appears no option.  Yet, even indicted persons, in conventional courts, push legal and democratic rights to bail.  Lexis and concepts never come more confused!

    When the elephant falls, say the Yoruba, all sort of knives teem to validate their sharpness.  At the trip of Magu, mud-spattering and wild allegations assume a doomsday proportion, that you just wonder what’s the motive by it all.

    A top columnist, with glam and dash, claimed Magu invaded, commando-style, the Minna residence of Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, former military head of state.  Abubakar has since denied such, though he admitted an EFCC near-search, due to a mix-up in addresses, at a guest house outside Minna, belonging to the general.

    The same columnist also claimed Magu stopped Gen. Theophilus Danjuma from paying for a private jet, allegedly forcing his cheque to bounce, thus making an irate Danjuma to storm Aso Villa, to protest to the president.

    But on that claim, mum is it from the Danjuma camp, even if the general did visit the president lately but came out sounding more conciliatory, less combative, as Danjuma and his Christian Elders lobby are lately wont to.

    Another blogger has gone rather ga-ga with wild allegations, entrapping Magu, Vice President Osinbajo, and Kiki, the VP’s daughter.

    While the VP has notified the IGP on criminal prosecution after thorough investigation, over alleged slush money from Magu, Miss Osinbajo’s landlord has pooh-poohed the blogger’s claim that she owned the building housing her Abuja business address.  Dr. Ayuba Musa, the landlord, has affirmed Miss Osibajo was his tenant, as she earlier claimed.

    Even the official “charges” would appear, at a closer look, as just card-stacking.

    Okay, the allegation of a N5billion discrepancy, in recovered stolen funds, is grave enough.  Magu’s EFCC is alleged to have declared N539 billion, instead of N504 billion, which Magu’s traducers, with their media confederates, have triumphantly dubbed “re-looting the loot”.  That deserves probing, fair and square.

    But the other allegations would appear manic mud-splashing, in a ruthless intra-administration turf war, for vicious supremacy: Magu’s alleged insubordination to the Attorney-General of the Federation and Justice minister, hoarding information on the extradition of Diezani Alison-Madueke, the Jonathan era’s alleged queen of sleaze and alleged late investigation of Process and Industrial Development (P&ID), which led to a Butcher arbitration in London almost butchering Nigeria in punitive costs.

    Other allegations include the existence of “Magu boys”, delay in acting on two seized vessels, leading to a wanton loss of crude, reporting some judges to their presiding officers without going through the AGF, sales of seized assets to alleged cronies, and alleged leaking of some investigated cases to the media, thus allegedly prejudicing the cases, in form of media trials.

    Incidentally, Magu and Abubakar Malami, SAN, the Justice minister, who appears Magu’s traducer-in-chief on this one, approximate the two contrasting forces, tearing the Buhari Presidency apart, in what appears a destructive tension.

    The ascendancy of the Malami side would probably sink Magu — and if he is guilty as charged, why not?

    But that will also pronounce a harsh indictment, if not severe verdict, on Buhari’s anti-graft war, of which Magu is an unfazed poster boy.  So, all the present excitement might well be a harsh self-plebiscite, which could easily end as unforced error.  But we wait with bated breath!

    Still, the moderating, nay redeeming, force would appear Justice Ayo Salami, former President of the Court of Appeal, a victim of Jonathan-era executive-judicial politics, because the court he presided over did retrieve stolen mandates.

    In a fit of self-mockery, Bode George, the Lagos politician, has decreed Justice Salami’s integrity suspect.  But with all their havoc as ruling party, how would George and his PDP know integrity, even if they saw one — PDP that has joined the nail-Magu orchestra with a frenzy?

    Still, while Justice Salami lost his office but regained his honour, the judiciary he left behind sunk into untrammeled rot, hitherto believed impossible; climaxing in the Code of Conduct (CCT) conviction of a sitting CJN, Justice Walter Onnoghnen.

    With his lost battle against CJN Aloysius Katsina-Alu’s judicial order, and fulsome demonization from charlatan politicians out for the jurist’s blood at all cost, he would at least appreciate Magu’s present goring, by wolves baying for his blood.

    Indeed, Magu’s appears a one-man bravura against graft, with sans institutional support: an eternally acting EFCC chair (denied confirmation by the Senate), had his well-earned conviction, in a celebrated corruption case, smashed by a cynical apex court flashing triumphant technicality, and now being thrown under the bus by his direct executive bosses!  What suicide mission!

    Yet, in all of the administration, Magu appears such a riveting alter ego of the president himself: heckled, abused, mocked and traduced, for the courage to do good, and save a doomed society from itself, with its suicidal elite!

    Still, however the Magu muddle is resolved, the thieving Nigerian elite will get their comeuppance: if not in this PMB anti-graft war, then in an iconoclastic orgy, where every plunderer of the public till will pay, the hard way, for his crime.

    When that dawns, no Supreme Court would flex its technical powers to spring convicts; no legislature would filibuster over confirmations of goodly public servants; no turf battles would throw conscientious public servants under the bus.

    Before that doomsday, however, may the good Lord open President Muhammadu Buhari’s eyes to see through a turf war, which won by the wrong camp, may well bury his anti-corruption war; and Justice Salami the wisdom of Solomon, to ensure a rare decent public officer gets justice, no matter the flying doomsday allegations.

  • The trial Magu

    The trial Magu

    Sanya Oni

    To many Nigerians, Ibrahim Magu, the embattled anti-corruption Czar had it coming all along. Even by Nigeria’s rather permissive standards, the 14-paragraph report delivered in 2017 by the Department of State Security to the National Assembly shortly after President Muhammadu Buhari nominated him for the anti-graft top job would, ordinarily, have been deemed devastating enough to rule him out of contention. Nigerians would recall the cocktail of accusations top of which was the charge of improperly keeping sensitive EFCC documents in his residence, an action that the Police Service Commission considered “prejudicial to state security”, sabotage and acts unbecoming of a police officer”.

    There were others such as occupying a residence rented for N40m, at N20m per annum – an accommodation not paid for from the commission’s finances but by one Umar Mohammed (Air Commodore/Rtd), said to be ‘a questionable businessman”. He was also said to be given to travelling on a private carrier, Easyjet, said to be owned by Mohammed of whom he was said to enjoy “mutually beneficial relationship”.  To lend proof to the charge, the department actually cited one instance when Magu flew to Maiduguri, alongside Mohammed and the Managing Director of a bank being investigated by EFCC over complicity in funds allegedly stolen by Diezani Alison-Madueke, Jonathan’s petroleum minister. Also, in the mix were allegations of vendetta against one Stanley Lawson; the charge that he preferred to work through police cronies in EFCC. In the end, the DSS surmised that Magu “failed the integrity test and will eventually constitute a liability to the anti-corruption drive of the present administration.”

    The big deal therefore – that is if it comes to that –is that whereas President Buhari was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt despite the weight of allegations at the time, this time around, he seems to have finally decided that his cup was now full and running over!

    Unlike the last time, Magu appears to have courted a more formidable nemesis – the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN). Ironically, he’s accused of sundry offenses ranging from diversion of recovered loot to insubordination and misconduct – offences not fundamentally different from those of 2017!

    There is of course a lot to say of his dramatic arrest in Abuja last week as deriving from an old but familiar playbook which began from when Nuhu Ribadu, EFCC’s founding chairman exited the agency in 2007. Ribadu was removed ignominiously by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, demoted in rank and sent to the National Institute, Kuru only to be dismissed from the police for refusing to obey “lawful orders of his commander , the Inspector -General of Police and for continuously absenting himself from duty without leave or excuse. It took judicial intervention to restore his rank and to allow him retire in peace.

    Following him was Farida Waziri. In her case, President Goodluck Jonathan had sensationally declared that she was removed in national interest the details of which he preferred to make a “state secret”. (She would aver in her book Farida Waziri: One Step Ahead that the former president actually fired her for probing oil racketeers).

    Ibrahim Lamorde, a Jonathan holdover, was lucky to have survived his first term given the swirling allegations of improprieties while he held sway. He was shoved aside –also ignominiously – months to the end of his first term.

    And now Ibrahim Magu. Is Magu fated to go the way of his predecessors?

    Much as it seems early in the day to be definitive, the actors, as I noted earlier, have merely picked up the old playbook. Already, all manner of figures – all of them dizzying –are being bandied. We hear of N539 billion declared as recovered funds instead of N504 billion earlier claimed. Minus showboating, Magu is accused of doing little to provide evidence for the extradition of Diezani Alison-Madueke. His tardiness in taking action on the two vessels seized by the Navy also came up for mention just as his alleged disrespect for the court order to unfreeze a N7 billion judgement in favour of a former executive director of a bank.

    His enemies, by the way, did not forget to mention the so-called Magu Boys, the elite club among the corps of investigators said to have the ears of the big boss. To these and many more have been added the tale about some choice property in Dubai linked to the embattled anti-graft Czar.

    All of these are at best allegations – yet to be proven. Suffice to say however that in a country where mere working hypotheses are held as sacrosanct, where spins and theories are packaged as facts to confuse the unwary, and conspiracy theorists perennially primed for the overdrive, there is pretty little chance of the ordinary Nigerian being able to sift the grain from the mass of chaff.

    What do we know of the choreographed mid-morning ‘abduction’ –with the media in tow – as against a simple summon? Was it mere happenstance or part of the plot? And the daily round of leaks (or lynching?) which leaves the impression of a fate long sealed before the ritual of a fact-finding investigation? Are these also part of the ‘process’ too? And if I may ask – to what purpose?

    Would those be part of the intriguing riddle which the eminent jurist, the stern Justice Ayo Isa Salami is expected to help clear?

    Ribadu. Waziri. Lamorde. And now Magu.

    The big question: How come things never seem to go right with successive leadership of the EFCC?

    The answer:  It comes basically to the wide gulf between what the EFCC’s establishment law prescribes as the role of its chief executive and Nigerians’ messianic expectations of the office! The law certainly did not create a maximum chief executive; nor does it envisage such wide discretions in which its chairman will be the chief operating officer, chief accounting officer and public auctioneer – as alleged – rolled into one!

    The law of course prescribes a 25-member board to give policy directions to the agency; not only that, it expects the anti-graft body to submit its reports annually to the National Assembly. While these institutional safeguards might not necessarily suffice, they constitute essential pillars in institution-building without which the agency will ever remain subordinated to the whims and caprices of an all-powerful anti-corruption Czar.  And because it suits successive administrations to have sole administrator answerable to it in charge; and a public which demands action – plenty of it given the gangrenous dimensions that corruption has assumed in our national life to the point where some measures of arbitrariness seems tolerable, an otherwise well-conceived agency is caught in the typical maelstrom of the country’s base politics.

    The fault does not lie with Magu or Malami; rather it is, as they say, in our stars!