For two days, they gathered at the State House in Abuja to contribute to the National Dialogue on Corruption. It featured heads of anti-graft agencies, members of the Bench and the Bar, civil society organisations and religious leaders, among others. How will the talkshop organised by the Office of the Vice President in collaboration with the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) help the anti-graft war? JOSEPH JIBUEZE asks.
If the fight against corruption must be won, new strategies are required. They include enlisting the support of all segments of the society, including the youth, civil society and religious organisations. There is also a need to build systems that do not allow corruption to thrive. According to participants at a two-day National Dialogue on Corruption, the fight against graft cannot be won if all arms of government and the society are not on the same page.
In attendance were Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Walter Onnoghen, Attorney-General of the Federation Abubakar Malami (SAN), Senate President Bukola Saraki, represented by Senator Chukwuka Utazi, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Acting Chairman Ibrahim Magu, Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) Chairman Ekpo Nta, former EFCC chairman Nuhu Ribadu, Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) chairman Sam Saba, among others.
The event had five sessions with sub-themes. There were no fewer than six speakers drawn from labour unions, religious and civil society organisations and anti-graft agencies. The first session, with the theme: Meaning and conceptions of corruption – types, effects and obstacles to effective fight against corruption, was chaired by Prof Ladipo Adamolekun.
The theme of the second session, chaired by Alhaji Hassan Sunmonu, was: Nigeria’s socio-economic order and economic relations: the reward system and character of the federal system of government. The third session had the theme: The political party system, civil service rules and practices and public/social service delivery. It was chaired by Imam Abubakar Siddeeq.
The fourth session, chaired by Ribadu, had the theme: Pattern of legal and judicial system and the budget and budgeting process; the fifth session, with Rev Musa Asake as chairman, had the theme: Elite manipulation of religion and ethnicity and leadership preparation of youth.
Osinbajo: We must work together
Prof Osinbajo said it requires a joint effort to defeat corruption. “We must work together – the legislature, the judiciary and the executive – to put a model that must work. We must ensure that systems that are put in place are fair and comply with the rule of law,” he said.
He said the fight will not be won where citizens continue to celebrate the corrupt, adding that the underlying causes of corruption, such as deprivation, also need to be addressed.
He recalled that corruption in the Lagos State Judiciary dropped to zero percent following the sack of 22 corrupt magistrates and three judges, by drastic improvement in welfare.
According to him, prior to the reforms, he once met an honest judge who retired after 10 years on the Bench but lived in someone’s boys quarters because he had no house.
He said a judge’s salary of N67,000 then could not build a house. To reverse the trend, every judge was given a house for life, while their remuneration was increased “considerably”, to the extent that Lagos became a reference point.
“It was because a system was in place and impunity was not allowed. It is important that we put in place models that will work,” he said.
Osinbajo wants a revamp of the process of appointment of judges, saying that in the United Kingdom, candidates undergo 17 different tests before being appointed.
The Acting President said a robust international collaboration is also needed to return stolen assets and to stop the hiding of loot abroad.
“One of the critical issues that we have discovered in our fight against corruption is that we need much more robust international cooperation, especially with respect to return of assets. We find that the process of returning assets, aside from the judicial process, is so difficult and so complicated that it could just take you literally years to get assets returned.
“And I think that it is important for countries of the world where stolen assets are located to really work with us in ensuring that these assets are returned speedily. I know that the United Kingdom is working with us in particular on this issue of beneficiary register.
“That will be extremely useful for us because we will now be able to discover who is behind some of the names of companies and other shelves that are used to hide stolen assets.’’
Justice Onnoghen believes that if the fight against graft is to be won, the culture of impunity must be discouraged. The CJN admitted that “a few bad eggs exist within the judiciary”, but restated his commitment to collaborate with other arms of government to fight the scourge.
“If you’re to fight corruption, then you should fight the culture of impunity which is attitudinal, by adhering strictly to the constitutional provisions and the rule of law. If we allow the rule of law to reign, then there will be a dramatic reduction in corruption and injustice. That is how I see it,” he said.
Judiciary’s role
PACAC chairnan Prof Itse Sagay (SAN) said corruption will be successfully tackled if the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015 is effectively implemented.
He said the judiciary was still disregarding provisions of the law which are meant to speed up cases.
Sagay said Section 396 of the ACJA provides that cases must be heard from day to day, and where impossible, adjournments must not exceed 14 days, and that where the defence raises a preliminary objection to the charge or information, such objection shall be considered along with the substantive issues and a ruling made at the time of delivery of judgment.
“In spite of these clear provisions, some judges are still granting adjournments running into months and worse still, will adjourn their cases to give a ruling on a preliminary objection, instead of giving the ruling at the same time as the judgment on the substantive criminal matter.
“What is more, contrary to Section 306 which provides that an application for stay of proceedings in respect of a criminal matter before the Court shall not be entertained, some courts still adjourn in order to await the outcome of an interlocutory appeal.
“All this is illegal and strictly constitute acts of misconduct on the part of the Judge. The outcome of all this is that we have over hundred high profile cases not going nowhere,” Sagay said.
He also decried what he called a most tragic phenomenon currently creating a major setback for speedy criminal trials where Senior Advocates of Nigeria defending looters and other financial criminals deliberately set out to cross-examine prosecution witness for weeks in the hope of dragging on the trial indefinitely.
Sagay said: “One prosecution witness was in recent times cross-examined for over a month whilst the Judge sat there helplessly, clearly having lost control of his own court. All he needed to do was to give such filibustering Counsel a time limit, say two hours and the nonsense would have stopped. But the Judge having totally lost control of his Court simply looked on helplessly as the filibustering Counsel went on week after week.
“In this regard, I propose that all defence Counsel should pledge to cooperate with the Court in effecting speedy trials before bail is granted to their clients and such bail should be revoked if the Counsel goes back on his word.
“It is not a coincidence that the fastest trials that we have recorded in Nigeria were those in which bail was not granted to the high profile accused persons. We must now think creatively, to speed up corruption trials in Nigeria.”
The PACAC chairman said the committee will set up a corps of young lawyers to monitor every corruption case, and report any breach of the ACJA to PACAC.
“We shall then pass these on to the National Judicial Commission for appropriate action,” he said.
Reverse presumption of innocence
Magu said while Section 36 (5) of the 1999 Constitution provides that Every person who is charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty; it also has a proviso, which states: Provided that nothing in this section shall invalidate any law by reason only that the law imposes upon any such person the burden of proving particular facts.
According to him, one area where the presumption of innocence can be justifiably reversed is concerning illicit or unjust enrichment by a public officer. He called for an amendment of Section 7(1)(b) of the EFCC Act which empowers the commission to investigate properties of any person if the person’s lifestyle and extent of properties are not justified by his sources of income.
“It is recommended that section 7(1)(b) of the EFCC Act be amended to create a specific offence like section 10. This will greatly assist in prosecution of public officers whose lifestyle is beyond their sources of lawful income,” Magu said.
He also called for strict enforcement of the ACJA, as well as strict compliance with speedy trial provisions under EFCC Act. For instance, he said Section 19 of the EFCC Act empowers courts to ensure that “all matters brought before it by EFCC are conducted with dispatch and given accelerated hearing;” and that courts are “to adopt all legal measures necessary to avoid unnecessary delays and abuse in the conduct of matters brought by EFCC.”
The acting EFCC chair called for adoption of sentencing guidelines to strengthen sentencing regime for corruption cases. He spoke of the need for a Witness Protection Legislation.
“It is important to follow up the announcement of the whistle-blower policy with a legislation to provide a legal framework for its application. The legislation should also provide for a witness protection programme to adequately protect whistle-blowers from harassment, intimidation or victimisation,” he said.
Other recommendations by Magu are the enactment of Proceeds of Crimes Act, evolving a process that will empower civic participation in the formulation of budgets, and more use of the Freedom of Information Act.
“Information about sums released for project can also be used to track project implementation. Tracking of project information can generate information unveiling diversion or embezzlement of funds. Concerned citizens and CSOs can provide such information to EFCC to provide a basis for investigating corruption and recovery of stolen funds,” Magu said.
Saba said the institutional framework necessary to control and diminish corruption includes a strong system for monitoring conduct and exposing wrong doing.
He said there was need for a strong framework constituting and insulating institutions of oversight, exposure and punishment so that they are not subverted by the very actors they are supposed to be controlling.
“This means that such institutions must be fully autonomous from party politics and their tenure guaranteed so they are not used by the ruling party or leader or faction as a tool of political vendetta. Surmounting these institutional challenges will create a strong pedestal to lunch an effective campaign against corruption in public service,” the CCB chairman said.
Saba said upholding moral and ethical values is another effective remedy to diminish corruption.
“Assets declaration is another veritable and workable tool to eliminate corruption. This is because where it is well administered serves as a tool for detecting and preventing illicit enrichment and conflicts of interest among public officials.
“While this is already on-going, it should not be kept secret. Furthermore, improper enrichment of public officials cannot be detected unless their own personal and family finances are transparent.
“Therefore, there should be a mandatory public declaration of the assets and liabilities of the immediate family of all specified senior public officers on appointment or assumption of duty as well as after their tenures,” he said.
In addition to political will, Saba said the people – those at the receiving end of the effects of corruption – should take ownership of the fight, meaning that they have to develop a higher consciousness far above their ethnic and religious inclinations.
Saba said: “On the part of government, there is the need to provide a living wage, a good reward system that encompass not only traditional, quantifiable elements like salary, variable pay and benefits, but also more intangible non-cash elements such as scope to achieve and exercise responsibility, career opportunities, learning and development, the intrinsic motivation provided by the work itself and the quality of working life provided by the.
“Provision of basic amenities for the people will also go a long way to eliminate corruption. If there is constant water supply, good schools, good hospitals, abundant food at reasonable cost, constant electricity supply, affordable housing and good roads for easy transportation, the craze for individuals to get these things through whatever means will reduce if not vanish.”
He said the attitude of government business being ‘nobody’s business’ should stop, while side-tracking laid down procedures to cut corners should give way to commitment, transparency and honesty.
“Nigerians and public officers in particular should have a patriotic mind set, which is a mindset of service to the nation above every other primordial interest (religion, ethnicity, tribe, family),” he added.
Former External Affairs Minister Prof Ibrahim Gambari, who chaired the opening ceremony, said the the arrest and punishment of corrupt officials must be complemented with a revamped national reward system.
He said it was not all Nigerians that are ‘fantastically corrupt’, but that there were so many decent Nigerians in all works of life doing the nation proud and, therefore, need to be recognised and honoured.
“In other words, as the looters and corrupt individuals are being shamed and punished, on the other hand patriotic and incorrupt individuals also need to be rewarded and honoured. This approach would make corruption unattractive and at the same time encourage patriotism,” he said.
Gambari said the sustainability of the fight against corruption in the context of an agenda of change must involve a collective endeavour to open a new chapter in national life that would represent both a clean break with the past and the opening of a new gateway into the future.
“Therefore, the nation’s elite must be part of the solution and not remain a largest part of the problem. President Buhari is leading the fight for the people and we must support him so that we can take our country back from the enemies of the Nigerian state – the looters and destroyers of our national resources from the professional champions of narrow ethnic interests by whatever name, who thrives on what divides us.
“To this end, a wholesale attitudinal change combined with new codes of leadership and followership need to be embraced across different segments of society,” he said.
Role of religious organisations
Magu called for a law to regulate religions organisations. “Religion is now big business. It is like capitalism,” he said.
PACAC Executive Secretary Prof Bolaji Owasanoye regretted that corruption has become so rife that some looters have become richer that some states. “We need to ask ourselves some questions,” he said.
Such questions, he said, include the role religious organisations play. “Faith-based groups should isolate the thieves among them and not celebrate them. We should all be sufficiently outraged to challenge them,” he said.
Activist-lawyer Mr Femi Falana (SAN) said religious organisations have a role to play in discouraging corruption among their members.
He decried a situation where churches and mosques organise thanksgiving services and access cash donations from people who stole public funds.
“When anyone has been accused of corruption , don’t organise thanksgiving service for them,” Falana said.
Executive Director of the Socio-Economic Right Accountability Project (SERAP) Adetokunbo Mumuni said Nigerians were only religious in appearance. “Nigerians are just ceremonial people, not godly people,” he said. He said some religious leaders were only interested in displaying their cassocks and turbans rather than living what they profess.
“The core of religions is to make you good. There is no religion that supports stealing and corruption,” he said, adding that churches and mosques must teach their members “moral soundness”.
A representative of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) said thieves were banished in traditional societies rather than being celebrated. He blamed western capitalism for destroying Nigeria’s value systems.
University don, Dr Maikano Madaki of the Department of Sociology, Bayero University, Kano, said investigation of corruption-related offences experience other problems along the line of cultural, regional, ethnic, and religious divide.
He said partisanship and nepotism are also used to halt the process of investigation connected to corruption, divides which he said play a fundamental role in sabotaging investigation to the extent that when a particular individual that belongs to any of the lines is accused of corruption, some of his/her associates will do all that is humanly possible to frustrate, condemn, affect or even influence the investigation process.
“The fight against corruption is a collective responsibility, as such, there is the need to mobilise and re-orient the entire citizens on the importance of the fight thereby minimising the use of cultural, religious, ethnic, regional, sectional and political differences to halt government effort.
“These divides are commonly used in Nigeria to selfishly express dissatisfaction with any move to arrest and detain an individual that belongs to a particular group in connection to corruption.
“This emphasises the need to involve all categories of leaders – community, traditional and religious in the fight against corruption. Sometimes, politicians from the opposition use party platforms to criticise government efforts at fighting corruption baselessly,” he said.
Eliminate obstacles
PACAC member and professor of criminology, Femi Odekunle, said obstacles in the way of effective fight against corruption can be substantially remedied by adopting a complementary approach and instrumentality that will make the fight against corruption more “systemic”, deeper in reach, and more enduring than the current appearance of “picking” the obvious or the available and thereby only scratching the surface of the problem.
He said: “Pay urgently-needed attention and take commensurate action towards an observable, even ‘forced’, reversal of the ‘emerged’ individualised ethos and culture of general indiscipline and lack of law-abidingness in the population at large – an ethos and culture not-unrelated to pervasive corruption and impunity.
“Adequately fund, staff, and appropriately-equip the leading anti-corruption agencies (as obtains in other serious climes) to really capacitate them to do their real work.
“Extend the anti-corruption attention to lower tiers of government (States and LGAs) and the private sector as well as to other types of corruption that are causal or consequential to the economic/financial but are equally, if not sometimes more, dangerous to the health of the nation than the financial e.g. political/electoral-corruption, policy-corruption, systemic civil-service/administrative-corruption, professional-corruption, and routine street/work-place corruption.
“Deliberately mobilise and encourage the generality of the citizenry and the organised civil society to agitate continuously for representative democracy through insistence on popular and corrupt-free elections; to demand accountability and transparency from elected and appointed officials at all tiers and levels of government; to exert pressures on governments to ensure that officials, in both the public and private sectors, who have engaged in corrupt practices resign their positions, make restitution, and face stipulated sanctions; and to ceaselessly disseminate information about the practical/observable development cost and evils of corruption to the generality of our population.
“Ensure that the economic dimension of our foreign policy/relations includes certain definitive “reciprocities” with respect to cooperation and ease of return of verified looted funds/assets back to the country.”
