IBRAHIM MAGU
IBRAHIM Magu was little known before he erupted on the big stage. Littlein the sense that he was no celebrity. He was no big-time police man or soaring impresario on the social scene. He was a police man who did his job, and racked up a resume in the battle against corruption.
But his story carries something of an irony. He is today being rejected by the Senate during a confirmation session. But this same man was ousted from the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) and investigated, and even put behind bars. The authorities discovered he had retained documents of the commission in his private residence.
But nothing was found wrong with it. He was released. His was not a case of criminality, but of a police officer who was absorbed in the work of investigation and the only way he thought the documents could be preserved was to keep them himself. He returned to the police force, and he served as an assistant commissioner.
But his trajectory rose. Even outside the EFCC, his record was good, even impressive. He had done a good job as head of the Economic Governance Unit, and became a thorn in the corrupt hide of quite a few big men.
No one saw him in the horizon when Muhammadu Buhari was elected president. Another Ibrahim was the head of EFCC. He, Ibrahim Lamorde, it was who had recommended the return of Magu to the anti-corruption agency. More for irony,Goodluck Jonathan gave his nod.
When Lamorde’s term expired, eyes turned to Magu, and some hairbegan to ruffle. But that was because of another irony. One of those under investigation when Magu was active in the NuhuRibadu years was the then Kwara State Governor, BukolaSaraki.
Now, years later, his EFCC has focused its moral eyes on the Senate President, and an adversarial storm has been precipitated between Saraki, the number three citizen, and Magu the corruption czar.
Now, the nation watches as the year ends, the man who fought corruption with ferocity has seen the prophecy of many coming through: corruption is fighting back. It is fighting back from one of the big houses of democracy, the Senate. They gathered and decided that they were not going to confirm him as the top man of EFCC. That means he has to remain acting, until he can no longer, and he will have to be replaced.
That implies that the Senate wants a character who is amenable to the moral vanities of the political elite. The issue is that a power play is roiling. Some of Buhari’s kitchen cabinet habitués loath the righteous positions of the EFCC. They see him as too technical, too independent, too Magu. He is not descending from the Olympian rigidities to more earthbound compromises.
See what has happened since he became the head of the EFCC. Names have been mentioned. Many of them colleagues and former fellow travellers of the senators and politicians of what we knew once as the New PDP, who defected to the APC. The Senate President himself has been ruffled, has been prosecuted and made many journeys to the courtroom, in a face of vanished dignity.
He did not like it. At least, his supporters said, the EFCC ought to understand that he is the third citizen, and even if he was not treated as a sacred cow, he should be treated in such a way that the opportunity would not arise that he should be treated as a mere citizen.
But we had other stories. Sambo Dasuki, former National Security Adviser to the president, got under the gun and was under intense investigation. It concerned a cash vault of N4.7 billion, regarded as the money designed to fight the war against the militant group, Boko Haram. Rather, it became the conduit of political corruption. Big names rolled out of the dishonour list. Tony Anenih, OluFalae, OlisaMetuh, Raymond Dokpesi, Femi Fani-Kayode, et al. The money was used, ostensibly, for another war: presidential election to return GoodluckJonathan. Also, Diezani Alison-Madueke, who played peacock during the Jonathan years, fell into the net.
The list was such that no limit was seen to the sweep of Magu’s broom. This shook the nation. It was so much that many began to see the Buhari administration as concentrating on corruption and leaving other matters undone. The economy continued to flag and faint. Power and infrastructure was not getting adequate funding and activity.
The civil society was getting excited about the war on corruption while the political elite was getting nervous. Yet, many think the war on corruption has been more about the optics. Name after name came out who had stolen so much money, and it became a sort of perennial song of our leaky till. The money was coming, Magu said. How much? We do not know, and the federal government has been asked by the civil society and newspaper editorials to dedicate a purse and we all as a nation should know the inflows and outflows. Such transparency will give it populist aura and acceptability. The danger, some analysts thought, was that the war was fought for the sake of fighting.
Magu has also been criticised for a lack of respect, working in cahoots at times with the Attorney General AbubakarMalami, for the rule of law. The story of the handling of Dasuki where he is detained in spite of court pronouncements has come to see the corruption war as guilty of its own corruption: the corruption of the law. But that has resonated with many Nigerians who have shown little regard for the men who allegedly drained our coffers while they enjoyed in the tony comforts of life.
So, Magu represents the contradiction of the war on corruption. He has fought with a single-minded zeal the hefty men who have ravaged our patrimony. They have dreaded him. He may not have performed in the showy, if impetuous style of Ribadu. Magu has been taciturn at best, more observed in his doings than in his sayings. But he has been able to contend with the big powers.
But he may not have had enough powers to do so, hence the coalition of the kitchen cabinet with the top politicians to stymie him. Worse still, he is being nominated by a president while a question is propounded: how come the president has men working for him who are at cross purposes with his war on corruption. Does that show a naïve president who cannot rein in his men? Does that mean the president does not stand by his main man of anti-corruption? Is the president by his lack of control or naivety undermining his war against corruption? Is the act of corruption fighting back coming from his own lair?
Magu was also the butt of investigation of the Department of State Services. Some see the charges as tenuous: one, that a commodore paid for the rent and furnishing of Magu’s residence. Two, he flew in his jet. Well, the EFCC said the commodore was not under investigation, and Magu played no role nor was he involved in the financials of his own residence. No one accused him of corrupt enrichment, or undue influence peddling.
These charges were condemned by the civil society groups and some lawyers who believe these charges are calibrated to frustrate a good man. So how did the president to whom the DSS boss reports allow these charges to surface? Did he know this and still nominatedMagu, or was this an ambush?
All of these show how Magu has dominated the year. The economy rattled, the roads were bad,power failure stung at night, schools failed. Many died in hospitals needlessly. But corruption stole headline after headline.
For making the fight against corruption the top agenda, in spite of hunger and failure of other sectors, The Nation has chosen Ibrahim Magu as Person of the Year 2016.
