Tag: Joshua Dariye

Former governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye, must have wondered what struck him on Tuesday last week, when he was sentenced to 14 years behind bars, after being found guilty of the charges of criminal breach of trust and criminal appropriation of the state’s funds running to over N2bn. Justice Adebukola Banjoko, the judge that many of the remaining corrupt public officials must be afraid of by now, in a six-and-a-half hour judgment, convicted the ex-governor on 15 of the 23 counts preferred against him in July 2007. Many corrupt officials would be afraid of having their cases tried by her because Dariye is the second ex-governor she would be convicting in about two weeks. She had earlier imposed 14 years’ jail term on ex-Governor of Taraba State, Jolly Nyame, on similar charges.

Justice Banjoko said of the brazenness with which Dariye carried out the fraud: “I can’t imagine such a brazen act. Is it the transfer of as much as about half a billion naira from the state’s ecological fund into a personal venture account? Everybody is a victim here.” The judge added that from a random check of some documents tendered as exhibits, she discovered that “the defendant was, in fact, richer than his state.” How on earth can any sane person divert ecological funds, or any public funds for that matter? Everybody, as the judge noted, is a victim in this circumstance.

One cannot but agree with Justice Banjoko that “there should be no compromise to corruption, by whatever shade or colour, or region, rich or poor; corruption will forever be corruption.” And it should be so treated. For every kobo that a public official steals, someone is being deprived of something; it could be education, it could be quality healthcare, good roads, jobs or even life. Moreover, investors run away from corrupt environments because it is antithetical to a good business climate.

With these high profile convictions, those who have been accusing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of losing high profile cases to shoddy prosecution should begin to review their stance. So much waters pass underneath the proverbial bridge; it is beyond the argument of shoddy prosecution. Going by the impunity of many governors, who run their states as personal fiefdoms, especially their lack of regard for fiscal discipline, many of them deserve to be jailed even as incumbents, but for the immunity they enjoy.  As a matter of fact, to paraphrase a former chief of general staff, they should be jailed and thereafter prosecuted! Their recklessness is indescribable. They refer to public fund as if it is their personal money. “I don’t have money for this or that project”, they tell you with such arrogance. Does the money belong to them? As a matter of fact, one governor, in his heyday, was said to be telling the people of the state that he did this and that for them and that if they liked, they should not vote for him in the coming election, as if he was doing the people a favour.

But it is heartwarming that our courts are waking up to the reality of the dangers we all face if people we put in positions of trust abuse such trust, and serving such persons their deserved comeuppance. We have ourselves to congratulate for this because, but for our strident calls for the needful in the judiciary, we probably would have been watching helplessly as people we all know as certified thieves would turn our judiciary to pawns, to our collective peril. But we all stood up against some of the so-called senior lawyers who, rather than use the law to get justice for the general good, would be fishing for technicalities to get their rich political thieves off the hook of the crime it is glaring they committed because of the hefty legal fees that such persons pay them. Our judges must be worried that criminals who committed crimes here in Nigeria get sentenced abroad when the case is still at preliminary stage back home here.

Justice Kayode Eso of blessed memory it was who alerted us to the existence of ‘billionaire judges’ in our midst many years ago. Today, we have many billionaire lawyers who stumbled on their riches not necessarily because of their brilliance in law but because they are able to subvert the law through unnecessary interlocutory injunctions, with the connivance of some pliant judges. It is in this country that a governor who went into the state house yesterday in bathroom slippers can emerge today in golden shoes without anyone asking questions. The meteoric transformation of many public officials in the country calls into question the source of their sudden wealth. Unfortunately, our legal system puts the burden of proof on the prosecution and not on a public official whose salary all his lifetime, even without spending a dime of it, is not up to N50million but he can lay claim to property worth billions.

We, the people will continue to shoot ourselves in the foot if we keep parroting and swallowing hook, line and sinker some of the arguments that our corrupt elite pass on to us without interrogating such positions. When they are haunted by their corrupt past and see they are about being brought to justice, they start shouting that the sitting government is victimising them due to political differences. I have always made this point; perhaps since the Obasanjo era when some people joined our ruling thieves in advancing this argument of political victimisation. I will not stop repeating myself because, until we go this way, we will be going in circles in the anti-corruption war. Let Obasanjo catch his own political enemies who are thieves. Let Goodluck Jonathan also catch his political opponents who have dipped their fingers into our collective pie. Just imagine the number of thieves that we would have taken out of circulation if this had been done. But we are waiting (thus playing into the hands of the big thieves) to catch all the thieves across parties before acknowledging that the anti-corruption war is working. The ordinary Nigerian must begin to reject this self-serving argument of the political elite. No doubt the best thing is for a true anti-corruption war not to have respect for religious, ethnic or political sentiments. But ours is still a fledgling democracy that runs on personalities and therefore should not be compared with places that run on structures. What should bother us is that the political opponents being arrested and tried are thieves; and not whether they belong to the opposition party or not.

This is the way it should be in a country where big people engage in primitive stealing as if stealing is going out of fashion. For God’s sake, what does any sane person need N2.2billion that a former Chief of Air staff, Air Marshall Adesola Amosun, for instance, was asked to forfeit (temporarily) to the Federal Government? That is how sunk our country is. I keep having the feeling that the worst place in hell will be the final resting place of many of our elite rulers whose proclivity to dip their hands in the public till is without comparison. They are so heartless. Many Nigerians out there cannot afford a meal a day; yet these people who steal in billions are reluctant to review upward the paltry N18,000 minimum wage.

It is because they are haunted by their dark deeds that they go about with security escorts that we, the oppressed, pay to keep. They know the harm they have done and they keep doing to the people and so cannot just be themselves in a crowd or in public without a retinue of security details. Yet, they claim to be democratically elected. What would they have done if we were in a military era?

We must celebrate whenever any of these big thieves is convicted. The icing on the cake is that they are even not allowed an option of fine. Otherwise, their fellow thieves would rally round them to pay the fine, no matter how hefty because they expect the same treatment when their own convictions come. But, like a magnanimous judge once did, they could be allowed to pick and choose any prison of their choice to serve their terms upon conviction. That is magnanimous enough.