The recent exposures probably far outnumber the arrests but still, the scale of the arrest of high public officeholders for corruption is probably without precedent in the history of Nigeria. Moreover, the arrest of public officials for corruption is higher in our country today than any other country of the world at the present time. Simply stated, in its twelve-year history, our national anti-corruption agency, the EFCC, has never been busier than at the present moment. Prior to now, exposures of corruption of mindboggling proportions had been the main thing, but now the arrests come right on the heels of the exposures, even if only a small fraction of those exposed have actually been arrested, charged and are facing prosecution. I think the question that arises from this extraordinary development concerning Nigeria’s special place in the contemporary worldwide war against corruption is the following: will we conduct the war against corruption in such a way that we will be able to teach the rest of the world somevaluable and lasting lessons about how to wage a concerted war against corruption and not only win but win decisively? Of course, this in no way obscures the fact that the outstanding moral and social objective of the anti-corruption war that our country is waging at the present time is justice for a looted nation and its teeming, pillaged masses. In other words, the point I am advancing here is that we should be asking both questions together: what to do to be victoriousin the struggle for justice in the war against corruption and how such a victory might serve as a teachable model for other countries of the world.
One reason why these two questions should be posed together is the fact that Nigerians as a whole seem relatively assured that the looters and their supporters will lose the war. This is in part wish fulfillment, the thinking behind it being the fanciful belief that the looters and their allies will lose because we very desperately want them to lose; and moreover, justice, morality and decency all demand that the looters should lose. But as I have repeated many times in this column, both the Nigerian government and people in general vastly underrate what it will take to win and win decisively against the looters and their allies. This is because legend and myth as a dedicated and indefatigable anti-corruption crusader preceded Buhari to office. Indeed, prior to his electoral victory and eventual assumption of office, there were stories doing the rounds of the national grapevine to the effect that as soon as Buhari was pronounced the victor in the presidential elections, all the looters would board their private jets, take flight and escape to safe havens abroad. However, in the post-election period in the real world, nothing remotely close to this fantastic scenario took place. The looters not only did not take flight, they stayed and they are fighting back mightily, with great help from their allies in the Nigerian Bar and Bench. Moreover, at least in these early rounds of the legal battles, the determined and organized band of lootersand their allies are declaring a stalemate if not an outright victory. This is because in the majority of the cases in the law courts, they have been granted bail and they have succeeded considerably in deploying delaying tactics to prolong the trial of their cases, if possible permanently. At any rate, the looters have given every indication available to them to give notice to Buhari and indeed the whole country that this is a battle they have fought before, a battle they know how to win.
Thus, beyond the myths of Buhari’s credentials as an anti-corruption crusader and beyond the wish fulfillment that we will win the war because justice and morality is on our side, the onus in this war of maneuver is for the government to demonstrate that it knows what it will take to defeat the looters, obtain their conviction and recover a sizeable proportion of the pillaged loot of trillions of naira and hundreds of billions of dollars. In other words, too much of the government’s present credibility and high ratings in the legal war on corruption come from exposures and arrests of lootersbeyond anything we have ever seen in this country; too little is coming from a perception that the government is conducting the war effectively and knows what to do to assure victory. Permit me to make a few observations in support of this claim.
In all fairness, the most charitable remark that can be made about the government’s prosecution of the looters in the law courts is that slowly but gradually, there are signs that a plan, a method, a sort of strategy is beginning to emerge from the overwhelming sense of a shocking lack of coordination in how exposures and arrests are being made and prosecution begun against alleged looters. There are at least FOUR separate and distinct arms or agencies of the government all working together at the same time, but without a sense that they are all working in sync, that they are all on the same page. The concerned agencies are the EFCC; the office of the Solicitor General of the Federation (SGF) working under the direction of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF); the Nigerian Police; and the office of the Director of State Security (DSS). To date and as far as I am personally aware, no public announcement has ever been made to give a report on the number of arrests made and the individual and collective size of the loot stolen. Are all the prosecuting lawyers working together as a team and under the guidance of a “command center” located in the SGF’s office? Your guess is as good as mine, compatriots!
As everyone knows, there is a lot of anger and frustration among the members of this prosecuting team that bails are being granted to virtually every accused looter and stays of proceeding are still being granted, even though this runs counter to the law of the land as enshrined in the Administration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 (ACJA). This raises many troubling questions. Why is the government keeping quiet about this and silently licking its wounds of disappointment and frustration? Why has not a single statement or declaration been made about what the government will do about this crucial development? Why have press and media houses throughout the country not been brought into a widespread and sustained reporting and discussion of this rampart and willful disregard of the provisions of ACJA by many if not most of the trial judges? Why have the names of the defense lawyers and trial judges disregarding ACJA not been published, not to “shame” or disgrace them, but to give them the chance to explain why, as far as they are concerned, ACJA might as well be a bill awaiting passage in the National Assembly and not the de facto and de jure law of the land that it is? Why the silence, why the perplexity of the government prosecuting team before these onslaughts of the looters and their allies on the Bar and the Bench? Are these not the signs of a rudderless and uncoordinated team fighting only with the fatuous weapon of the wish fulfillment that it will win because justice, morality and decency are on its side?
All is not lost and questions like those I am posing in this piece are being posed by many other commentators, pundits and activists all over the country. And there are signs that the government is listening; indeed, there are also signs that some of the trial judges are listening. [This past week, the trial judge in charge of the case against Olisa Metuh gave warning to Metuh and his lawyers that they have already used THREE of the FIVE adjournments of postponements to which they are entitled under ACJA]. Against the background of this development, the Sagay advisory committee could play a very crucial role in both the outcome and the educational possibilities in how Nigeria conducts this epic war against corruption. Technically, the Sagay Committee is not one of the agencies responsible for making exposures of looting, arresting looters and coordinating their prosecution in the law courts. No, the Sagay committee was not designed to do any of these particular things. What it is mandated to do, what it must do well, is in fact provide the moral and intellectual framework within which the war against corruption can be won and converted to a lasting instructional value for not only our country but the whole world. In other words, the task of the Sagay committee is that it must be the mind and the superego of the war on corruption: it must show that all is not simple and uncoordinated improvisation in Buhari’s war against corruption. If it fulfills this task, the Sagay committed might well show that Nigeria has something to teach the rest of the world in the current global anti-corruption war. I suggest that it must start posing the questions that the government prosecuting team is not asking, thereby enlightening the country and the whole world about the content and the lessons of this epic war against corruption that will, for good or ill, define the epoch we have just entered.
Obasanjo and his”toothless bulldog” insult to the EFCC
Just at the very historic moment when the EFFC is making far more disclosures about looting in our country and far many more arrests of alleged looters than at any previous period in the country’s history, along comes Olusegun Obasanjo to declare that the EFCC is a toothless bulldog whose bark is worse than its bite. What does he exactly men by this astonishing claim? Should it be regarded as one more instance of Obasanjo’s verbal and political charades that are best ignored completely?
I confess that I am more inclined to the latter view. Obasanjo loves being in the news; he has a severe case of what could be described as the “relevance anxiety syndrome”. By this, I mean that he is so egomaniacal about his standing in the public affairs of this country that he cannot bear to be out of the view of the public for less than, say, three months at the least.And so since everyone is talking endlessly about the EFCC’s frenetic exposures and arrests of looters, what could be more irresistible for our Babasale of Egomania than to attack and ridicule the EFCC?
I don’t think we should be satisfied with this response to Obasanjo’s attack on the frontline anti-corruption agency.And this is precisely the point: Obasanjo is attacking the agency, he is ridiculing it because the agency is making all these exposures, all these arrests. From this, we can conclude that Obasanjo is deeply troubled by Buhari’s war on corruption, if indeed he is not directly opposed to it.More insidiously, Obasanjo is perhaps saying that the arrests, the exposures will achieve nothing at all. If that is the case, it is now left to the EFCC and the Buhari administration to give the lie to Obasanjo’s insult by demonstrating that their bite will be as ferocious as their bark. In other words, when and if the convictions and the recovery of stolen loot start happening, the last laugh will be on the Egomaniac of Ota. QED
Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
