The Nation Newspaper

Tag: ROGUE

  • Rogue escorts and mystery VIP

    This discourse is not about national security, no.  It is not about the operation of the troops in the theatre and their manoeuvres, no.  It is not even about the hated word of herdsmen and farmers, RUGA, or grazing routes, where the federal government is found to dither in mute complacency.  If along the line it touches tangentially on any of the excluded items above, it would be to the extent that it is in the higher interest of our nation.  We cannot continue to live in denial and pretend to  solve our problems by running away from it in the guise that it touches on national security; which of course should be the more reason it should be in the public domain of the peoples’ parliament.

    In any case, it was the Nigerian Army itself that broke the news of soldiers on escort who abandoned their rifles and absconded with yet to be determined huge sums of money speculated in the media to be about N400 million.  This discourse is focused on a humungous heist that the ordinary Nigerian should not just show a passing interest because of its security implication as well as the desire to fight corruption in all spheres of life in the country. Yes, we must be interested in who owes the money and where it was coming from.   Why was the money travelling in a soft skin vehicle rather than an armour-plated bullion van?  Why was the money not transferred on a designated account in this era of BVN for proper record to ensure that it was not meant to sponsor criminal activities or money laundering?   Who is the mystery VIP that is entitled to military escort from Sokoto to Kaduna where we have air services for speed and safety?

    How many such sorties have these soldiers made in the past to have made them perfect this scheme and tactical manoeuvre for a piece of the action?   Why the choice of such young inexperienced soldiers for such duty involving such huge sums of money?   We cannot find the soldiers guilty without finding the senior officer(s) who tempted them with such mouth-watering loot from the combat zone that they can never in their entire career earn.

    This may well be the right time to take an honest audit of what is happening in the theatre of operation against insurgency in the Northeast especially the top brass of the military high command that has become the example of soldiers of fortune, like the notorious Panamanian military leader and politician Manuel Antonio Noriega engaging in drug trade and mining.  The life of a soldier is austere and Spartan-like, denying himself everything for the love of his country.  A soldier must have honour and integrity and enjoy the confidence of his commander. He is trained to be tough with exemplary conduct in private and public life.  A soldier must not rob his country to amass wealth as his nation is expected to provide adequately for him because of the life of sacrifice he has chosen.

    This matter should not go the way of other enquiries in the past where reports are kept in government cupboards to gather dust and later eaten by termite in the usual way of protection of the elite in the society. In our recent history, a man that headed the Nigerian armed forces who accused soldiers of cowardice when they complained that they lacked equipment to face the insurgents upon retirement was discovered to have accumulated so much wealth that he was made a guest of the anti-graft agency.  Ditto some other high ranking officers of the armed forces who were made to return humongous sums of money stashed away in their private homes.  They have luxury and choice properties dotted in highbrow areas across the country; some others have been discovered to have given away mouth-watering sums of money to religious leaders and fetish priests.

    The time has come for us to question everything we are told by those who are in charge of running the affairs of government departments and agencies. We are facing grinding and acute poverty but we are told that our economy is healthy as government gives handouts in the name of traders’ money while businesses fold up.   The state of insecurity has become so frightening yet we are told that we are winning the war against insurgency and insecurity across the country.  With all the blackmail and cajoling by the government, the media still manages to beam out daily the report of scores of people killed in banditry and whole truck load of passengers harvested in kidnapping incidents for ransom.

    Rather than sit down to think through the enormous challenges, our leaders are looking for foreign partners and donor countries to come and help us fight insecurity and poverty that we brought upon ourselves through bad leadership, mismanagement and divisive tendencies of our elites.   If we are to succeed as a nation, there must be a value change.  If we are to combat poverty and insecurity, there must be re-orientation and strengthening of our institutions. We should stop importing solutions from America and Europe as the reality in two places can never be the same.

    Our laws may never be perfect and indeed, there is no known country in the world with a perfect law and legal system.  People appraise the social reality of their country and time and apply remedy that suits the situation.  Before Britain abolished capital punishment there were series of committees including the Wolfenden Committee on Homosexual offences and prostitution inviting knowledgeable critical stakeholders.  Here in this country those we elected who took oath to uphold the law and the constitution violate our laws and constitutions with impunity. We sit down analysing and justifying desecration of our law and constitution because it suits us at the time, seeing everything through the prism of religion and ethnicity.  Why is El Zazaky still in detention when a superior court of record has granted him bail? Why is Dasuki still in detention when different courts have granted him bail?  Why are the president and governors unable to sign the death warrant of those convicted of capital offences having  exhausted their appeal at the apex court?

    If you choose to be in government and take oath to defend our law and constitution, you must drop your religious sentiment and carry out your statutory and constitutional duties whether it agrees with your belief system or not.  If you cannot obey the law that brought you into office and swore to protect, in the name of everything that is good, please leave Nigeria alone for those who have the gut to act.

    This time in our history, we need men who are mentally active and ready to act and deliver on good governance respecting the laws and constitution of this country.  The CSOs and NGOs should be at the forefront of campaign to promote performance and good governance and not dissipate energy collecting donors monies to promote alien depraved cultures and lifestyles that add no value to the well-being of  our society.  On the rogue escort and mystery VIP, the military should hold the mirror and take a deep look at its image, if she does not like what she sees, breaking the mirror will not change the situation. We appreciate the efforts of members of the armed forces but it can be better. Please wake me up when we find answers to the posers of the rogue escorts and mystery VIP.

     

    • Kebonkwu Esq writes from Abuja.
  • Rogue snake metaphor

    Rogue snake metaphor

    Bizarre report of a snake swallowing N36 million in the vault of the Benue State office of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), made interesting headlines last week.

    A JAMB sales clerk, Philomina Chieshe stunned a high-powered fact-finding team when she told them she could not account for the money realized from sales of scratch cards because a snake crept into the vault and swallowed it. When prodded, she explained that her housemaid connived with another JAMB staff to ‘spiritually’ steal the money through a snake.

    And she would want her audience to believe the story. Why not?  After all, are such fables not commonplace in our national life? If she did not believe it could make sense to some people; if she had not seen people peddling and swallowing such mystic and occult stories hook line and sinker, perhaps she would not have come up with such concoction.

    Alas, she believed it could pull through. Hence the ease and seeming innocence with which she crafted a story that should ordinarily have qualified her for psychiatric attention. She is not alone in this kind of weird belief.

    In our daily social life, many well informed and even highly educated Nigerians promote this kind of thrash to deceive and hoodwink innocent citizens for some self-serving ends. So Philomina’s narrative, as naïve and unbelievable as it would seem, fits into an uncanny metaphor to illustrate the pervasiveness of corruption on these shores.

    It highlights the weird belief system many of our people have come to accept and live with. Promoted by all manner of preachers and mundane cultural practices, such tales have assumed a dominant role in explaining (albeit falsely) most of the challenges thrown up in our daily lives. All manner of places of worship and persons take liberty in accounting for and rationalizing human challenges through spiritual means. Even when there is no basis for these irrational explanations, such tales are invented by the unscrupulous and deceitful to achieve ends of mischievous and pecuniary nature.

    Sickness, misfortune and even deaths have been the worst victims of these supernatural and mystic explanations. And because of the vicissitudes of life in a predominantly illiterate and poverty stricken environment, many have come to accept such fetish and irrational explanations for some of the challenges they face in their daily lives. So Philomina was just exploiting the inherent weaknesses of our belief systems. Do you blame her when such stories are daily promoted in our television stations as real accounts of African life? Those who regularly promote disappearing and mundane relics of African culture in the name of ‘African Magic’ and similar programmes should share in Philomina’s confusion.

    But she goofed because snakes are not known to feed on currencies. Neither can one or a colony of snakes effectively swallow N36 million. She misfired because in this case, she will be required to prove beyond reasonable doubt that snakes could in all actuality swallow that amount of money. For her inability to differentiate between facts and fiction; normative beliefs and credible evidence, the snake rogue should be taken as a metaphor for the official in whose care the money disappeared.

    So it is not enough to peddle stories on the escapades of witches and wizards. Neither is it sufficient to seek escape route from the numerous ills that afflict mankind by attributing them to the unseen hands of some ghosts, the dead and the vampires. There is a limit beyond which such stories will no longer make sense. That is perhaps, the point that has been brought to the fore by the story of the rogue snake.

    Beyond this however, Philomina’s story illustrates the degenerate level into which corruption has irretrievably sunk in our national life. It is an acceptance that public funds can be frittered and all manner of ruse invented to successfully cover them up. That such a colossal sum of money could be left in the hands of a common clerk also speaks volumes on probity and accountability in our public life. And if one may ask, what happened to the bank account of that establishment that a whooping N36 million had to be kept in the safe such that we are now being told the ridiculous and lame story that it has been swallowed by a snake.

    As if this was not enough embarrassment, another state coordinator of the same establishment in Nassarawa State has come up with another strange story to cover up alleged fraud.  The official was said to have claimed his car got bunt together with N23million worth of scratch cards.

    Diligent investigations were however to reveal that the cards which the official claimed to have been burnt together with his car were actually used up by prospective students from Nassarawa State to register for JAMB within the same period. Obvious from the two accounts is the degenerate level into which corruption had sunk in the operations of JAMB. If the accounts of the two incidents are anything to go by then, it could be safely concluded that the establishment had been stinking in dismal corruption and corrupt practices all this while.

    It is also very confounding how colossal sums of public funds are left in the hands of some unscrupulous staff to manage only for them to fritter them away and cook up frivolous stories to cover up their tracks. Perhaps, if the current investigations had not been set up, the suspects would have conveniently covered up their tracks with the nation losing scare resources direly needed for developmental purposes.

    But that is this country for you. All these happened as the current administration was waging the war against corruption with fanfare. And if you ask them of their score card in the last three years or so, they will quickly brandish the war against corruption as one of their major achievements. The war could as well have recorded some measure of success in retrieving some monies looted by past political office holders. We have also seen a measure of progress in the recovery of some properties from both former political appointees and civil servants even as the target has mainly been those opposed to the government of the day.

    Events have however, shown we are yet to get at the bottom of the factors that propel and reinforce corruption in our national life. A former governor was reported to have said recently that corruption is the real problem of this country and not restructuring. He is partly right. But the proper way to put the matter is that corruption feeds from our inability to restructure. Corruption thrives because of our inability or refusal to restructure. Corruption is encouraged because of the awesome powers of the central government and its perception as an avenue from which the constituents should grab at will. That is why the two JAMB officials had no qualms inventing all manner of subterfuge to cover up the missing monies in their possession.

    That is the situation you get with such unwieldy national establishments performing functions that are better managed by smaller and more efficient organizations. If the universities were allowed to conduct their own examinations and set their admission benchmarks, an omnibus and ineffective institution like JAMB would have found no place. What is true of JAMB is no less correct of other national establishments. Decentralization or devolution of powers will promote more efficient and effective governance and reduce corruption.

    The much touted war against corruption will continue to remain a mirage as long as it has not touched the fabric of our society. The rogue snake denotes the lady under whose care the N36 million disappeared while in the raging fire can be found the man in whose care the N23 million was left. That is the metaphor of the unmitigated corruption that strides the entire gamut of our national life. That is how bad the situation has remained and a measure of success of the war against corruption.

  • Between a voodoo and rogue state 

    An official of the department of Petroleum Resources, (DPR) was reported to have lamented how about 10 full loaded trucks of petroleum products left Suleja depot to Bauchi State in the North-east only to vanish along the way. The incidence of diversion of petroleum products is very rife, in the heat of the immense sufferings of Nigerians to access the essential product, especially at this festive period.

    Since the current bout of scarcity of the products, leading to paralysis of economic activities and the massive sufferings it has inflicted on the majority of Nigerians, the common refrain of government officials concerned is that the scarcity is the handiwork of marketers who want to force government’s  hand to hike the price of the product. Other nefarious activities  of the profiteers according to government officials include hoarding of the product to create artificial scarcity for the purpose of reaping bumper profits.

    However, it takes a  combination of a voodoo state and rogue officials for fully loaded trucks of petroleum products to vanish without trace, before it reached its destination and no one is held accountable as if there is no clue as to who authorized the loading and even the identity of the driver. What suffering Nigerians get for explanation is lamentation from those put in charge. For a government that serially and routinely lament the machinations and infractions of some delinquent marketers, ostensibly proving helpless, even to enforce it own laws certainly stands on the perilous infrastructure of a weak and compromised state.

    Since the outbreak of the current petroleum products scarcity, the relevant government agencies and the marketer’s association have openly traded blames. Unable to bring some delinquent marketers to comply with the regulatory framework of the industry, government resorted  to appealing to them to be nice and considerate, as if most human’s natural instinct for greed responds to such platitudes. Only a compromised and captured state appeals to offenders to be nice instead of invoking extant laws to whip them into line and deter prospective future offenders..

    David Mark, former Senate President, Current Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu and others, including former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole are all set to challenge in court, government’s recent directive that they vacate official residences they were offered for a fraction of its cost by the previous government. That these men are are pushing back to keep public property that they should never have obtained in the first place, underlines the vacuous character of the Nigerian state and the morbid nature of the government that oversees it.

    An incompetent state, inchoate and dysfunctional, with its nearly only semblance of formal state appurtenance being the fang of organized violence, deployed selectively is destined for elite kicks and knocks, using spurious legal umbrella to shield from the open ridicule of a captured state.

    The toll of inefficient and incompetent state, daily under siege by its predatory elite handlers, who manipulate and undermines it, weighs heavily on the hapless Nigerian people. The election of a political leader, widely adjudged to have personal integrity even in a relatively free and fair election has not mitigated the deepening hollowness of the state, where it looks  and appears like a normal state with all the paraphernalia of one but is actually a caricature and a mediocre of any state.

    Pockets of special and vicious interests emerge routinely, sapping the away the modest vitality of the state, capturing its key organs and rendering it sterile and hollow, and merely masquerading for the powerful clique that have surreptitiously captured it and run it through government proxies in most bizarre way, using ultra legalistic forms.In this condition, the state is mere predatory machine organized to enforce a rudimentary order, conducive to the helplessness of the public to the hedonistic pleasures of the black market operators of the rogue state.

    In this respect, the state is totally unable to enforce the law to which it is constitutionally permitted because the constitution itself, lacking in the legitimate inputs of the people is a decoy meant to hide the deceit of a voodoo state. The political rhetoric of a government leaving off on the vacuous framework of a compromised and captured state should never be taken seriously, otherwise why would government continue to meekly and timidly appeal to renegade petroleum hoarders and other criminal syndicates in the industry to be nice and change their minds? The fact is that the line dividing the so-called marketers and officials of the regulatory and enforcement agencies are narrow and nearly all the felons in the industry are active collaborators with state officials. It is same thing as when the state officials allocating foreign exchange are the same people who own the black market chains for foreign exchange trading. There are many and numerous instances, where officials of the Nigerian state are complicit in the open subversion of the state without any adverse consequences but a huge returns of profit.

    A strong and competent state need not be authoritarian or abusive. Recently, the head of South Korea’s foremost business conglomerate, Samsung went to jail for bribing public officials and seeking to compromise  the integrity of the state. In our clime, the chairman of one of our big manufacturing industries or even other minor players will never ever have the prospects of being brought to book for any infraction, no matter what length they go to compromise and undermine the integrity of the state. The reason the former South Korean leader, Ms Park was removed from office and serving jail term is a joke compared to former President Obasanjo  use of the state apparatus to organize fund raising for his private library. The man still pontificates on issues about public governance and is even taken seriously.

    President Buhari’s famed personal integrity has not and is not likely to disrupt the tragic trajectory of the Nigerian state, simply because he has not or does know how to convert the strategic mass line that ushered him to office to a sufficient revolutionary force to disrupt the old order. The myth that things will simply turn around because he is there, has subsisted sufficiently enough, to no avail for him to discard it. To disavow the rogue state that he inherited  is the cardinal political imperative of his popular mandate. The continuing decay of the state, demands emergency measures which is within the framework of constitutional democracy, where the mechanism of the broadly and popular constituent assembly has been used to re-found the state and re-focus it to the course of political accountability, inclusiveness and social recovery. While the old and compromised state institutions are let to roll on in their usual circus show, a radical measure to re-found the state and revitalize its institutions, by tapping directly on the popular majority through the constitution of peoples’ constituent assembly is the critical antidote to state decay and consequent failure.

    President Buhari must understand his popular mandate as in consisting essentially, the constitutional overthrow of the rogue state.

    • Onunaiju, is of Center for China Studies, (CCS), Utako, Abuja.

  • Risks of rogue precedents in corruption fight

    SIR: Fighting corruption is a matter of law and order.  Still in any democracy, constitutional dictates remain supreme. If the constitution does not grant certain enforcement powers, they don’t exist; and policies or actions advancing such powers are deemed unconstitutional. The recent raid-arrest of some serving and suspended judicial officers and the manner in which the raids were conducted by agents of the Department of State Services (DSS), has provoked animated debate that goes beyond fighting corruption. Questions are being asked: Were such raids and arrests within the constitutional remit of the DSS?

    Without prejudice to the rule of law and the right to prosecute the judicial officers for whatever crimes they allegedly committed, there is due process and statutory regulations for dealing with judicial officers who run afoul of the law.  The extant regimes are underpinned by the Principles of Democracy, Separation of Powers and the Rule of Law as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution. Yet, critical views persist; including those from the Nigerian Bar Association, contending that due process was not followed, despite claims by DSS to the contrary.

    Prevailing fixation with fighting corruption in Nigeria by any means possible, has led some commentators to seek to subjugate the rule of law to such whims. In a democracy like ours, such whims are not just capricious, but profoundly dangerous.  The greater danger lies not in arbitrary raids, arrests or prosecutions, but in the implications of insinuating rogue precedents into our law enforcement modalities: precedents, which if unchallenged will certainly undermine ordered liberties.

    Nobody is above the law; certainly not judges. And public officials who enjoy prosecutorial immunity are clearly delineated in the Constitution.  However, every Nigerian citizen is protected from arbitrary arrest, unlawful search and seizure, the right to counsel, presumption of innocence, and the right against self-incrimination. Were these rights accorded to the judicial officers?

    With the arrests, comes the perception or suspicions of double standards.  The judicial officers were unlikely flight risks, as affirmed by their consequent release on personal cognizance. Why then were their homes raided in the dead of the night? Why were senior military officers -retired and serving – accused of weightier corrupt offenses never subjected to similar raids? Is law enforcement now selective?

    Corrupt judges like any corrupt public servant, should be prosecuted and jailed, if guilty. But if there were procedural or substantive breaches of ordered liberties in the arrest of the judges, it would be wrong to let those breaches stand in the name of fighting corruption. There’s also the issue of full disclosure. Nigerians need to know the magistrate or judge of a competent jurisdiction who signed the search and arrest warrants; and of the petitions and affidavits that triggered the investigations, raids and arrests.  As the National Judicial Council (NJC) indicated, “The impression created and widely circulated before the public that the DSS forwarded a number of petitions containing various allegations of corrupt practices and professional misconduct against some Judicial Officers to the Council, and they were not investigated, is not correct.” The NJC has urged the DSS “to make public the particulars of such petitions to put the records straight.”

    As a matter of policy and best practice, security agencies must come clean to remain credible on such anti-corruption matters. If mistakes were made, it’s easier to admit so, apologize and move on.  For now, there are challenges; questions persist as do doubts.  The DSS side of the story seems a tad fuzzy. For those Nigerians who believe their story, no explanation is necessary; and for those Nigerians who disbelieve their story, no explanation is possible. Nonetheless, the greatest danger to our nation, constitution, law enforcement and the anti-corruption war, is to allow the entrenchment of rogue precedents and worse still, to allow such precedents to gain currency and assume validity.

     

    • Oseloka H. Obaze,

    Awka, Anambra State.

  • His Lordship, the rogue?

    His Lordship, the rogue?

    It doesn’t get more chastening — does it? — the portrait of a justice of the law as an alleged rogue!

    That jars on the very fundament of cultured society.

    And it doesn’t get more damning for civil society architecture — herding justices of the courts (including the Supreme Court) into detention, with alleged smoking guns, after a sting operation, by the secret police.

    Neither does it get more troubling: a governor — and a lawyer to boot! — dramatically speaking, hopping off the bed to block the arrest of a judge, alleged to have soiled his hands; and judge and governor allegedly conspiring to trot away vital evidence!

    His Excellency and His Lordship at a conspiracy?

    Besides, what is the nexus between the two — the one, enjoying legal immunity because his high office is supposed to be above board; the other, enjoying other constitutional privileges, because he is deemed an immaculate priest in the temple of justice?

    Did one illicitly aid the other, the past favour the beneficiary now returns, in his benefactor’s day of woe?

    So, if both shirk their responsibilities, can they, in all good conscience, hold on to the privileges, despite extant laws?

    The extant laws!  Yes, for that is where a party, in the emerging macabre drama, could be accused of resorting to self-help.  In arresting the judges,  DSS has been accused of “Gestapo tactics”.

    On this score, the gubernatorial case is clear-cut.  So long as he is in office, a governor enjoys immunity against criminal prosecution.  But does that allow him the laxity to indulge in alleged criminal behaviour?

    The judge’s?  Less so.  True, there are stated procedures to discipline an erring judge; and in fairness, the National Judicial Council (NJC) has latterly gone on the offensive to discipline some of such judges.

    Still, is there anything in the law that expressly forbids arresting and docking a judge, beyond the constitutional refinements of channelling grievances through the NJC, the Areopagus of judicial cleansing?

    Experts must provide specific answers to these questions to guide the polity, in these very unusual times!

    Jesus, the Christ, famously rued: my father’s house of worship has become a den of thieves!

    With this alleged governor-judge conspiracy, therefore, has Nigeria’s shrine of government become captive to a concert of executive and judicial rogues?

    And why a sting operation?  Is the Nigerian judiciary so much beyond redemption, in its alleged gobbling of sleaze, that even constitutional provisions to punish judges are so effete and ineffectual, hence this shock therapy?

    Shock therapy!  Will it achieve the desired purpose, teach the right lessons and send errant rats scampering into the hole?

    Or will it develop a life of its own, like some earthquake that could swallow the society, as we know it today?

    Questions, questions, questions!

    But instead of clear and dispassionate answers, it is the tragedy of contemporary Nigeria that everyone is diving into this troubling pool of high scandal; and pressing their constitutional right to an emotional splash.

    For starters, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) is flexing what its president calls a “judicial emergency”.

    There are also threats.  Thundered Abubakar Mahmud, SAN, NBA president, backed by a “war council” of four former NBA presidents, Wole Olanipekun, SAN, Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, J.B. Daudu, SAN and Augustine Alegeh, SAN: “I’ll be meeting with the CJN later tonight or tomorrow. There will be consequences,” he warned, “if these demands are not met.”

    The NBA stance is understandable, given the Bar-Bench esprit de corps.  However, whether it should be less combative and more calculative boils down to tactics and strategies it has decided to apply.

    Since it has first-hand information about the matter, at least much more than the general public whose sympathy it is trying to rally, it is only reasonable to respect its stance.

    Still, that bit on later meeting with the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), and threatening “consequences”, should the government not accede to its demands, border on the reckless, with all due respect.

    For starters, that puts the CJN on the spot.  However the NBA wants to engage the CJN, it should have kept to its chest; and not blabbed to the public.

    The NBA is, of course, entitled to its formalistic and legalistic view, which from its tone, presumes the arrests were to “intimidate the judiciary”.  But shouldn’t it have been a bit more nuanced about it all?

    What if DSS’s claims are proven, that the arrested judges were caught with some humongous cash in varied currencies, after a sting operation possibly after a tip-off, would the NBA not draw the CJN into unfair controversy, about using his office to shield corrupt elements in the judiciary?

    Would that not eventually weaken the CJN’s position, in the delicate balance of state power?

    The late Sabo Bakin Zuwo was a 2nd Republic Kano governor, accused of criminally warehousing public funds.  The press, ever so mischievous, dubbed him “Banking Zuwo”, after a devastating pun of his name.

    So, with alleged “Banking Zuwo” judges, can the NBA, or the CJN for that matter, beyond obdurate legalism, defend the conduct of judges allegedly warehousing huge cash at home, when they are not some illiterate Idumota traders mortally scared of the banking system?  What, by the way, might their motive be?

    Bakin Zuwo, of course, echoes a parallel in 1984, after the Buhari military regime had overthrown the Shehu Shagari 2nd Republic presidency (1979-1983).  It clamped most of the politicians in detention, and set up special tribunals to try the “corrupt” politicians.

    Just like now back then, NBA kicked — and to be fair, there were genuine fears those tribunals would not dispense justice.  Even then, the late Gani Fawehinmi broke ranks.

    Now, Femi Falana, SAN, is breaking ranks (claiming NBA, by its stand, risks protecting “corrupt judges”) — and, truth be told, the NBA would appear on more slippery grounds than it was in 1984.

    With all of these, can the NBA really afford to go toe-to-toe with the state, without risking its own integrity?  That is why NBA should show more wisdom than bellicosity.

    Of course, the human rights army has also weighed in with the ogre of looming dictatorship, claiming humiliating judges was tantamount to endangering democracy.

    That might well be.  But what if the judges first humiliated the law, by betraying their sacred oath?  Besides, “humiliating the judiciary”, on account of a few indicted judges, is hot but empty  gas.

    A few illicit judges cannot seek licit cover under the decent majority.  Indeed, keeping those bad judges humiliates the good ones.

    However, even the  Buhari Presidency must admit the sting operation, against the  judges, was nothing short of revolutionary.  So, DSS had better possess the evidences it claims it possesses.  Otherwise, it just might be the government’s last-ever romance with civil society.

    However the case pans out, the roiling notion of his Lordship, the Judge, as a thief should churn the tummy of everyone.

    So, whatever the posturing and counter-posturing, as both sides bluff and bluster, such a decadent judiciary should worry everyone.

    This is why Nigerians should navigate this sorry pass with more sobriety, and less grandstanding.

  • Lagos criminalises land fraud, rogue agents

    Lagos criminalises land fraud, rogue agents

    Lagos State Government has amended its criminal law proceedings by adding fraud involving land transaction as a criminal offence.

    The State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Ade Ipaye said before now, the law stated that land cannot be stolen, development which aided unscrupulous people, especially rogue estate agents to hide under it to sell third party properties.

    He spoke at the launch of the “Code of Conduct of Estate Agency Practice in Lagos State” by the Lagos State Real Estate Agent Transaction Department (LASRETRAD).

    He said the state has changed the definition of property that can be stolen.

    He said: “The law before now stated that you cannot steal property, but now our law says you can steal land because we have changed the definition of property that can be stolen. Now land grabbing and fraudulent estate agency practice is priority in the criminal justice.”

    He added that the state has zero tolerance for fraudulent workers, especially in the Ministries of Land, Housing and Judiciary who aid and abet criminals outside in landed matters.

    “We will want to use them to set example of how committed we are to checking fraudulent cases in landed property in the state,” he said.

    Ipaye also said under the state new criminal law, assault, manslaughter, murder and grievous bodily harm are all criminal offences because people commit them in land grabbing. The attorney- general urged the police to partner with the state, saying they have a basis to interfere in the matter unlike before.

    “The Police must be ready now to give us the case file as the need arises,” he added.

    He said part of the new rules is that a registered agent transacting business in the state must have a registered office, underscoring the zero tolerance for portfolio agents who dupe people and quickly change base.

    He said an agent must maintain a record of his or her business and ensure that a prospective tenant or purchaser takes physical possession of the property paid for within 14 days except otherwise stated in writing.

    He added that the agent should also ensure that his principal performs all necessary obligations due to the government under applicable legislation and regulation.

    On standards of professional conduct, he maintained that a registered agent must comply with the fiduciary obligations to his or her client arising as an agent. He must not mislead a customer or client, nor provide false information, or withhold information that by law or fairness be provided to a principal.

    He must also ensure that the principal is informed of any significant potential risk so that the principal can seek expert advice if he chooses.