Tag: unlucky

THE Senate’s choreographed rejection of Ibrahim Magu, boss of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), last week is both a pointer to the disharmony and infighting in the Muhammadu Buhari presidency and a reflection of the president’s awkward administrative style. The rejection was expected, the second in three months. Weeks before Mr Magu presented himself before the Senate a second time, it was widely rumoured that there was no way he would be confirmed. It had little to do with the Department of State Service (DSS) report that accused him of gross wrongdoing, a report seemingly defanged by the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, who probed the matter. The DSS report worked from the answer to the question. The rejection also had little to do with Mr Magu’s competence and style. His style was no less aggressive than that of one of his predecessors, Nuhu Ribadu. In competence, he was in fact a relief to most Nigerians who feared that the anti-graft body had been inoculated against efficiency.
Mr Magu is not the most eloquent of men, and his personal style, a little idiosyncratic, and a little affected, grated very badly on the nerves of polished people. He tended to be too abrasive and excited, and he seemed to sneer and even sometimes growl at the rule of law. But he has since refined his act, brought his boundless enthusiasm to bear on a national malady that probably needed even more than he was accused of bringing to the job, and cultivated an excusable air of a law enforcement czar that at once elicited awe and provoked resentment. Even those who rejected him a second time last week knew he was the right man for the job. They knew they were putting down a public officer who seemed to have prepared for this job all his life. They knew it would be difficult to find someone imbued with his kind of commitment, if not honesty. But the conspirators had too much to lose to care.
It is true that the conspiracy to shoot down Mr Magu’s confirmation transcended the Senate and reached far into the recesses of Aso Villa, drawing on every aggrieved journeyman with an axe to grind or a loot to cover. It is true, too, that had the DSS not stood pat on its original report damning Mr Magu and dismissing him as a liability to the government and its anti-corruption campaign, the senate would have found it immeasurably difficult to unhorse him. But it is also true that the confusion and contradictions in the presidency, not to say the president’s awkwardness and indecision, provided the fertile ground for Mr Magu’s rejection. However, that confusion and awkwardness are not just a product of administrative incompetence or of the natural and inherent vacillations to which Aso Villa is apparently besotted; they are more fittingly a reflection of the Buhari presidency’s lack of philosophical and ideological underpinnings.
Yes, the president is regarded as honest, practical and as hard working as his troublesome health would permit. And there is no doubt that the abundant goodwill that propelled him into high office has not been dissipated by both his goofs and gaffes, and by his excesses and constant defiance of the law and constitution. For a deeply traditional society sometimes burdened by sham religiosity, it is also curious that his celebrated tiff with his wife has not seemed to diminish his attraction to the ordinary Nigerian. Yet, these attributes, as helpful as they are to the president as a person and to his presidency which is already fraying at the edges, do not countervail the worrisome fact that the Buhari presidency is enervated by the soullessness and brittleness of its own core.
Ordinarily the DSS should exhibit independent judgement and conduct its operations without partisan flavour. But in Nigeria, it has not been so; and in the case of the DSS report on Mr Magu, it was not any independence of judgement that inspired the damning report seized upon by the senate to do the acting EFCC chairman in. Not only did the DSS produce a first report against Mr Magu shortly before he was to appear for confirmation as President Buhari’s nominee, a report in which analysts picked gaping holes, the agency, on request, again produced a second report that reiterated and reinforced the first. It is not clear where they got the courage to undermine the president’s resolve, assuming the president was as resolved on the matter as Nigerians think. And if the president knew better than to fight the senate over Mr Magu, especially given the rising profile of the senate president and the understanding he and the senate would be expected to show for an ailing president, why nominate the anti-graft boss a second time and risk another humiliation?
This column suggested in December that in a contest between the DSS and Mr Magu, and notwithstanding who had the sympathy of Nigerians, the DSS would always triumph. It has to do with the nature of their work and the fact that the secret service stood better chance of having the ear of the president. The EFCC’s brief does not go beyond financial crimes, a narrow though important part of national life. The DSS on the other hand has a wider, national and gravely important responsibility for the security of the nation and even safety of the president himself. It was unlikely, this column argued, for the DSS to eat its word on Mr Magu or be abandoned by the president. Unfortunately, too, Mr Magu is not the most restrained of men. Sensing how opposed to him the DSS was, he unadvisedly gave free rein to his emotions on the secret service, an organisation with a long memory and vengeful spirit.
Those who suggest that Mr Magu can remain in office indefinitely as acting chairman of the EFCC are neither interpreting the letter of the law properly in respect of that office nor interpreting the spirit or intendment of the law expertly. If a nominee needs legislative confirmation to occupy an office and function in it, but is rejected twice, it is impossible to keep him in that office by any conceivable legislative, executive or administrative sleight of hand. A public officer needing confirmation can act only before he is put through the mill of confirmation. Some have also suggested that the president can either keep him as acting chairman ad infinitum or nominate him a third time after possibly clearing all the obstacles to his confirmation. The president has too much sense to risk a third humiliation. He will not attempt it, for he knows that for reasons best known to the senate, Mr Magu’s goose was twice cooked and is now overdone or even burnt.
President Buhari is too vulnerable now to risk a blowout or an interminable struggle with the senate or House of Representatives. His health is evidently not too robust, and in the brief period Vice President Yemi Osinbajo acted for him, his style and grasp of leadership issues and principles were exposed as jaded, needlessly combative, and retrogressive. He faces domestic troubles, and the coalition that brought him to power has begun to unravel. Worse, even those like the Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai whose thoughtless demagoguery elevated them to the status of demigods have become nervous and are penning combustive and contumacious letters. The president, if he is perceptive, may begin to realise that the North, his main political bulwark, is breaking out in a fever of machinations ahead of 2019. They pray he should complete his first term; but even the most optimistic of them are unable to see him beyond that term.
If he is to have a peaceful reign, the president will have to mollify the rage of the voluble, disaffected, unprincipled but calculating Mallam el-Rufai whom the cabal has obviously shut out of the president’s inner circle, conciliate the National Assembly, a fractious and irreverent body of men and women bonded by their common obsession for the good life, devolve some powers and responsibilities to his much younger and intellectual deputy, and learn to speak with a little more empathy and affection for the country that gave him a second chance in office. It is not a man so hobbled by political and physiological circumstances that will nominate Mr Magu a third time. He has no special reason to; indeed, he has no special interest in the matter. He will look for a much cleverer and more reticent man who will wait for confirmation before unsheathing his sword or unleashing his acerbity.
It is regrettable to see Mr Magu go. He has his heart in the right place and would have made a great impression on nearly everybody. But the greater concern now is to help the president manage the imminent fission in his presidency. Aso Villa has become a bed of intrigues plotted by ambitious aides with a keen, clairvoyant sense of the political tomorrow. If they are not to dismember the president’s first term even before the bell is properly rung for the next campaigns, a kitchen and general cabinet reshuffle may be ineluctable. President Buhari cannot begin to learn at 74 the ameliorating tactics of worming his way into the forgiven and accommodating hearts of the people. But, given a second chance at life after being ‘so sick’, he should find those who can help him carry out his objectives and package a much stronger and resonating message for the country.