The conviction of former Taraba State Governor, Jolly Nyame, by a high court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja on May 30 signals a renewed fight against corruption by the government led by the All Progressive Congress (APC).
Justice Adebukola Banjoko, who delivered the judgment on the 11-year-old trial, handed down a 14-year sentence to Nyame who governed between 1999 and 2007.
He was found guilty of criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of N1.64 billion belonging to Taraba.
Nyame was convicted on 27 out of the 41 counts preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
He was sentenced to various jail terms, the highest being 14 years, for offences bordering on criminal breach of trust, criminal misappropriation, and taking valuable things without consideration, and receiving gratification as a public officer.
The judge pronounced a maximum imprisonment of 14 years for criminal breach of trust without an option of fine; two years for criminal misappropriation; seven years for receiving gratification and five years for “obtaining valuable things without consideration.”
Nyame’s sentence came with no option of fine on any of the counts. The sentences run concurrently.
Banjoko did not spare him while dismissing his plea for mercy. She said she was “morally outraged by the facts of this case.”
She noted that the conduct of Nyame, a Christian and a Reverend, was audacious, otherwise being “a first offender” and “a family man” as argued by his lawyer should ordinarily be part of consideration in sentencing.
Banjoko said the people of Taraba State invested high level of trust in Nyame when they first voted him as Governor in 1991, again in 1999 and 2007.
“The level of trust must have been so high.
“The convict is a Reverend, which means he is a Christian. He is expected to show high level of honesty, piety and integrity.
“How will Reverend Jolly Nyame begin to tell the people of Taraba State and the whole world to justify his action and inaction?
“How will he justify this colossal loss of the state under his watch?” the judge asked.
She described Nyame as an unrepentant sinner because even though he knew that his former aides being investigated by the EFCC were returning part of the money they stole, he continued committing the crimes.
Banjoko recalled the evidence in court that in April 2007, a month to the end of his tenure, Nyame spent over N100 million to host the then President.
“He will perhaps be the most audacious chief executive Nigeria ever had. He was still continuing to commit the offences while under an intense searchlight of the law enforcement agency,” she noted.
“Over N100 million was spent in a day for the visit of one man who was the President who is not God in April 2007, when he was expected to vacate office in May 2007.
“This is just one in the catalogue of the crimes he committed. There was a crazy level of corruption in the air in the state in Nyame’s administration.
“Rev. Jolly Nyame encouraged other officers to engage in reckless misappropriation.
“There is no legal or moral justification for that level of outright stealing. The defendant behaved like a common thief.”
She rounded off saying being “the first case of its kind,” the court must impose heavy sanction “that will hopefully serve as a deterrent to other public officers.”
Nyame’s trial is perhaps the longest so far and he becomes the second Governor jailed by a Nigerian court for corruption.
The first was James Ngilari, former Governor of Adamawa State, who was jailed for five years in March 2017 for corruption. The judgment was upturned in the Appeal Court.
Nyame’s conviction has attracted a lot of responses.
Abuja sees it as the highpoint of its fight against corruption, coming at a time President Muhammadu Buhari is desperately trying to press home the point that he is serious about fighting graft which dents the image of Nigeria so badly.
We commend the judiciary for the conviction, particularly as Nyame’s case is a high profile one.
We have always known that until prominent Nigerians are jailed for corruption – instead of those who steal fowls and vegetables the EFCC boasts of convicting – the fight against corruption remains a ruse.
We are interested in how the EFCC will replicate this feat in other equally high profile cases of corruption involving politicians who defected to the APC, apparently to evade justice.
Nigerians want the frontiers of the fight against greed expanded to all shades of politicians regardless of party affiliation.
While we celebrate Nyame’s conviction, we seek speedy trial in the cases of other suspects whose matters are in the EFCC.
They include those of former Abia State Governor, Orji Uzor Kalu; former Senator and Minister Musiliu Obanikoro; former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, David Babachir, among others.
The feeling out there is that former members of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) now in the APC enjoy the patronage of Buhari with their crimes forgiven.
No fewer than 18 cases involving former Governors are pending in court.
TheNiche will join the EFCC to celebrate at the end of such cases rather than in the excuse given by its acting Chairman, Ibrahim Magu, that he does not have evidence to prosecute the cases.
He said so recently in the matter involving Babachir.
It smacks of hypocrisy by Buhari if those frolicking with him and holding him up as a man of integrity because they now belong to the APC were once branded corrupt because they were in the PDP and had cases in court for alleged corruption.
As Ebonyi State Governor, Dave Umeahi, told the press recently nobody is against the fight against corruption but people frown at it if it becomes selective.
When former President Olusegun Obasanjo set up the EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices and related offences Commission (ICPC), the idea was not for the institutions to embark on cherry-picking their duties.
Obasanjo sent many of his party members to jail using the EFCC or the ICPC. Buhari can do the same.
Many Nigerians, mainly those in the opposition political parties, fear that the government is not keen about a level playing field in the fight against corruption.
And as Senator Shehu Musa reminded us sometime ago, if deodorants and insecticides are applied to different cases, then Nigerians have every reason to worry about the so-called successes in the fight against graft.
The EFCC and the judiciary should take the battle more seriously and eschew media trial as we see most of the time.
It is unbelievable that the same EFCC and judiciary celebrating Nyame’s jail sentence allowed corrupt politicians to pay for their freedom in an arrangement called plea bargain.
Some former Governors are being shielded by the courts because they have perpetual injunction procured from the courts.
What is good for the goose must be good for the gander.
