By Cudjoe Kpor
On December 2, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the nation’s anti-corruption agency assumed custody of its biggest catch to date. Col (rtd) Sambo Dasuki, former national security adviser (NSA) was accused of arms purchase deals worth about N643.82 billion and $2.2 billion.
Other suspects were arrested later with him. Former Sokoto State governor Attahiru Bafarawa, former minister of State for Finance Bashir Yuguda, former director of Finance in the Office of NSA Shuaibu Salisu, former general manager of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Aminu Babakusa and Waripamowei Dudafa, a former aide, (Domestic Affairs) to ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, who is on the run, among others.
Since then, tongues have not stopped wagging.
Who’s next is more of the speculation. What crime was committed by the suspects presumed innocent till proved guilty in court was not given much thought. Should the next arrest be Jonathan who gave the order for the spending jamboree? Or should it be the ex-finance minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who diverted sums meant for development projects into arms purchases? From there, the so-called looted funds were re-looted by Jonathan for other uses in the bazaar such as paying convention delegates in the ex-president’s re-election campaign.
While the spate of arrests and media frenzy provided amusements for the easily excitable fringes of the population, EFCC leaders were no less ecstatic. Its Chairman Ibrahim Magu informed the nation that the agency was on top of the ongoing investigation and, triumphantly, all the culprits in the arms procurement scandal would be brought to justice.
According to its website, Magu chose the International Anti-corruption Day commemoration event at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja on December 9 to preach how EFCC resolved to break the corruption chain in a fair, accountable and transparent manner: “We shall collect all the looted funds once they are convicted,” he boasted.
However, everyone familiar with EFCC and its operations knows that this may end up an empty boast. For, the thorough and painstaking investigation needed to secure conviction of suspects in court is the commission’s worst undoing. It slams hundreds of count-charges against suspects for media hype, but can hardly prove any in court, a signpost of incompetent fishing.
Moreover, once the case enters the orthodox criminal justice system, EFCC’s power is curtailed by the rule of law. All their hooplah with trials in the media end there. It has to prove its allegations in front of a competent judge. The ecstasy ends there. And its hard work has to begin. But too often, in big-time corruption trials, it hardly proceeds beyond the arrests and bail.
In fact, the sickening joke during the Jonathan era was that if you must steal from public treasury because the President had a body language which speaks corruption, make sure you steal in billions. That way, if EFCC arrests you, buy your way through the criminal justice system till you are granted bail – and you are a free man to enjoy your stolen wealth as the case gets stuck in court. If your freedom on bail gives the country a bad image of corrupt big men and women, junketting around the country, too bad. Several former governors and other political office holders are walking the streets free with EFCC bails dangling fromtheir necks. Now, the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption “body language” seems to impose some order on the infamy.
Meantime, Magu said EFCC has investigated 1,881 cases this year; 280 are ongoing and 78 accused were convicted, eight interim and two final forfeiture orders were given by courts.
But this year, the treasury is depleted by looters believed to be in the Jonathan government. The stage was therefore set for accusations and counter-recriminations by the Executive arm of government and the Judiciary. The Executive, represented by the Presidency is obviously obsessed with speedy trials. No delay to deny justice to any person. Then of course the government would get back its looted funds once convicted. Moreover, the sentencing would elicit appropriate justice without delay to the convicts in order to deter others.
The reality is, corruption is ubiquitous. Stealing from public treasury for private pocket is a goal all but a handful aspire to. Even the country’s filthily corrupt security network is soaked in corruption, which makes it difficult to eradicate it. Obviously, the society’s moral compass has gone haywire. The pervasive mentality reigns that only fools get caught in busted crime. Arrest and prosecution pose no deterrent in a society with corruption in free reign. Perpetually fresh substitutes will attempt the same crime. Till the new attempt fails and they are also arrested. Then they blame everything, devil, witches and wizards included, for being nabbed. Then… the circle is retraced.
Maybe that was why the plea bargain option, as an alternative dispute resolution mechanism was necessary. But the slap-on-the-wrist plea bargain, as in the outrageous cases of ex-governor of Edo State Lucky Igbinedion and his younger brother Michael, gave plea bargaining a wrong label.
In 2008, EFCC brought a N25 billion fraud case against Lucky Igbinedion, his brother Michael and one other for looting the state treasury during his eight years’ tenure as governor.
On conviction, he was sentenced to six months in jail or the option of N3.5 million fine and ordered to refund N500 million to the state treasury and forfeit the three houses he acquired with stolen public funds to the Federal Government. All but one of the 191 charges of corruption and money laundering against him were dropped. Seven years later, his brother Michael was also fined N3m for stealing the N25bn of public money.
Thus, plea bargain assumed a bad notion. No wonder the current Attorney General of the Federation Abubakar Malami (SAN) has ruled it out saying nobody should steal billions from the public treasury and refund chicken change to it. “We want all the stolen money refunded,” Malami said recently. Consequently, all those who looted the treasury in scandals that have cost the nation hundreds of billions of Naira, would be made to cough out the money and still pay the price for abuse of public trust.
At the top, the accusations and counter-recriminations between the Presidency and Judiciary raged recently. Nobody has an answer as to how to accelerate the trials yet. The Presidency mulls special courts which EFCC believes will dispense justice speedily. The Judiciary objects. Instead, the Presidency should hire competent prosecutors and EFCC should investigate its cases thoroughly. With brainy prosecutors, the high courts will be able to try cases in one month.
The immediate-past Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Aloma Mukhtar had blamed the slow pace of trials on corruption and warned that the judiciary would be stymied if corruption was not eliminated from the Bench and the Bar. Justice Mukhtar cited a Lagos State study to House of Reps lawmakers during a public hearing in 2013 that it takes an average of 5 to 9 years for a case to move from filing to delivery of judgment.
President Muhammadu Buhari took up the theme at this year’s All Nigerian Judges’ Conference in Abuja on November 23. Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, who deputized for Buhari, told the judiciary to fight real and perceived judicial corruption because the delays of trials have become hindrances to government’s efforts at retrieving stolen wealth. ‘’For, there is both local and international dissatisfaction with the long delays in the trial process…especially for high profile cases of corruption, if they involve serving or former political officeholders,’’ Buhari said.
On the contrary, he admitted that the reasons for such delays or outright inaction were at times beyond the courts and blamed the “consequences of shoddy investigation, out-moded rules of procedure, poor prosecution or unprofessional practices of counsels.’’
Two weeks later, on December 9, incumbent CJN Mahmud Mohammed turned the tables back on the Presidency and blamed it for deliberate lack of “political will,” hence shoddy prosecution of corruption cases involving high profile and politically exposed individuals close to them in their political parties.
CJN told a November 24 meeting in Abuja with the AGF, Justices of the Supreme Court and heads of Federal courts that the government must hire well-qualified, competent and brilliant prosecutors backed with well-equipped forensic and ballistics laboratories for better evidence gathering to reduce trial time.
‘’Experience in the judiciary shows that there is abject lack of political will to prosecute some of those cases pending before our courts almost a decade in some instances. It is not because there are no special courts, but mostly for reasons of political expediency and other ancillary considerations,” the CJN said.
“The quality of prosecutions presented in courts by our prosecutorial agencies are sometimes of a standard that will never found a conviction in any court anywhere; yet, a well-prepared prosecution can see to the determination of criminal matter within a month.
“Of course, no competent prosecutor, who has filed valid charges would permit an accused to mount an interlocutory appeal, to the extent of going forth and back, sometimes twice or more to the Supreme Court, since such lapses could be injurious to the dispensation of justice.’’
Above all, CJN’s suggestion, EFCC and other agencies, including the police, must first investigate a case thoroughly before arresting suspects. Then there would be hardly any reason for adjournments once trial starts.
Yes, the special courts were mooted by Mrs. Farida Waziri in 2011 as EFCC chairman. She had argued that the special courts were the special purpose vehicles where trials go speedily from start to finish in six months, shunting the congestion in the regular courts without infringing on the rights of suspects. The national lawmakers quietly ignored the special court proposals because they did not want to be trapped by it themselves – obviously implying that there were too many dirty hands among the “legislooters” in the most important arm of the government too.
Waziri put it clearly on November 1, this year at Benue State University’s Centre for Food Technology and Research, Makurdi, one of the 10 World Bank’s Africa Centre of Excellence projects. She said: “As an anti-corruption czar, I have seen how some of those the nation entrusted with its oil resources in the past helped themselves more than the country. It is time to end oil-money-induced corruption in our land by buying into President Buhari’s vision and take ownership.
“I have made my contributions in the fight to discourage that and even recovered some of the looted funds in billions of dollars. For daring to do that, I came under fierce attacks, slander, blackmail and threats. But by God’s grace and long years of experience, I survived all. I am glad today that indeed, there is a new sheriff in town.”
Now it appears the anti-corruption agency has regressed to its crude methods of inducing fear in suspects. The law presumes all suspects innocent till they are convicted. But during the crude regime of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the Obasanjo constitutional dictatorship provided the umbrella under which he could perpetrate every illegal abuse of power and injustice against suspects – and got away with it.
For instance, the nation watched with horror when EFCC agents on June 30, 2005, brutally slapped, hit and maltreated former Inspector General of Police Tafa Balogun and finally made him fall out of their official car in a most inhuman way of treating a suspect. The appalled trial judge, Justice Garba Salisu described it as “barbaric”.
Mrs Farida Waziri and her successor, Ibrahim Lamorde, brought more civilised prosecution of the anti-graft war by democratic standards. Now, Ibrahim Magu has regressed atavistically to the bestial era. The crude, uncouthe arrest of ex-NIMASA Director-General Patrick Akpobolokemi in front of a Lagos court on December 14 shocked all civilised humanity and the video went viral. Obviously the Ribadu era of bestiality against suspects is back. If Magu had learnt anything under Waziri and Lamorde, he preferred the brutal era of executive recklessness. For, no matter the “crime” Akpobolokemi committed, he was innocent till the anti-graft agency proved it in court beyond reasonable doubt.
Till then, an incompetent and frustrated EFCC should not be seen to descend into the arena of the brutes of the wild jungle beasts to intimidate and humiliate a suspect with such arrogant brutality in broad daylight in front of his lawyers. The world now moves on brain power in the knowledge society. Not the whimsical brawn power of the hairbrained. That is what separates the animals from the humans, even if a suspect is yet to be proved guilty.
