In its 12 years of existence, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has waded through the fight against corruption, Nigeria’s national disease.
Politicians complain about its modus operandi. The public is hardly satisfied. So, how can the EFCC help clean up sleaze? Correspondent SAM NWOKORO reports.
Every nation fights against corruption in public places. No nation has a perfect system. Not even the developed economies are immune to the corruption virus; only the degree of prevalence varies from country to country.
So, every nation has an anti-graft institution to enforce high moral conduct in public and private domains. Nigeria created the EFCC in 2003, and it has been battling the chequered system from one administration to another ever since.
Because Nigeria has an unenviable record in global integrity perception, it is difficult for the EFCC to win public endorsement that it is doing well in its task.
The United Nations (UN) has as part of its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the reduction of all kinds of crime to mitigate poverty in developing countries, especially cyber and cross border crimes.
Nigeria is signatory to various bilateral and multilateral treaties and agreements on fighting corruption. But how far have these instruments helped the EFCC in its work? Why are the people not willing to see the agency in better light? Imagine what would have happened if such an agency never existed in the first place.
Why EFCC was created
The EFCC is a child of circumstance born at the right time. Before its creation, only the police did all the tracking, apprehending, and prosecution of crime. This posed logistical and administrative problems for the police.
There was also expansion in the country’s socio and economic profile: Nigeria has created more private sector businesses by divesting state shares from sectors such as aviation, telecommunication, banking and finance, information communication technology (ICT), and oil and gas.
With the transformation of business complementing the democratisation of all tiers of government, the workload of the police in fighting elite, otherwise called white collar crime, spiralled.
The deepening of ICT in the beginning of the 21st century meant sophistication in crime methods. Local criminal tactics were refined through greater awareness of the power of the internet. This also demanded sophistication in crime fighting. And it led to the call for the creation of more crime busters to reduce the work of the police.
The EFCC was created by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration in 2003 in response to pressure from the global Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on Money Laundering which named Nigeria as one of the countries not co-operating in the anti-money laundering crusade.
The mission of the EFCC is “to rid Nigeria of economic and financial crimes and to effectively coordinate the domestic effort of the global fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.”
However, its effectiveness is disputed. A lot of Nigerians see the EFCC as a government tool that witch hunts political opponents.
“It appears one regime after another uses the agency to settle issues and scores among political foes and friends. Yet, fighting corruption in Nigeria is a complex issue of balancing national interest and security and keeping national ethos.
“That is why some governments are weak in fighting corruption in Nigeria, while others take it serious, depending on how their tactics enhance their tenure security,” said Chidi Nwankwo, a rights activist at “Stamp Out Corruption Initiative”, a non governmental organisation.
Milestones
Notwithstanding global perception about corruption in Nigeria, the EFCC has made some indelible marks and people at least see it as a barking dog against corrupt public officials.
It recorded instances of zeal to fight corruption soon after its creation in 2003. Cases that brought the EFCC to the limelight included the prosecution of former Inspector General of Police, Tarfa Balogun.
The EFCC recorded 117 convictions in 2013 and 126 in 2014.
It recovered N9,755,924,635.69 in 2011; N41,548,665,730.69 and $1,520,410.00 in 2012. In 2013, it recovered N11,276,108,536.81 and $2,190,127.00 as well as 45,585.00 pounds and 7,090 euros.
It arrested more than 20 syndicates who specialise in illegal foreign exchange (forex) transfers without clearance from the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS).
Those the EFCC has interrogated include former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor now the Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido; Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello; former Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) Chairman, Onyema Ugochukwu; and former House of Representatives Speaker, Dimeji Bankole.
They also include former Governors Saminu Turaki (Jigawa), Orji Uzor Kalu (Abia), Joshua Dariye (Plateau), Jolly Nyame (Taraba), and Chimaraoke Nnamani (Enugu), among others.
Between 2008 and 2009, about 15 high ranking public officials were quizzed over alleged abuse of office apart from money laundering allegedly committed by private sector operators.
But the EFCC did not have evidence to prosecute all those interrogated.
Post banking industry consolidation and exposure to high wire crime showcased the ability of the EFCC between 2009 and 2012, leading to the forfeiture of assets by the chief executive officers of some banks who failed to exercise due diligence in the issuance of loans and letters of credit.
The establishment of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), which bankrolled the bad debts of financial houses between 2008 and 2010, was as a result of their money laundering scams unearthed by the EFCC.
Sociology of Nigeria’s corruption
Corruption in Nigeria has defied solutions, legal and extra-legal. It was the reason the First Republic was overthrown in January 1966 by soldiers, who charged that politicians were 10 per cent collectors without the interest of the nation at heart.
That began the mistrust among the component parts of Nigeria.
Transparency International (TI) once reported that “Nigeria ranks 27 among 136” in its corruption index, and that “65 per cent of corrupt cases were occasioned between 1999 and 2009”.
The situation has not changed much with regard to Nigeria’s rank in TI corruption index.
It added that “weak institutions and poor regulatory laws in the private sector accounted largely for the large number of trans border crimes in Nigeria”, as well as a “corrupt political class, especially Nigeria’s judiciary, which cringes and takes time to convict corrupt public officers.”
The report also cited the “politics of appeasement by the political class.”
Olufunke Adeboye, associate professor of history and strategic studies, University of Lagos (UNILAG), wrote in an analysis in 2012 that “Nigeria as a country richly endowed with natural resources and high quality human capital is yet to find its rightful place among the comity of nations.
“A major reason that has been responsible for her socio-economic stagnation is the phenomenon of corruption.
“The [Muhammadu] Buhari regime [of December 1983 to August 1985], which scarcely showed respect for human rights in its bid to entrench discipline and sanity in public life, was toppled by Ibrahim Babangida in a bloodless in-house coup on August 27, 1985.
“The next 13 years saw no serious effort to stop corruption. If anything, corruption reached an alarming rate and became institutionalised during Babangida’s regime.
“Leaders found guilty under Murtala Mohammed and Muhammadu Buhari regimes found their way back to public life and recovered their seized properties.
“The 1994 Okigbo Panel report on ‘Re-organisation and Reform of the CBN’ indicted Babangida, [Sani] Abacha and former CBN Governor, Abdulkadir Ahmed, for mismanaging about $12.4 billion of oil windfall between 1988 and 1994.
“Babangida authourised the deduction of crude oil of 65,000 barrels per day [bpd] for the finance of special priority projects, including the Ajaokuta steel and Iron mills and the Shiroro hydro-electricity power projects.”
“The report also talked about debt buy-back and building-up of foreign reserves.
According to the Okigbo report, the quantity of crude lifting from Nigeria for debt buy-back under Babangida’s regime increased to 105,00 bpd and in early 1994 to 150,00 bpd.”
Other factors
Another factor that accelerates corruption in Nigeria is the “I don’t care attitude” of the citizens.
The late writer, Abubakar Jimba, lamented in a public lecture last year that “the inability of the political elite to see the Nigeria unity project as one demanding of everyone’s selfless sacrifice … is responsible for why the Nigerian elite prefer settlement by [the] corrupt leadership class instead of standing by the masses for the greater good.”
Adding her thoughts to why corruption in the country is a difficult problem to solve, former EFCC Chairman, Farida Waziri, told a delegation of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) that “in Nigeria there are many persons in public office that are mentally ill, and to sanitise the system, the Nigerian public space, aspiring public office holders should be subjected to psychiatric test.
“Most of the negative character traits exhibited by public officers in the country, especially massive looting, are symptomatic of mental illness. Primitive accumulation and greed.
“If you are stealing what you need, it is a different thing, but if you are grabbing left, right, and centre throughout, then your character should be called to question.
“This is necessary to help rid Nigeria of economic and financial crimes.”
Whether she did not fall victim of the same anomalies she was criticising remains a matter for debate.
However, some Nigerians applaud the EFCC for its efforts.
Former federal Attorney General and Justice Minister, Kanu Agabi, said at the agency’s award ceremony in February this year that “the men and women that the nation should remember are those like you (EFCC employees) who serve selflessly and honestly.
“The men and women that the world have immortalised are not those who sacrificed others, but those who sacrificed themselves. The sacrifice which men of the EFCC have made for their country can be better appreciated in the past few years under Ibrahim Lamorde as EFCC Chairman.
“Not many would have remembered the profile of the agency before Lamorde took the reins. Integrity was a major issue, and development partners, including leading international law enforcement agencies, were reluctant to relate with the agency.”
Partnerships, reforms, aspirations
The nature of the work of the EFCC demands the training and retraining of personnel. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) of the United States, the British Scotland Yard, and Australian anti-narcotics and money laundering institutions partner with the EFCC in detecting and arresting cybercriminals.
The agency equips its personnel with new techniques in crime tracking, boosted by the government’s launch of the cybercrime tracking and detection roadmap for all security agencies.
In January this year, the EFCC declared that it recorded 243 convictions in the past two years.
EFCC spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren, said there is no more safe haven for corrupt Nigerians anywhere in the world, as the agency is working with about 20 organisations in Africa, Asia, Europe, and America.
“Some people feel that we are not doing anything because we no longer dramatise our activities. The FBI will not tell you it plans to arrest somebody. That’s not the way it is done. We are really doing a lot under the present administration,” he stressed.