By Ikechukwu Amaechi
When President Muhammadu Buhari cancelled the August 23, 2017, Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, the first on his return from a 103-day medical trip to the United Kingdom, in order to receive the report of the Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo-led committee, which was asked to probe the allegations of fraud against the suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, and the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ayodele Oke, some Nigerians were scandalised.
And the reason was simple. The Council remains the highest policy making organ of the federal government and after a three-month absence from Nigerian shores, many had thought that the president would have had the urge to be brought to speed on the happenings in the country by those he entrusted with the responsibility of making the authoritative allocation of our collective values while he was away convalescing.
So, to such people, the reason for the cancellation was preposterous. What does it take for the president to receive a report? Is it no longer a matter of scheduling? Besides, that week’s cancellation would be the fifth time the president would be in the country but unavailable for the meeting of the Council which consists of himself, his deputy, Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Chief of Staff to the President and the ministers. The last time he attended the meeting before then was more than four months, precisely on April 5.
But there were also some Nigerians who were prepared to give the president, to borrow a cliché, the benefit of the doubt.
To such people, the report and what the government does with it were at the core of all that the Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) stand for and profess.
President Buhari had suspended Lawal in connection with the allegations of violation of law and due process in the award of contracts under the Presidential Initiative on North East (PINE), and Oke over the discovery of large amounts of foreign and local currencies ($43m, £27,000, N23m) by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in a residential apartment at Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos, over which the NIA had made a claim. The committee had 14 days to submit its report.
Many Nigerians had eagerly awaited the report, which, if Buhari’s health had not deteriorated necessitating his abrupt return to a London hospital on May 7, ought to have been presented to the president on May 8.
So, there was a tinge of urgency to the whole matter and the president pushing aside every other matter on his table to address that particular issue was perceived in certain quarters as a good enough justification.
Of course, the three-man committee which also had the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, and the National Security Adviser, Babagana Mungonu, as members duly submitted their report and thereafter a strange silence fell on the nation.
Osinbajo after the presentation said the ball was now in Buhari’s court to study the report and take decisions based on the recommendations.
When asked whether he would disclose what was in the report, he demurred, saying only the president could take a decision on the recommendations, but added that the committee was fair in its investigation even as he declined to give a timeline of how long it would take the president to study the report and take action.
“Of course not. This is a report which contains recommendations to the president. It is a fact-finding committee as you know and what our terms of reference were was to find out based on the fact available to us and based on the interviews of witnesses of what transpired in those cases, one involving the SGF and the other the DG of NIA. We have now concluded that and we submitted a full report with recommendations to the president. We cannot, of course, give you any kind of details because the president has to look at the report, study it and then make his own decisions,” the vice president said.
Fair enough!
What is not fair and, therefore, unacceptable to many Nigerians, is the fact that one month after, not even a word has been heard from President Muhammadu Buhari on the matter. Could it be that the report is so technical that the president is yet to understand what it is all about, given his limitations? If that is the case, Osinbajo, his deputy and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who authored it, would have been summoned to help break it down for him. But to so believe would be too simplistic. It is either the report indicted the accused or not. Simple! Many believe that what is playing out is a much more sinister plot because the committee most likely passed a guilty verdict on the accused.
Therefore, the fears are that the president has put the report away to gather dust, bidding his time and hoping that Nigerians in their legendary penchant for collective amnesia would sooner than later forget. Those involved, particularly Lawal, are the axiomatic sacred cows. The president was forced by public outcry, literally, to set up the investigative committee and suspend the accused from office.
That was after an earlier attempt to upturn a guilty verdict passed on Lawal by the Senate backfired.
The Senate which brought the matter to the public domain had indicted the former SSG based on a report by its committee on the Mounting Humanitarian Crisis in the North-East but Buhari would have none of that. Instead he wrote to the Senate, accusing the Senator Shehu Sani-led committee of failing to give the SGF a fair hearing, adding that the report was signed by only three out of the nine committee members.
But Nigerians need to know what the verdict of the Osinbajo-led committee is. We need to know whether the accused were exonerated or indicted. If they were exonerated, what were the reasons for the exoneration? If they were indicted, then what next? When will they be arrested and charged to court like all other Nigerians accused of corruption?
This is necessary because suspension from office or even outright sack is not the punishment for graft in our statute books.
If Lawal and Oke are charged to court and found guilty, then they should serve the time as a deterrent to others. That will send a very strong message that this government is not biased in its anti-corruption fight. It will also send the clear signal that the government means business.
Anything short of that will make the din of Senator Sani’s immortal words that, “When it comes to fighting corruption in the National Assembly and the Judiciary and in the larger Nigerian sectors, the president (Buhari) uses insecticide, but when it comes to fighting corruption within the presidency, they use deodorants,” continue to echo even louder.
Nigerians who still believe in Buhari and his anti-graft posturing neither want to agree with Sani’s bombastic description of the president’s letter as “a funeral service for the anti-corruption fight,” nor his assertion that “we have a political atmosphere where you have a saintly and angelic presidency and a devilish and evil society.” No! Not yet!
But truth remains that when it comes to the weapons to be deployed in the fight against corruption, double standards will always be an anathema. So, Nigerians are waiting.