Ayo Ola
Human rights activist, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) and the Executive Chairman, Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre) Mr. Olanrewaju Suraju, on Thursday, decried that the avowed anti-corruption fight of President Muhammadu Buhari and his ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, was ineffective.
They spoke in Lagos during the public presentation of ‘Compendium of 100 high profile corruption cases in Nigeria,’ organised by HEDA supported by MacArthur Foundation.
Falana who spoke virtually said, “It is doubtful that the Buhari regime has not abandoned the fight against corruption completely because you are all aware some people are standing trial or being charged for corruption of about N5bn to N10bn and are rushing to the APC and as one of the leaders of APC once said, ‘come to us, join us so that your offenses can be forgiven, we can drop charges against you.’In other cases, agreements have been reached between the Attorney General and people standing trial for very grave corruption charges and based on such agreement, the cases have been terminated.
“For me, I pity PACA, EFCC, and even ICPC because they seem to be on their own while the Office of the Attorney General is now working for corrupt people and very powerful in society.I, therefore, commend HEDA not to get frustrated, not to get tired, because but for the limited intervention that organisations like HEDA make, the situation would have been much worse. So I want to thank you and commend you and ask you to keep it up.
“Corrupt people are treated with a lot of reverence in our society, lawyers are bound to run after them.”
He added, “Under the Recovery of Public Property Law of 1984 which was a Decree enacted by the Babangida/Buhari-Idiagbon junta, if you stole a million or more, the penalty was life imprisonment. That law is conveniently not applied by the anti-graft agencies so that these people who looted the treasury are not sentenced to life imprisonment. But there are some Nigerians who feel those who had looted the treasury, such be made to pay that penalty because of stealing of public funds, people die on our roads because the roads are ill-maintained, people die in hospitals, even buildings collapse because of corruption. So those who say let us implement the death penalty with respect to corruption may not be wrong. But I am saying that even the law that prescribed the death penalty is not applied because of what I call class solidarity for instance Yahoo Yahoo boys arrested by EFCC are paraded on a regular basis but nobody dares parade a big man. When two occasions that were done in recent time, the state in fact one occasion, the state apologized to the big man that was paraded, in the second occasion it was done once and because of the attacks from the media and some ethnic groups that idea was dropped.
“Even in the fight against corruption, you must also appreciate class dimension which makes it impossible for the anti-graft agency to go the whole hug because you must understand again that corruption is part and parcel of the type of neo-colonial capitalist system that we are operating hence instead of corruption, legislators will call it to lobby in the US, instead of charging people with stealing, the penalty for stealing is seven-year imprisonment, we prefer to charge them with money laundering and even when they are jailed two or three years, the court insists that the term should run from the day the person was arrested and also where a big man or a bug woman is convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, very rarely, usually there is an option of fine.
“So when somebody has been convicted for two, three, or four or five offenses, the penalties are said to run concurrently by which the system itself makes it impossible for people to appreciate that it is not in the interest of the society for people to engage in corruption.”
Executive Chairman, HEDA, Mr. Suraju said the Buhari’s administration anti-graft way leaves much to be desired, adding that it has not been effective.
He said, “ The fight against corruption under this administration, has been like a flipflop which is like good steps forward but several steps backwards. You will see where the anti-corruption agencies are struggling to effect some potential possible changes, and you experience, especially with the office of the Attorney General in particularly underming the cases, not only withdrawing some of the high profile corruption cases because the suspects are members of the ruling party but also to the extent of engaging in practises that are unbecoming of not only government but the government that is claiming to be fighting corruption.”
On the compendium, he stated that the public had been very useful.
“This public presentation of the 5th Edition of the Compendium on 100 high profile corruption cases in Nigeria, is in commemoration of this year’s International Anti-Corruption Day.
“The annual compendium provides members of the general public with verifiable information on some protracted 100 high profile corruption cases that began since 2005 detailing: parties involved, case number, nature of offense, the amount involved, year case was filed, court and status, with the aim of increasing citizens’ awareness of those cases and circumstances surrounding them. It is to also challenge the Administration of Criminal Justice system in Nigeria on the need for reforms and speedy dispensation of justice, while also emphasizing the importance of transparency and accountability given corruption-induced developmental setback in Nigeria.
“This 5th edition of the compendium was preceded by: investigative researches, analyses, and identification of new high-profile corruption cases not listed in the previous editions. Previous editions have formed the basis of international reports and investigations by partner organizations.
“We also succeeded in using the compendium to engage some international anti-corruption agencies to start assisting the country in identifying illicit properties that are domiciled outside the country featured in the compendium by HEDA.
“We have had in recent time where a university in the UK is using the compendium.”
Executive Secretary, Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-Corruption, Prof Sadiq Isah Radda, said the FG had been doing its best to fight corruption.
He, however, said the efforts had been unsatisfactory. He called for collaborative efforts of all the arms of government, the three tiers of government, civil society organizations, and the entire Nigerians for the anti-graft war to be effective.
According to him, there will be more efforts to fight corruption in 2022.
He said, “Nigeria has made very little progress in the fight against corruption which means we have some progress but there is a lot of work to be done. This a lot of work to be done is not the responsibility of the lawyers, CSOs, the government, the ICPC, EFCC alone, it is the responsibility of everybody. We have to work together, civil society organisation, the government, anti-corruption agencies to ensure that we tackle the problem of corruption. We are doing the little effort we can at the FG level. It is not satisfactory, we can do more. But can we have the state and LG to at least, do what is being done at the FG level?
“FG that said it is going to fight corruption is making some modest efforts. I am not saying there is no corruption in Nigeria or there is no problem. There are some sensational statements made against the government and its officials and the anti-corruption agencies. We are in a country where people make many assumptions and they go by that assumptions.
“If you read the report two weeks ago, Nigeria has been accused of allowing terrorism financing. This is simply because there is no collaboration between NFIU, EFCC, ICPC and the police. The report did not accurately capture what is happening in Nigeria but because the anti-corruption agencies are not working in sync and are not collaborating as some of them have turned the fight against corruption as a business.”
He added, “If we really want to solve this problem, every one of us must take responsibility.”
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Rotimi Jacobs, called for the adoption of electronic payment in all government transactions to make the anti-corruption war effective.
He said, “There is a misconception in our country as to the utilisation of security votes. No wonder we have security challenges because we believe that if the funds for security are utilized for security, we will not be in the state where we are today.
“The poorest state in this state in terms of revenue allocation what they allocated for security votes every month is N250m, the so-called rich states, their own allocation is N1.5bn to N2.5bn every month. These funds are not paid through cash. The banks must go and source for cash every month for N250m and when the cashier of Government House collects N250m every month, he gives it to the governor. The Governor will not sign anything. He will utilize the money as his own in all states of the federation. This is a trend. During the election, the security votes will ballon. In the last three months to the election, in some states, N3bn and cash are being given to the governors, not for security but for election in all the states of the federation. Why is it that the government if they are sincere about the fight against corruption have not been adopting e-payment for all payments by the government? The major problem we have if we are sincere about the fight against corruption, the cash transaction in government must stop. That is the major area where we have a problem.
Where is it that ministry to fight corruption. Cash transactions must stop.
“There are other cases of corruption by public officials. One thing in our country, while will Jacob Zuma of South Africa, if he is a Nigerian, will he ever be charged in Nigeria after leaving office? Why is it that no ex-President or Head of State has ever been prosecuted in the country? Why is that the immunity they enjoy in office, they still enjoy it after leaving office? Will FG confiscate the properties of Abacha if he had been alive? I think sincerely we are not fair to the Abacha family because we are creating the impression that only the Abacha family stole. It is only Abacha family that we have concentrated our efforts on. What has happened to the others.”