Like the mirroring device called the Kaleidoscope, this column follows up and monitors the constantly and quickly changing patterns of socio-economic and political events around the world giving special attention to those events happening in Nigeria and other African countries. The Kaleidoscope takes an impartial and objective analysis of these events, taking cognizance of the needs of African countries as developing countries and recommending options for the attainment of socio-economic and political emancipation of these countries from the grip and strong clutch of neo-colonialism.
This brief re-introduction of the kaleidoscope is necessary here because the matter being discussed today touches on one of those fundamental reasons why Nigeria and other African countries have remained underdeveloped. That reason is conspiracy on the part of the political elites, and leadership failure arising from that conspiracy.
Great countries have risen around the world from the debris of fallen nations because such great countries aligned their justice administration systems in obedience with fixed natural principles and laws upon which the foundation of the universe is hinged, while the failed nations failed because of their penchant for travesty of national laws as evidenced in the wrong application of their laws and blatant neglect of the common aspirations of the people.
The embattled Abdulrasheed Maina has been let off the hook. Now, the man can begin to pop his champaign. I will explain why I think this way in this discourse.
Abdulrasheed Maina, born in Biu local government area of Borno State in 1950, a former Senior Administrator for Customs, Immigration and Prison Pensions Office (CIPPO), was the former chairman of Pensions Reform Task Team (PRTT) until he was declared wanted by the EFCC for some economic sabotage against Nigeria, bordering on money laundering and other related criminal activities.
For about ten years, Mr. Maina had been evading the law, periodically walking in and out of custody. This November 2021, he was eventually found guilty of the offence for which he was charged and jailed a total of 61 years for those offences. The sentences on the charges upon which he was arraigned and found guilty are to run concurrently, leaving a sum of 8 years for the embattled Maina to remain in prison custody.
In the ruling, the Honourable Court upon which the equally Honourable Judge, Justice Okon Abang presided observed that Maina had illegally maintained some deposit accounts with N300 million, N500 million and 1.5 billion naira, respectively, among others. He was also found guilty of laundering N171, 099,000.00 procured from unlawful acts.
In the judgment secured against Maina by the EFCC for the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Maina is to lose 23 of his houses built around the world to the Federal Republic, apart from the jail sentence. By the way, this world class sleaze by Maina took just two years to happen between 2010 and 2012, when he was the boss of PRTT. A total sleaze of ₦100bn was recorded against Maina by the EFCC within the two years he chaired the PRTT.
The Kaleidoscope wishes to congratulate the EFCC for its victory against Maina and the forces that shielded him from the long arms of the law for almost ten years. He nearly got scot free from a classic case of official corruption – one of the worst ever recorded anywhere in the world. But this is where the congratulations and excitement must stop, if we are to look at the consequences of what Maina did.
Firstly, let us recall that the money which Maina who must have worked in concert with other criminals not caught by the law stole, belonged to elderly Nigerian statesmen and stateswomen who had worked their lives out to earn pension after their retirement. We all seem to suffer from collective amnesia, otherwise, how can we forget so soon the travails of Nigerian elder statesmen and stateswomen who thronged the public places including the pension’s office to ask for their withheld pensions? Many of these elder statesmen and stateswomen were ‘beaten’ by both rain and sunshine as they were also ‘tear-gassed’ by government security agents who felt that they constituted nuisance to those public places they occupied. How many of these elder statesmen and stateswomen died miserably unwept and unsung by the country they diligently served, without receiving their monies? It is on records that many of them, unable to withstand the humiliation and stress at their old ages, collapsed and died on the spot while protesting the injustice melted to them.
I know many families affected by this grave injustice. Nigerians must come out to reject the sentence given to Maina as a precedent for the administration of justice in an extreme case of wickedness as Maina dished to these fallen heroes and heroines. That human justice delivered by the court is a travesty, a parody, nay a stylish imitation of natural justice from which the rule of law and administration of human justice must be copied. Not only is it a grossly inferior imitation of what the justice administration system can be, it is also both an absurd and grotesque misrepresentation of natural justice, nay, a caricature of what the law can be.
For the attention of readers who may not know: a concept known as ‘plea bargain’ is usually applied by the EFCC and other anti-graft agencies in disposing of cases of high profile executive corruption and stealing.
Let me recreate a scenario as to what actually happened and what may still happen in the Citizen Maina case: The man may have been unilaterally assisted to evade the law by the powers-that-be (because he “co-operated” the Nigerian way) through intermittent high profile detention which actually did not take away his freedom over the past ten years that he has been “haunted”. It was possible that a legal jamboree was enacted to have a disappointing semblance of a criminal trial because the presiding judge must only adjudicate the case based on the evidence before him, which may overtly have been whittled down as a result of inducement and undue criminal influence. For example, the man may have negotiated his way, courtesy of the magic wand called “plea bargain”, obviously surrendering part of his loot to the people who organized the ramshackle trial.
He was eventually found guilty of all charges leveled against him. The 61 years jail term imposed on him for the charges runs concurrently. This summarizes to the 8 years we have been told. Now, of these 8 years, the man may actually be demanded to serve out between 4 and 5 years as required by the schedule of prison tenors. This though, is speculative, but I assume it to be so.
The next thing after the pronouncement of the trial Judge is to do the paperwork. As this is done, all the years that the man have been in prison custody through intermittent posh detentions over the ten years duration of cat and mouse chase in the high profile trial will be discounted for him and Nigerians will find out that the man may be walking away free in the next few weeks, if not immediately as soon as the paperwork is completed on his behalf.
They will issue him a certificate of release from jail as a criminal convict – a certificate which should ordinarily cap and put a seal on all his political ambitions. But wait! Another government of another set of recycled criminals of different shades will come up one day and grant him a State Pardon, and rehabilitate his dimmed political career. He will be recycled, once again like many former criminals before him, into the Nigerian political mainstream.
I doubt that this hypothetical scenario created here by me will not play out in Citizen Maina’s case. Do you see why I said that the man will be popping Champaign with his friends after thejudgment?
There have been reports about the looting of the Federal treasury by Nigerians whose duties are to execute the suspicious, corruptive, retrogressive and controversial derivative of a non-existing law. This derivative is “plea bargain” already mentioned. To say the least, “pleas bargain” in Nigeria is the most fatal blow to the administration of criminal justice in the country. It is borne out of greed and executive lawlessness of an incurably corrupt government that swims in illegalities and mindless impunity. The concept of “plea bargain” is peculiar to Nigeria. Never before had it been heard in legal history that criminals are enticed to retain past of their loot in exchange for freedom or mitigated sentences. What I am aware of is Parole where first time offenders or criminals who had comported themselves very well are either released conditionally or granted suspended sentences.
With “plea bargain”, crime has subtly been legalized in Nigeria and given a boost to flourish. The rule now seem to be that a prospective looter of national treasury must prepare to loot enough to share between the law enforcement agencies and himself, while surrendering peanut of the loot to the country whose money he has stolen, and whose laws he has infringed upon.
Justice administration system in Nigeria should be transparent and seen to be so by Nigerians.
“Plea bargain” encourages crime. Apart from punishing crime, another fundamental thing that the law aims to achieve is to be a deterrent to crime. “Plea bargain” in Nigeria as presently applied and used for economic saboteurs and executive thieves by the EFCC and other anti-graft agencies does not punish crime enough. It ‘romances’ and encourages crime. It does not also serve as a deterrent to crime. Like I have said earlier, the unwritten rule now seems to be that prospective thieves should steal enough to share and cover their tracks when apprehended and put on trial.
The government should observe that since the EFCC was established and mandated to apprehend and prosecute economic criminals, there have been more executive thieves and economic saboteurs who now steal, not in millions anymore, but in billions and trillions of naira. The EFCC should be scrapped with its “plea bargain” and the normal legal process to investigate and prosecute crime by regular police force, which is the norm all over the world, revamped and reinstituted for general application. This is most necessary as the commission has become a money-spinning vehicle for both the officers serving in the commission, their prosecuting legal teams and sundry contractors involved in one way or the other in the docking, investigation and prosecution of executive thieves and economic saboteurs.
Two other reasons why the EFCC should be scrapped is, one, all the previous chief executives of that commission were marred in one controversy or the other which necessitated that they were given “soft landing” retirement, allowing them to go uninvestigated. The second reason is that it has become a home for scammers as shown in the unauthorized and controversial swoop on the house of Justice (Mrs.) Odili where nonentities and scammers, supposedly being bred in the corridors of the commission mentioned the person of the Attorney General of the Federation as an accomplice in their unholy mission. This, though has been refuted by the office of the AGF, but Nigerians already understand that there are more to that rebuttal than meets the ear. This is a story for another day. The third reason why the EFCC should be scrapped and its functions transferred to a special task force of the regular police under the control of the Inspector General of Police, where it can also be assisted by the Interpol and other such special forces, is that the EFCC has become a hunting tool at the hands of the executive arm of the government who uses to nail the political ambitions of its political enemies and other politicians who have run short of favour of the executive.
In the part two of a two-part work titled “The Successful Trend of Community Policy across Nigeria” which were published in the Kaleidoscope, I had recognized, in what I call the anthropological origin of law, that all the laws of man derive directly from the many norms and values of the people and these later transform into the customs commonly accepted by the people as their uniform and set standard of conducts necessary to maintain peace, harmony and order in their communities. These ideals soon become laws and this is the origin of human laws and this origin of human laws, I opined, derive directly from the laws of nature which have been observed and viewed to be sacrosanct by consistent generations of man through the eons of years it took man to arrive at his present evolutionary stage of Homo Sapiens (wise, modern, and civilized man)
Does any set of these human laws in any tradition or culture justify stealing? It is doubtful.
In part one of that same work, I had observed what I call “the sociological hierarchy of law” to be expressed in the following order of superiority, viz:
- Natural law
- The people
- The rule of law
- The government
The above order presupposes that where the rule of law errs, not replicating the opinion of natural law (justice) as to reproduce a synchronicity in the administration of justice through the four components/segments in the “sociological hierarchy of law”, the opinion of the people (the second component) must prevail above those of the rule of law (the third component) and the government (the fourth component) because they both have failed in synchronicity with natural law (the first component, which is the primary source of all laws).
My thought on this matter is food for thought for jurisprudence lawyers but before they have time to do that, I ask a question: what is the opinion of Nigerians as regards the judgment delivered in the case of Maina versus the Nigerian State? Most Nigerians view that judgment as a travesty because the irreparable damages which Maina caused to pensioners – elder Nigerians, were not actually redeemed by the judgment. How have the sufferings and death of those elder statesmen and elder stateswomen been assuaged by the judgment?
The disparity in public expectation (the second component, being the people), and the actual delivery of justice (the third component, being the rule of law) in the case between Citizen Maina versus the Federal Republic of Nigeria gives impetus to the periodical necessity to give vent to what I called “the Ideal State” as against the concept of the Hobbesian State propounded by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).
My thoughts on the “Ideal State” are conveyed in both the first and second parts of that work titled “The Successful Trend of Community Policing across Nigeria”. I propounded that through popular and mass verdicts, the “Ideal State”, powered and delivered by the people, ‘rights’ the ‘wrongs’ of constituted governments who may have fallen short of people’s expectation from their governments as exemplified in the case of Citizen Maina versus the Federal Republic of Nigeria. My argument is that if a constituted government must prevent a mass movement that may seek to replace it with the “Ideal State”, it must maintain the synchronicity in the administration of justice which is established and must run without contradicting itself, across the four segments/components of the “sociological hierarchy of law”, as earlier enumerated.
ABUCHI OBIORA
For: Global Upfront Newspapers
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