Proceeds Of Crime Bill: Putting The Cart Before The Horse

By Abuchi Obiora

Fresh with the ideas he must have imbibed from the 9^th Session of the Conference of State Parties of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) which was held from 13^th to 17^th December 2021 at the International Congress Centre (ICC), Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Mohammadu Buhari appealed to the Upper Senate Chamber of the National Assembly in a letter dated January 14^th, 2022, to quickly pass what he believed to be three key bills that will help him fight corruption in Nigeria.

The bills are:

1. Proceeds of Crimes Bills
2. Whistle Blower Bill
3. Witness Protection Bill

The President’s message was conveyed to the Upper Chamber on Wednesday 19^th January, 2022 through the Presidency. Concluding his appeal to the Red Chamber, the President wrote, “While anticipating the Senate’s expeditious consideration of these submissions, please accept, distinguished Senate President, the assurances of my highest consideration”.

In a television broadcast discussion early in the same month of January 2021, the presidential Spokesman, Femi Adesina had told journalists that his boss, the President, will not hand over power to corrupt politicians.

By the way, the Proceeds of Crimes Bill, in summary, among other things, should be meant to confiscate and surrender to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, all loots, monetary, material acquisitions of convicted economic saboteurs, which they may have acquired by illegal means, while the Whistle Blower Bill should be directed to the protection of individuals, groups or institutions who may have participated in alerting security agencies of the activities of the economic saboteurs. The Witness Protection Bill is the last in this necessary tripod of legislations to fight and discourage corruption because it is meant to cloud, and put veils on all witnesses who may have participated in nailing the economic saboteurs.

This last Bill in the tripod arrangement is most essential because individuals who may have overwhelming evidence to incriminate people involved in official and executive corruption, but who may have been fearing for the safety of their lives, will pick up the courage to come out and testify, because their identities will never be revealed. This letter by Mr. President to the Senate Chamber of the House of Assembly is a bold step in the right direction. I welcome that gesture as anybody who thinks well of Nigeria will do. But since every serious human being or community, even a country, should aim and work towards perfection, I say and insist that this good gesture came very belatedly……approximately 16 months before he leaves office, out of a total of 96 months he was sworn in twice to serve as the President.

By this ill-timed and belated appeal to the Red Chamber (which body of legislators was inaugurated approximately 180 days after the President assumed office), the President, unwisely had managed pulling along the cart with the horse tied behind it all these donkey 80 months he had uncharted the course of national journey to  retrogression. No wonder his government sauntered, derailed, never meeting any target it set for itself during the electioneering campaigns.

Worst still, that letter to the Senate exposed the tragedy and misadventure of a government that had not articulated a roadmap to its destination until 16 months before leaving office. What a national tragedy.

Before anybody misunderstands me, let me quickly recall that the realization of all the campaign promises of the then major opposition party, the APC, against the then ruling party, the PDP, was anchored on fighting corruption. Remember that Nigerians were told that the PDP could not deliver because it was corrupt. One would have thought that this claimant to being corruption-free would have articulated its programme to fight corruption which is what Nigerians believed was its reason for reaching out to replace an existing so-called corrupt government.

As a result of this serious misapplication, the incumbent government has indicted itself and revealed why it had not been able to fight corruption for more than six and half years of its existence. Literally speaking, the government went to farm with neither machetes, hoes, nor baskets, expecting to plough the ground with bare hands, and gather the harvest with the palms. If government has not prepared to fight corruption which it claimed to have come to fight after more than six and half years of  eight tenured years of its protracted existence, what has it actually been doing since inception? My quick answer to the question is: not much! The government has been idling away a part of national time as well as throwing away a substantial quantity of national resources during a period that will be missing, having been wasted, when the history of Nigeria is written.

If you still doubt what I say, let us take a look at the testimony of a repented former member of the ruling Political Party, who suddenly has discovered that the government he was a part of is acting like the little child in a school relay match who grabbed his baton and instead of running like his mates to the score line, speedily ran in the opposite direction of the score line, messing up the country as the little boy messed up the race for his colleagues.

That repentant chieftain of the ruling party, the APC, is Mohammad Haruna and I will carefully reproduce his observations because these observations will explain the rudderless journey which Nigeria was forced to embark with a dubious “Change 2015”. It will also make my work easy in making a conclusion that this government either did not believe that Nigerians will ever fall for their deceit, hence never prepared to rule (as evidenced in its submission of the primary legal instrument it needed very badly to fight corruption and change the narrative, to the National Assembly 16 months before its departure) or it was already prepared to plunge Nigeria into war through the recruitment of foreign mercenaries that presently harangue Nigerians as bandits, if he did not win the presidential elections that it never prepared any forward positions for, should it, in error, win the election.

Comparing the immediate past government to the incumbent government Mohammed Haruna itemized thus:

1. The eggs we were buying N30 under corruption before handover in 2015 is now N85 under Mr. Integrity.

• The Indomie we were buying N60 before handover in 2015 is now N150 under Mr. Integrity.

• The bread we were buying N400 under corruption before handover in 2015 is now N850 under Mr. Integrity.

• The sachet of tomato paste we were buying N50 under corruption before handover in 2015 is now N160 under Mr. Integrity.

• The 50kg bag of rice we were buying N9,500 under corruption before handover in 2015 is now N29,000 under Mr. Integrity.

• 24 liters of groundnut oil under corruption was N8,500. The same 24 liters of groundnut oil under Mr. Integrity is N31,000.

• The exchange rate that was N180 to $1 under corruption before handover in 2015 is now N580 to $1; Naira has continued to lose value under Mr. Integrity.

• The bag of cement we were buying N2,500 under corruption before handover in 2015 is now N4,500 under Mr. Integrity.

Mohammed Haruna continued by saying:

• Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about rescuing Chibok girls and Leah Sharibu.

1. Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about Mambilla power project.

1. Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about fixing existing petroleum refineries and building new ones.

1. Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about giving Nigerians constant electricity.

1. Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about securing lives and properties in Nigeria. People are now being massacred and wasted on daily basis.

1. Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about banning all government officials from seeking medical care abroad.

1. Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about creating 720,000 jobs in the 36 states of the federation per annum (20,000 per state).

1. Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about engaging one million N-Power graduates and skill-up up to 10 million Nigerians in partnership with the private sector.

1. Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about completing the 365 road projects under construction in all parts of the federation.

1. Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about increasing the beneficiaries of Trade Moni, Market Moni and Farmer Moni from 2.3 million to 10 million.

1. Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about remodeling and equipping 10,000 schools per year.

• Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about fighting corruption and revamping the economy.

• Mr. Integrity is no longer talking about institutionalizing the practice of giving soft loans of up to 1 million Naira to small traders, artisans and commercial motor drivers.

• The communities we were traveling to in Northern Nigeria, we can no longer visit (even in our dreams) under Mr. General Integrity who promised to fight insecurity and restore peace.

• Farmers have abandoned their farms under Mr. Integrity.

• The health sector, academic sector and roads are in worst conditions under Mr. Integrity.

• Nigeria’s (International and local) debt under Mr. Integrity is about N60trillon but Nigerians don’t see the impacts or where it was invested.

• Mr. Integrity has never given account of recovered looted funds.  He is not even interested to give account of the recovered loot.

Mohammed Haruna concluded by saying and I quote: “The situation in Nigeria had never been this terrible”. In his expose, Citizen Mohammed Haruna summarized the gloomy condition of Nigeria and Nigerians.

So, I ask: how has Nigeria, with her vast array of first-class human resources, spanning all the human endeavors and professions who can do better than the people presently occupying leadership positions in Nigeria gotten to this point?

It is said that evil men prosper when good men, in an unsuspecting silence, decide to keep quiet and watch from the gallery. All hands must be on deck now to salvage the country and wrestle her from a group of people who are either inept, or they have abandoned Nigeria and Nigerians, having decided to line their pockets while the country dithers along the path of extinction.

Sponsored by known political minions and rascals who either killed or deceived people to attain political offices or surreptitiously acquired those political offices that brought them to limelight and front burner of national politics, the incumbent government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will soon hit the second position in the Guinness Book of World Records following after the Nazi government of Dem Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, as having attained power by the means of propaganda, mudslinging, deception and lies. Either guided or caged by these known political rascals one of whom, in an obvious mockery of Nigerians they have shortchanged, want to become President in 2023, the incumbent Federal Government of Nigeria has reneged on all the promises it made during its electioneering campaign.

Addressing the issue of political will and capacity to deliver on election campaign promises, Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli an Italian Renaissance diplomat, political philosopher and writer who is also understood in the contemporary world as the father of modern political science because of his erudition and valid theories in that field, wrote that “Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great”. The above political theory has either exposed the lack of political will of the ruling political party, the APC, or the originating and intentional falsity of all the claims and promises of the electioneering campaign of ‘Change 2015’ in the light of the failures of everything the ruling party has promised Nigerians it will do prior to the election that brought it to power.

Secondly, the above political theory throws up the question: Is the President sincere in his presentation of those three Bills on corruption to the Senate? To find out, let us look at the antecedents of his government on corruption and the handling of the Proceeds of Crime of former economic criminals, which Proceeds were either recovered by previous governments or his government. We will not bother ourselves here with the sharing of some of those Proceeds of crimes in the custody of the EFCC, which we all have had stories of how they were shared by some top members of the ruling party including some government officials of the Ministry of Justice. Let us, therefore refer back to Mohammed Haruna’s expose as contained in number 20 and 26 reproduced in this work.

Having referred to Mohammed Haruna’s expose, I insist that the timing of the presentation to the Senate of those Bills on corruption when considered together with the recent lullaby from the President to Nigerians that citizens will experience a sudden and magical transformation of the present security situation in the country from its ugly state to the bliss of a new dawn of unfathomable peace and freedom of movement within Nigeria between now and the year 2023, that the President was everything but sincere. One easily can see through the murky hourglass of the President’s politicking that, a fortiori, Nigerians are henceforth, bound to hear more of another round of empty political talks and fake promises from both the President, the Presidency, and the APC between now and the election year 2023 as they will fruitlessly work hard to sell to Nigerians, the candidacy of a man, his kingmaker from the South Western part of Nigeria, who, ab initio,  had aspired, yet, cannot attain the office of the Executive President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Q.E.D (Quod Evat Demonstrandum).

ABUCHI OBIORA

abuchiobiora@gmail.com 

For: Global Upfront Newspapers

www.globalupfront.com

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