“If corruption is a disease, transparency is a central part of its treatment.” — Kofi Annan
American footballer and coach, Wes Fesler, might not have had Nigeria’s cesspools of official corruption in mind when he said, “Hypocrisy is the audacity to preach integrity from a den of corruption.”
That’s the exact picture painted daily by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. EFCC’s double standards cry to high heavens and have been made more manifest since the inception of the present federal regime.
Anybody who has been part of Nigeria’s political evolution since 1999 and who has followed the activities of the Commission will understand and even sympathise with it in its current roles in the fight against [or for] corruption.
The anti-graft body is in difficulty, having a goat as a janitor in a yam barn and expecting to meet the yam intact. An anti-graft agency that is set up and supervised by thieves stealing the nation’s resources to play out a diversionary act in the drama and we the citizens are expecting them to catch the thieves. What a tall order!
What more evidence do you require to adjust your expected outcomes to zero than the fact that the man who pioneered the body as the Chairman/Chief Executive, Nuhu Ribadu, is also entangled in the EFCC mess?
Recall that Ribadu then listed Bola Ahmed Tinubu, then-Governor of Lagos State, as among the 10 most corrupt Nigerians. But today, he provides security to the man as president as his National Security Adviser.
Doesn’t that tell you that EFCC was never set up to fight corruption but to execute a diversionary project for the corrupt cabals who seized political power and needed to keep the public thinking that something was being done to protect their commonwealth? Ask EFCC today about Sambo Dasuki, the alleged central figure upon which most of the Jonathan regime’s corruption revolved. Ask them about those they told us benefited mightily from Dasuki’s disbursements. That drama came and is gone. Now, we have entered Godwin Emefiele’s circuit with all energy seeming as if the real thief has been caught. There were more arrests in Dasuki’s case because they were of different political parties. That will not happen with Emefiele no matter how many beans he spills in the process. Why? The names he can list are members of the sinless,
squeaky-clean club called APC. Like Dasuki’s, Emefiele’s case will die after the drama has reached its crescendo and successfully achieved the goal of creating an impression that something was going on to curb graft in high places. Perhaps, after Tinubu, another EFCC’s former tenant will mount the throne. God forbid!
Let us imagine the ambition or confusion of the early operatives of EFCC who looked up to Ribadu as their leader to stamp out corruption in public office. Recall the zeal that propelled them into thinking they were serving a nation that had the best of intentions and meant well. Today, they would be wondering what happened…whether their role model Ribadu has found himself dancing to the tune of “If you can’t beat them join them.”
That has been the rigmarole in the Commission as it entered one confusion after another. Ribadu (2003 to 2007), Mrs Farida Waziri (2008 to 2011), Ibrahim Lamorde (2012 to 2015), Abdulrasheed Bawa (2021 to 2023), Ibrahim Magu (2015) to Mohammed Umar Abba (2020 to 2021), Abdulkarim Chukkol (June to October 2023, and now the incumbent Ola Olukayode. The turnover rate says it all about the crisis of confidence that has riddled the federal agency as any government in power searches for who can play along and “well”.
The current leadership of the Commission has more challenges than previous ones. Has Ribadu any reputation left to guide them without contradicting himself? Is it President Tinubu who can boldly challenge them to go after Nigeria’s thieves without raising the question of double standards?
The last EFCC leadership could claim that President Muhammadu Buhari successfully pretended that he was not corrupt, but there is no way the succeeding leadership can pretend about corruption. So what the current EFCC is training itself to do is chase “Yahoo boys” and ₦aira mutilators while looking away from those pillaging the public treasury. The current EFCC leadership has the Commission’s role to remain going after minor crimes to avoid the moral burden of going after the big thieves who could in anger spill the beans and find themselves in the “wrong” spot.
The countless times they changed Emefiele’s charges was the same way it happened to Col. Dasuki. EFCC is so scared and shy of top corrupt cases because they don’t know how it could go and lead to sacred cows losing their jobs. For instance, before the white elephant of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello left office, EFCC had made much noise about the ₦10 billion money laundering case involving him and his nephews. Nigerians waited with bated breath for the immunity clause covering the governor to drop. What did they see? A commission celebrating the arrest of a lady for ₦aira mutilation while ex-governor Bello is enjoying his loot. In the matter of the naira abuse lady, the Commission was so assiduous and prompt that it even recorded and produced her video in a disc and presented it to the court to show how efficient they had been. The lady had no choice but to accept and plead guilty. If EFCC had been as effective as it was in the Bobrisky case, many treasury looters walking the streets and enjoying their loot would have been in prison. Even their allies in the Judiciary would have been put in a tight corner.
The Commission has remained mute as Bello’s immunity ended some months down the line, possibly some negotiations are going on to water it down or obliterate the crime or sink the case file finally. After all, Bello is a member of APC where past sins are not to be remembered any longer.
EFCC has been grandstanding, trying to harass and intimidate the former chairman of the Human Rights Commission, Prof Chidi Odinkalu, for stating the obvious that the Commission is idle and for want of action has decided to chase rats in a hunting field of great animals. Prof Odinkalu could not understand why with several persons who should be in the EFCC custody roving about freely and causing confusion. The Commission only sees Yahoo boys and naira abusers to arrest.
According to the Commission, “The attention of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has been drawn to some reckless commentaries made by a former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Chidi Odinkalu on the arrest of Idris Okuneye(a.k.a Bobrisky) by the commission, describing it as evidence of idleness or an abuse of power.
“The commission views such commentaries from Odinkalu as unbecoming of a former head of a major government agency.
The intention of the EFCC’s threatening press statement is ostensibly to intimidate and stop the professor from further exposing the hypocrisy of the EFCC leadership. But the Commission should know that going after Prof Odinkalu is likely to compound their problems. Today, Prof Odinkalu is like a lone voice crusading in the visibly filthy Nigeria’s judiciary seeking remedy in that sector, his success there will help EFCC greatly if they sincerely want to fight corruption.
If the threat on Odinkalu is to cow him, the Commission has misfired because he is not a rabble-rouser but an incisive intellectual critic that the society badly needs now. The 11th President of India, A.P.J Abdul Kalama, could not be more right when he said, “If a country is to be corruption-free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother, and the teacher.” Prof Odinkalu rightly fits in there as both a father and teacher. If EFCC is determined to confront corruption in this country it should curry the favour of the likes of Prof Odinkalu rather than antagonise him.
Nigerians cannot accept the fact that looters of public funds are everywhere flaunting their ill-gotten wealth and the concern of EFCC is chasing common criminals, seemingly to distract and divert focus. God help us.