A forum for all stakeholders to forge a common strategy in the war against corruption recently ended with the admission that the crusade under the present administration is still far from achieving its goal. The Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo, who said so, was stating the obvious, going by clues that are self-evident.
President Muhammadu Buhari, with the slogan, “If we don’t kill corruption, this corruption will kill us,” came to power in 2015 with the anti-graft war among his three-pronged cardinal agenda. Osinbajo, at a round-table organised by the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption, said, “We are not even slightly deluded into thinking that we have won the battle, certainly not.” The President, he argued, first focused on grand corruption – stopping the brazen looting of public treasury. He added, “We are now poised to deal with the wider problem of systemic corruption, especially where the average person interacts with government.”
Corruption bedevils the issuance of contracts, vehicle licences, passports, clearing of goods at the ports, justice delivery system, police operations, public job recruitment and clearing of office files. What is more, banks still serve as the pivot of money laundering and illicit financial outflows. The padding of the National Health Insurance Scheme 2018 budget by N264 million and contract inflation; the grass-cutting contract saga that cost the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, his job, and Buhari’s aloofness in taking action are indelible blights on his anti-graft drive.
It was for this reason that the United States Department of State exclaimed in 2018 that on Buhari’s watch, impunity still thrives to the extent “that allows officials to engage in corrupt practices with a sense of exemption from punishment.”
With the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission already overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge when Buhari came in, much was, therefore, expected of him in strategic policy formulation to give these agencies a shot in the arm. Instead, public perception of corruption in the country is still high. It is strange that Buhari’s anti-graft campaign has not restored the awe or fear the EFCC’s name once invoked among tainted public officials in the past.
How effective the anti-corruption fight has been, is also evident in the way high profile suspects have defanged our justice delivery system. This is climaxed in the prosecution of more than 10 former governors that left office in 2007, still hibernating at “no case submission” level in various courts in 2019. Though Joshua Dariye and Jolly Nyame are serving jail sentences for their abuse of office when they served as governors of Plateau and Taraba states respectively, the scorecard reflects more of a poor showing than applause.
An anti-corruption crusade that works requires the synergy of all the relevant institutions of the state – the EFCC, ICPC, State Security Services, the Police, Judiciary and the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation. Ironically, some of them work at cross-purposes, thus helping to strengthen the audacity of suspects. Such a brawl had existed between the office of the AGF and the acting EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu, and between the EFCC and the SSS.
This debilitating paradox and lack of political will to plumb the depths of corruption in the country is why silence is the official response to the Halliburton and Siemens contract scandals that entangled past public officials at the highest levels. The US, Germany and Italy have all convicted, fined and sent to jail their nationals involved in the felony. It is the absence of cohesion and coordination in the fight that explains the AGF and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami’s advice to the EFCC to drop the $1.1 billion Malabu oil scam case, for what he described as lack of evidence to support its planned money laundering charge.
Yet, the minister had earlier disclosed in 2017 that Nigeria was about to collect $85 million from the UK, following a “final judicial order” on suspects convicted in the matter. France had completed its trial, and in Italy, the prosecution is making progress. Instructively, in an ongoing trial in the UK on the case, the Nigerian government says some highly placed former state officials collected bribes.
By the time Buhari’s government is done with its battle against corruption, it would be judged, not really by how much the EFCC has recovered from looters, the implementation of the Treasury Single Account or the number of ghost workers expunged from the wage bill, but by the number of once untouchable looters jailed to serve as a deterrent; by a public service sector that is well-positioned to deliver services unencumbered by corrupt practices; and by having an in-built mechanism to bring culprits to book.
Funding the anti-graft agencies effectively for them to have institutional capacity to deliver their statutory responsibilities is, therefore, critical. Some suspects have secured perpetual injunctions, which have restrained the EFCC from investigating or arresting them. Such perverse court orders need to be set aside; the African Union’s 2012 report, which fingered Nigeria as the biggest source of illicit financial outflows from Africa, is still a clear and present danger.
Similar daunting challenges in other nations have compelled them to review their strategies. It is why the UK introduced the “Unexplained Wealth Orders” law, which shifts the burden of proof on the accused, rather than the old order of an accused being presumed innocent until proved guilty. Under the law, it is obligatory for an owner of a property worth £50,000 to satisfactorily explain the source, or forfeit it to the government. It was a magic bullet in Singapore’s anti-graft drive. Indonesia too is making progress with it.
Consequently, a retooled anti-corruption framework that is pragmatic, its operators not selective in choosing suspects for prosecution, is the only way to make a dent in the scourge for public funds to work for common good. Nigeria has no reason to be home to the poorest globally. Ultimately, the country has to enact a law on unexplained wealth, similar to that of the UK.
