The recent Supreme Court judgment that cleared the way for the re-commencement of the corruption trial of ex-Governor Joshua Dariye is symptomatic of Nigeria’s failing anti-graft war. That the court just threw out an interlocutory appeal on a prosecution first filed eight years ago, when the substantive issues have not even been heard, highlights the weaknesses of our judicial system in combating corruption. This and many other similar stalled corruption trials should renew the urgency to create special courts and for anti-corruption investigators and prosecutors to change tactics.
Dariye was first arraigned at the Federal Capital Territory High Court on July 13, 2007, weeks after ending his eight-year sway as governor of Plateau State and the trial judge set November 13, 2007 to commence trial. Rather than defend the 23 counts of money-laundering and corruption, his lawyers filed preliminary objections on jurisdiction and competence of the charges. This diversionary legal contest dragged on from high court to Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court for eight years while the substantive questions of how public funds were allegedly misused remained in the cooler.
Exasperated with the interminable delays over the accused’s frequent medical trips, a prosecutor for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Kelvin Uzozie, in the N5 billion corruption trial of an ex-governor of Enugu State, Chimaroke Nnamani, lamented in 2014: “It is a scandal that a criminal case that the law says must be speedily concluded has not even proceeded to trial more than seven years after it was filed.” In May 2013, a Federal High Court in Dutse ordered law enforcement agencies to locate, arrest and produce ex-Jigawa State governor, Saminu Turaki, who had repeatedly failed to appear in court to defend the 32 counts of corruption filed against him in 2007 involving N36 billion. In line with the legal presumption of innocence in the absence of a judicial conviction, Turaki and Nnamani, like Dariye, who currently represents Plateau Central at the Senate, were senators from 2007 to 2011 while their cases were bogged down in the courts.
For a country adjudged to be one of the world’s most corrupt, this is not how to stamp out graft. A United States Department of Commerce advisory to American companies in 2006 suggested that up to 40 per cent of all Nigerian government contract sums are creamed off by corrupt public officials. Transparency International’s latest rankings place Nigeria at 136 out of 175 countries, while a report by the Thabo Mbeki committee for the African Union says Nigeria accounts for 68.1 per cent of illicit funds outflows from the continent.
We need to reform the laws to facilitate speedy corruption trials and recover stolen public funds. Nigerians can hardly see evidence of judicious application of the N7.9 trillion and N7.75 trillion respectively distributed from the Federation Account in 2013 and 2014 to the federal, state and local governments, as funds are routinely embezzled with no fear of censure.
Prominent voices like those of the late jurist, Kayode Eso, pioneer Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission, Mustapha Akanbi, and former EFCC Chair, Farida Waziri, had separately called for special courts to try corruption cases using fast-track arrangements. A former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Dahiru Musdapher, designated some federal high courts to try graft cases, but this experiment faltered and was not followed through by his successors. But Pakistan, the Philippines and Kenya have already set up special corruption courts, a measure “strongly recommended” by the United Nations Development Programme for developing countries in 1999. Reviewing the estimates of $400 billion allegedly stolen from Nigeria between 1960 and 1999, Antonio Maria Costa, president of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, lamented that this money could have been spent on schools, roads, hospitals and water facilities.
Nigeria should stop behaving like a failed state. No country worth its name allows public funds to be filched with impunity. In January, Robert McDonnel, governor of the US state of Virginia until early 2014, was jailed two years for receiving bribes of $177,000. While no fewer than 17 ex-governors who left office in 2007 or 2011 in Nigeria are still facing stalled, tepid trials for alleged missing billions, McDonnel’s ended in less than a year after leaving office and for the equivalent of about only N35 million. Scores of other US officials have, over the years, been jailed for graft, according to the US Department of Justice. China has jailed several former high ranking officials for corruption and has just sentenced a former top development banker over a $5 million bribe. It took the UK courts less than a year to prosecute and jail James Ibori, a former Delta State governor, and his accomplices on charges of graft in Nigeria that a local court had spuriously thrown out.
Our judicial system needs to be reviewed to deliver justice, and not technicalities. The system feeds an elaborate graft machine, enriching politically exposed persons, lawyers, judges and complicit anti-graft officials and prosecutors, while corruption has run riot. No major PEP has been convicted since 2008 and many accused ones have gone on to occupy high public offices as ministers, senators and ambassadors. Ayo Fayose was still on trial for a N1.5 billion poultry scandal in his first outing as governor before being impeached, but contested and won election as governor in Ekiti State last year.
No one should be above the law as India showed last Wednesday, when a New Delhi court summoned a former prime minister, Manmohan Singh, to appear as co-accused in a corruption trial.
The CJN, Mahmud Mohammed, and the National Judicial Council should immediately activate Musdapher’s special courts proposal, while vigorously pursuing the entrenchment of permanent anti-corruption courts in our judicial system. Judges should stop allowing frivolous, diversionary motions and become stricter on motions for adjournment based on suspect medical reports. Anti-graft agencies should work with health authorities to discourage and prosecute doctors who aid accused treasury looters with false medical reports to evade trial.
