The Federal Government must set up a loot recovery trust fund
In its recent annual general meeting, the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) made a resolution that goes straight to the heart of accountability. Deferring to the suggestion of Femi Aborisade, one of its guests, it held that the Federal Government under President Muhammadu Buhari is lagging behind in its human rights obligation as regards its handling of the funds recovered from those who placed their thieving hands in our collective till.
Consequently, the CDHR resolved that the Buhari administration should establish a recovered loot trust fund. However, the CDHR called for it to go through bills in the Senate and the House of Representatives. But we think the Buhari administration should spearhead the move.
It should not be hard. But it has been because the issue of corruption is not just a systemic rot. It has been buoyed for generations by an accretion of thieving elites that will stand in the way of any resolve to reverse a pattern of greed and decadence.
Earlier this year, the Buhari administration, after intense pressure, decided to unveil to Nigerians the sums of money and assets recovered from May 29, 2015 to May 29, 2016. It reeled out figures that many Nigerians found stunning and an index of the kleptomaniac audacity of our democratic brass.
According to the figures revealed, the cash recovered in local currency totalled N78,325,354,031.02 (seventy-eight billion, three hundred and twenty-five million, three hundred and fifty-four thousand and thirty one Naira and two kobo). They also recovered $185,119,584.60 (one hundred and eighty-five million, one hundred and nineteen thousand, five hundred and eighty-four and sixty cents). In British money, they recovered GBP3,508,355.46 three million, five hundred and eight thousand, three hundred and fifty-five pounds and forty-six pence). Eleven thousand, two hundred and fifty Euros rolled in also.
The information minister, Lai Mohammed, disclosed that the government raked in N106,563,480,095.43 (one hundred and six billion, five hundred and sixty-three million, four hundred and eighty thousand, and ninety-five Naira and forty-three kobo). More figures were released, and they reflected the assiduity and single-mindedness of the administration through the agency of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to track and recover our stolen funds.
Even then questions were asked. How come we got the money and we do not know the thieves? There was a lacuna of accountability to the tale. The Federal Government referred to some issues of legality that, up till now, still sound opaque to well-meaning Nigerians. How come they can corral a man like Sambo Dasuki, who has been shamed and prosecuted, yet others who have stolen are allowed to go scot-free?
We cannot say we are fighting a war against corruption with half-transparency. For sure, it has been argued that some of the tactics employed to wage the war have fallen short of the requirements and standards of the rule of law. Some others have said the tactics have been right if, sometimes, they have been crude and downright antediluvian.
One of such examples has been the handcuffing of prominent politicians and the storming of judges’ homes in the dead of night. The hoopla was tempered by the positions that they did not veer from the constitution. Secondly, these are methods that the law enforcement agencies have deployed for decades without controversy on the average Nigerian not in high office or celebrity. We have condoned these and only now are shouting hoarse because some sacred persons have been ruffled.
Again the issue of the fight on corruption is about accountability. If the Federal Government was able to release the money recovered as at the end of May, it ought to do so constantly, and the best way to go about it is to establish a trust fund that will be tracked publicly online. That way, it will have a dedicated website. We cannot pursue such a project without naming with all its implication for shaming.
If the Federal Government does not want to name, it will be guilty of double standards. Only recently, the former boss of the Nigerian Customs Service, Abdullahi Dikko, returned the sum of N1 billion to our coffers. Again, quite a few others have been arrested, including Femi Fani-Kayode and Musiliu Obanikoro, for sums of money publicly announced. Obanikoro was reported to have returned N100 million. Some were arrested, like President Goodluck Jonathan’s spokesman, Reuben Abati, who was asked to account for N50 million.
The question of the trust fund is also to make it part of the process of democracy. In these days when 33 state governments cannot pay salaries, we need to know not only how and when inflows occur. We also want to know how they are disbursed.
That is the only way the war on corruption cannot be accused of philosophical contradiction, of opacity in a rubric that calls for nothing but openness.
