Abandoning his trademark reticence, President Muhammadu Buhari acted decisively on Monday by ordering “the disengagement of Abdulrasheed Maina,” the former chairman of the Presidential Pension Reform Task Team, from service. But before then, the damage had already been done to his sanctimonious crusade against corruption. Maina’s reinstatement to the post of a director in the Ministry of Interior has generated outrage since it became public knowledge at the weekend through an online newspaper report.
He was accused of serious fraud over pension funds after he was entrusted with the task of cleaning up the mess in 2010. However, Maina’s sacking and the directive to investigate the circumstances of his reinstatement are an opportunity for the President to get to the root of the huge pension fraud and refocus his waning anti-corruption campaign.
Throughout the weekend, the audacity of Maina’s reinstatement fittingly dominated national discourse. By some accounts, Maina had allegedly stolen N195 billion of pension funds at a time pensioners were dying needlessly, waiting to be paid their entitlements. For this, the police had declared him wanted in 2012. But apparently wielding his influence, he had neutralised all efforts to have him to answer questions about his controversial tenure at the PRTT.
In the ensuing imbroglio, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission also declared Maina wanted in July 2015 and Interpol in February, 2016 over the same scam. The EFCC had charged him to court alongside a former Head of Service, Steve Oronsaye, and two others over alleged biometric pension fraud of N2 billion. While the other accused persons appeared in court, Maina absconded and after some time, he reportedly fled the country. Therefore, the then Goodluck Jonathan government ordered the Federal Civil Service to terminate his appointment for absenteeism. The uproar over his reinstatement, double promotion and secondment as a director is therefore not unexpected.
Let’s get the facts straight. Maina could not have acted alone in this saga. Winifred Oyo-Ita, the HoS was initially reported to have written the letter of secondment to the office of Abdulrahman Dambazau, the Interior Minister. The HoS is the custodian of civil service rules and could not have acted secretly in a case that has attracted public attention. As of Monday, Maina was still a wanted person on the official website of the EFCC, rendering the first responses by the HoS’ spokesman and the minister evasive and complicit. The case got messier on Monday when Oyo-Ita flatly denied ever posting Maina to the ministry as claimed by Dambazau.
Maina first came to public consciousness as an instrument for cleansing the monumental fraud and outright stealing that were being perpetrated in public pensions and he quickly went to work, claiming back then in 2012 that about N3.3 trillion might have been released by the Federal Government since 1976 without being accounted for. The details were shoddy.
But Buhari was elected President in 2015 on a promise of combating the blight of Boko Haram terrorism and corruption. He has professed for too long to be morally offended by the level of corruption on Jonathan’s watch. Far much more than his opponents could ever dream, however, the President has damaged his own reputation for integrity, compromised the anti-corruption war and dashed hopes that he would be a unifying figure in a fractured, divided nation. His swift response to the Maina scandal is uncharacteristic and the scandal might never have happened if he had acted so decisively in the past.
There has been a serial condoning of corruption when it comes close to home. The Chief of Army Staff, Yusuf Buratai, and Dambazau were alleged to have acquired unexplained wealth, as was his controversial Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari. He brushed these aside just as he initially ignored allegations of corruption against the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, who was later indicted by a Senate probe panel. Even after eventually suspending Lawal and receiving a separate probe report of a presidential three-man panel headed by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo on the SGF and on Ayo Oke, the suspended chief of the National Intelligence Agency, in whose custody $43 million and other cash were found, Buhari has sat on the report.
When Abdulmumuni Jibrin, a former chair of the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, blew the lid on how budgets had been padded by billions of naira to corruptly enrich lawmakers, even confessing to being a beneficiary, the government failed to move against the House Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, and other principal officers, instead, using the police to harass the whistle-blower. The government thus missed a golden opportunity to break a system that enables lawmakers to annually cream off up to N100 billion through the notorious constituency projects scam in the lower chamber.
Corruption was on the march again when Isah Misau (a senator) recently accused the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, publicly of failing to account for over N10 billion monthly earned from special security postings, among others. Again, instead of using this lead to resolve the contentious issue of over 100,000 policemen being assigned to individuals and corporate bodies and the monies levied on them, the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, curiously filed criminal charges against Misau.
Similar cronyism has been playing out after the outcry by Ibe Kachikwu, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, who alleged that Maikanti Baru, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, had been sidelining him as chair of the board, made appointments and entered into $25 billion transactions without the board’s approval. Rather than insist on due process and build institutions, the Presidency has sided with Baru, denying allegations of corruption when in fact, Kachikwu only complained of procedural wrongs and not corruption.
The sacking of Maina is not enough. A report of how the Maina shenanigans was orchestrated, which the President directed to be done and forwarded to his Chief of Staff by the close of work on Monday, should not be another window dressing. It is obvious that it took the effrontery of highly placed, tainted government officials to pull off this absurdity. The offices of the HoS and Dambazau, have been fingered. This is an abuse of office, an embarrassment of immense proportions to the Federal Government, which should claim the scalp of those found culpable.
We must not lose focus of the victims of these crimes: the hapless pensioners. Buhari should act on the report without delay to allay the fear of those who might suspect an official seal to Maina’s recall. To start with, the fugitive must be made to face justice. The EFCC, which still maintains that he is a wanted person “for offences bordering on procurement fraud and obtaining by false pretences,” should seize the moment and get him and his accessories arraigned in court.
Maina’s secret return sent another powerful signal that Nigeria is being ruled by a crooked cabal. Buhari’s leisurely, distracted style of governance has allowed a coterie of self-seekers and sectional bigots to hijack governance and act badly in his name. A leader’s integrity is only fully tested when he is called upon to act when those close to him are offenders; not when opponents are the culprits.
Buhari should change gear or come out completely discredited. He should investigate the veracity or otherwise of the deluge of complaints against his top aides and other associates that are reported to exert so much influence despite holding no official positions. As Tam David-West, a former Petroleum Minister, once advised, Buhari needs to clean up his house. He should know he is acting with impunity by ignoring allegations of corruption against members of his kitchen cabinet.
