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Is Nigeria’s National Unity Government Made Less Credible By The Arrest Of Orji Kalu-A Key Player? By Attorney Aloy Ejimakor
As I write this essay, there is an ongoing debate amongst Nigerians in Diaspora, aroused to speak up by the sudden resurgence of prosecutorial zeal which saw to the recent detention of PPA presidential candidate, Orji Kalu amidst President Yar’Adua’s dicey maneuverings to win support of key opposition figures for his multi-party ‘government of national unity’ or ‘GNU’. Much of what is being said is yet to make its way into mainstream Nigerian and American media but it is raging anyway and steadily gaining surprising traction on the pages of Diasporan blogs, discussion boards, email forums, and hastily convened meetings of various Nigerian Diaspora associations. Keeping Kalu’s prodigious prestige within his Igbo ethnic group in mind, there is, surprisingly a near absence of ethnic spin to the discourse. Rather than playing the ethnic card, most commentators are instead genuinely troubled by what Kalu’s arrest and prosecution portends for the polity because it is not in dispute that Kalu was invited by President Yar’Adua to be a major player in the President’s present efforts to gain the confidence of the opposition in Nigeria’s attempts to have closure on the flaws of the last presidential poll. In other words, prosecuting ex-governors for corruption seemed an easy sale, but one with civil libertarian credentials like Kalu – a ranking presidential candidate, who cut short his US visit and traveled back to Nigeria reportedly under pressure from President Yar’Adua, presents some challenges and new dimensions that cannot be easily ignored.
And as many as the plurality which endorsed President Yar’Adua’s legal mandate to prosecute any corrupt ex-governor, there was also a suffice of well-reasoned enunciations preponderating in favor of exercise of prosecutorial discretion to defer or even countermand any present intention to prosecute Dr. Kalu. Some justification was found in his unique position as the leader and extant presidential candidate of a major political party that is, as a matter of law still in contest for the presidency of Nigeria, simply on the uncertainty posed to Yar’Adua’s tenure by the ongoing judicial challenge to the presidential poll results. Besides, reasonable people have wondered why the same degree of prosecutorial aggression has not been deployed to pursue other high profile officials known to be mired in more stark evidence of corruption, and it rankles more when you factor in the double whammy that some of these people are either still serving in government or honorably retired and even received national honors to boot. So, until the EFCC crusade comes full circle to ensnare all known financial felons of our time, cases such as this one concerning Kalu will continue to be a hard sale to many well-meaning Nigerians including those in the Diaspora, whose intellectual input into the anti-corruption agenda and access to sources of material information could serve to strength government resolve and lead to quicker and more credible outcomes.
Thus, President Yar’Adua, cast more as the statesman, and less as the Prosecutor-in-Chief, is expected to look to political expediency and take the path of prosecutorial restraint for the sake of his present efforts to pacify an indignant opposition and unify the country. Taking this course makes a lot of sense and comports with the President’s bourgeoning statesmanship, self-evident in some of key policy decisions he has made since assuming office. Further, it is not unusual for Yar’Adua - a freshman President to resist the sweet allure of populism and make an admittedly difficult decision that continuing to press ahead with prosecuting Kalu is one distractive battle to parry for now. Think Atiku, whose PTDF indictment is wisely off the table for now; perhaps, because President Yar’Adua quickly and rightly saw the sense in not marring his present efforts at nation building with the possible public relations nightmare posed by a simultaneous attempt to prosecute Atiku on a disputed indictment. And think Asari, who suddenly made bail and had his treason charges countenanced indefinitely, assumedly because President Yar’Adua must have reckoned that incarcerating and prosecuting Asari is an avoidable drag on the high intensity peace process he has rolled out for the Niger Delta. Human history is replete with other many examples, but it borders on the hackneyed to keep rehashing them here. Still, attention must be drawn to America’s President Bush, who is enmeshed and reeling under waves of unrelenting criticisms over the gathering debacle in Iraq, but still found the courage to see the political capital inherent in commuting Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s rather stiff sentence for felony and is even now said to be considering tagging along a pardon despite the enormous public outcry on its trail. The Libby commutation is unarguably politically-motivated and clearly intended to appease a critical national security constituency a shrewd President Bush can ill-afford to alienate in the middle of a difficult foreign invasion and war on terror.
As applied to Kalu, the conventional wisdom is to see President Yar’Adua tarrying a while to seriously weigh the merits of shelving the allegations against Kalu - for many practical reasons, such as allowing for further and fuller investigations, keeping in mind the legalities of the conflicting court orders issuing from high courts of equal jurisdiction, not to talk of the bare knuckle political skirmishes that continue to be cited as temptations that could have sparked prosecutorial overkill. Assuming that the President pursues this course, he can deflect any resulting backlash by ducking under the plausible merits of Dr. Kalu’s consistent assertions that these charges stemmed in part from the vicious political rift he has had with former President Obasanjo for much of the past eight years. Besides, legal umbrage can be found in the injunctive orders issued by the Federal High Court in Umuahia, if not within the most conservative interpretations of the landmark judgment that reversed INEC’s array of disqualifications, of which the same indictment at issue here appeared to have been deflated to a nugatory degree.
It seems to me therefore, that it is the general sense of Nigerians residing in the United States that the serious and admirable business of forming a multipartisan government should be insulated from the political risks posed by having Orji Kalu, one of the major players in the GNU in the eye of the present storm trailing his pre-trial incarceration in a federal penitentiary. Even those with very principled partisan persuasion, support for the anti-corruption agenda, and much admiration and respect for President Yar’Adua like my humble self will also agree that few cases, such as this may be deserving of some other third solution that can still assuage the nation’s frustrations with official corruption and commitment to rule of law without rocking the GNU boat. The necessity for exacting equal penalty for every criminal behavior, especially a white collar crime must be limited and balanced by the distinguishing trait of the human specie to exercise discretionary judgment wherever necessitated by a set of unique circumstances. Kalu’s case seems to fit into this mould.
On the strength of his political standing and the flurry of endorsements he received during the campaigns, Orji Kalu has come to represent something of an iconic and credible leader for the Ndigbo, who are likely to project their collective sense of alienation from motherland Nigeria into Kalu’s present travails. And his fine outing in Taraba State points the way to the beginnings of a national appeal in record time for a party founded on the guts and fortune of an embattled Kalu just months to the general elections. Added to all these is the widespread belief that Orji Kalu may have waived his party’s right of petition against the presidential poll results in an effort to be seen as sincere and serious about joining President Yar’Adua’s project in healing a bruised nation. President Yar’Adua, a man who has shown flashes of honor and prescience, is expected by all men of goodwill to reciprocate Kalu’s gesture by summoning the courage to resist the quaint temptation to lend the anti-corruption crusade entirely to the absolutism of legal solutions. Simply put, there is always a third way out of a logjam. After all, with all the hype trailing the very public display of the arrest, the lesson is already learnt that the President wishes to take no prisoners in the anti-corruption battle.
Therefore, in as much as this writer fully subscribes to the notion of giving free reins to the EFCC to prosecute financial felons, the President is not hampered from weighing in occasionally, on a case-by-case basis, to take stock and see the sense in embracing the option not to prosecute any case that comes with the most risk of disrupting the trust of the Nigerian people in the anti-corruption battle. Early signs of such cases can be found in their high drama and political content. Kalu’s case seems to fit into this category, all with its particularly appealing equities, disputed indictments, and warts and all. Especially now that the President is on a tedious battle for legitimacy and national reconciliation, seeming to wax too aggressive in putting Orji Kalu, an ally of sorts, under the pain of prosecution on an indictment believed by many to be legally untenable in some respects hardly helps but tends to complicate matters to a troubling degree.
The truth is that the President’s sincere and altruistic invitation to the PPA to partake in the GNU becomes less credible if the EFCC continues apace with the ongoing prosecution of Orji Kalu. Without seeming to diminish the merits of the corruption allegations preferred against him, persisting on the path of a purely legal strategy, as is now the case, may be seen by even diehard cheerleaders of the administration as a scorched earth policy that would appear to make pacification of ANPP and AC much more difficult and very unlikely to succeed or remain sustainable in the long term. Leaders of those parties may take fright and then recoil to their trenches to hunker down to a judicial war of attrition aimed at overawing the administration through an overplay of the volumes of admissible evidence they painstakingly documented on the presidential election; and thus unwittingly giving both President Yar’Adua and our Nigeria he seeks to heal a political endgame devoid of much to cheer, at least in the near term.
Attorney Aloy Ejimakor sits on the Board of Habitat & Health International Fund, Washington, DC and serves as its Executive Director. alloylaw@yahoo.com
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