Mediocrity Rules In The Ministry Of Justice

By

Akintokunbo A Adejumo

London, United Kingdom

akinadejum@aol.com

Word of the Day:

Drumbeater – (Noun) One that supports a cause, especially vehemently

Synonyms:  partisan, zealot.

Usage:   The Attorney General and Minister for Justice was an unabashed drumbeater for the cause of corruption.

Chief Michael Aondoakaa, SAN, Attorney General and Minister for Justice of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The mere title of this man conjures up a powerful vision and ideals of the type of country we all want our Nigeria to be. The title, that is. But the man conjures up an entirely different vision, a nightmare actually.

Not since that doyen of legal jurisdiction, Chief Richard Akinjide, holder of the same titles during the Shagari Administration has this position and the holder ever been this controversial. In fact, I cant remember any such holder in the intervening years being as controversial and in the public news as Chief Aondoakaa, all for the wrong reasons. Even his predecessor, Chief Bayo Ojo was not this controversial.

The fact is, the man has started off really very badly. He has also cast serious and worrying doubts about Yar’Adua’s government’s position on fighting corruption and adhering to the rule of law. It seems that the Minister of Justice is never sincere about meting out justice to corrupt politicians and instead is using that phrase “rule of law” to try to pull wool over our eyes and therefore doing more harm to the anti-corruption stance of his government. It does not bode well for this administration, whose leader, the President, is widely regarded as a man with a zero tolerance for corruption.

His actions so far have brought to the fore, and exposed him as a charlatan and mediocre, despite his lofty title and the suffix of Senior Advocate of Nigeria, which is meant to be at par with the UK’s equivalent of Queen’s Counsel. How this country of great potentials and fine minds always manage to come up with mediocres, ignoring merit everytime, confounds me.

The Nigerian legal and judicial system has been known all over the world for its brilliance ever since the 60s. We have exported fine legal minds to other countries in Africa and recognised in Europe. We have legal luminaries who, while based in Nigeria, are often called to other countries in Europe to display their fine minds and knowledge. I remember that Nigerians have been Chief Justices, Attorney Generals and Ministers for Justice in countries such as Gambia, Uganda, Lesotho and Botswana and many others. The late Sir Taslim Elias, a former Nigerian Chief Justice was for many years, the President of the World Court at The Hague. Chief Richard Akinjide was also to be in the World Court, and many Nigerian legal officers have served and are still serving in various capacities all over the world, not because of world political considerations, but because of the reputation of the legal and judicial profession in Nigeria.

To be saddled and imposed with this man, Aondoakaa, seems to be an unjustified aberration, completely out of tune with our repute. In fact, when it seems that sanity and confidence in the Nigerian legal system is being restored after the atrocities of the Abacha years, and the uncertainties of the Obasanjo Administration, we are now regressing and all the gains achieved are about to be thrown out the window. All because of this charlatan and mediocre with a patent conflict of interest.

To be frank, I had never heard of Michael Aondoakaa until he became the Attorney General. Or rather, let me put it this way; I had only heard of him because he was representing some politicians who had been accused or indicted by the EFCC for corruptly enriching themselves while in office. We can all see that he had been fighting the corners of corrupt politicians and governors for some time – and making money from it, and that means he can never see the EFCC in a good light. In February 2007, Aondoakaa appeared as lead counsel in a suit that challenged the powers of the EFCC, INEC and the six-man administrative panel instituted by former President Obasanjo to recommend the disqualification of Atiku Abubakar from the Presidential race based on his indictment by the EFCC and the administrative panel of inquiry for alleged corrupt practices. In June 2007 Aondoakaa appeared again as lead counsel for the ANPP, the PDP's principal opposition, at the Nasarawa gubernatorial election tribunal. The list of Aondoakaa's clients includes George Akume (former Governor of Benue State) and Abubakar Audu (former Governor of Kogi state) - both of whom have been accused of the embezzlement of significant sums of money, and who have pending criminal cases instituted against them by the EFCC. Herein lies the problem and this is where the conflict of interest comes in. He can never be favourable to Nuhu Ribadu and the EFCC’s fight against corruption because they have crossed swords many times in court.

In his article, “Attorney General Aondoakaa: His Master’s Voice” (Nigeriaworld.com) Malcolm Fabiyi wrote, “The question is whether or not it is ethically appropriate that a lawyer that has taken the decision to defend such men, and who by that decision, is required to question the legitimacy of the agencies that had brought charges against his clients, should now be placed in a position of authority over the same agencies that he has battled for the last couple of years in the courts! While it might be true that in law, all men are entitled to a legal defence regardless of the enormity of the allegations levelled against them, I also believe that there is something telling and revealing about Aondoakaa's character in his decision to take on these cases. Many lawyers of established character and moral fortitude had chosen to forego the allure of huge payouts guaranteed to anyone who represented these men, and elected not to offer their legal services in defence of the pack of vultures that systematically bled our nation dry over the last eight years. “

I have been following his actions since he became Attorney General barely three months ago. Please note that in Nigeria, we have a system where the Ministers are selected for the President by the ruling party and/or governor of each of the 36 states, so it is likely that the President had not even ever heard of the man until his state’s branch of the PDP or its Governor nominated his name for a ministerial position. His first gaffe was the debate about whether the EFCC should come under his office and that EFCC should seek his office’s approval before prosecuting any case. At first, he tried to flex some muscles and then conceded that he will give the EFCC a free hand. We are now seeing first hand how much free hand he’s giving the EFCC.

The second gaffe committed by Chief Aondoakaa was during the Naira Re-denomination debacle. I don’t know when the Attorney General becomes a spokes-person for the government, but the man decided to interpret the Constitution and the law enabling the autonomy of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria to serve the purpose of the Government but not the people of Nigeria. Fabiyi again posited “The manner in which Aondoakaa announced the suspension of Professor Soludo's currency re-denomination program was a great insult and disservice to that committed patriot. Not one issue was raised by Aondoakaa about the technical and economic merits, or the lack thereof, of the program. Instead our eminent legal luminary ranted and raved about how the CBN governor failed to follow the letter of the law in the process that led up to his announcement of the program”.  He ended up with egg over his face, but true to type, he did not see the egg. He was wallowing in mediocrity and his ego and self-importance as the Chief Law Officer of the country. His mediocrity shone out like a beacon, but he himself did not realise it. (These people never see it or get it, do they?). That is our political leaders for you – they never see beyond their noses for obvious and self-interest reasons.

Then comes the mother of all gaffes. He is getting himself all in a twist by publicly attacking the EFCC, a government body supposedly under him. He sent his office’s representative to a case in court being handled by the EFCC without the EFCC’s knowledge and thereby caused a lot of confusion and embarrassment in the court. That is communication breakdown for you. The Attorney-General then issued a statement saying he wants to preserve a "prohibitive injunction" issued by Abia State high court, so as to avoid his own committal to prison as the attorney-general in breach. And so, EFCC must be pushed out of court, and stopped from prosecuting ex Governor Orji Uzor Kalu, who along with his mother, allegedly stole close to 20 billion Naira of Abia State funds.

Then he demanded an apology from the EFCC and later announced to the world that the EFCC had tendered an apology to his Office. The EFCC promptly denied this. This idiocy alone has made his position untenable, not to talk of his unprofessional way of doing things. He was neither doing the right thing nor doing things right, a trait of mediocres in government and other high places.

I have several questions for this man. Why isn’t the Attorney General taking a position or at least giving advice on the Speaker’s contract scam at the House of Representatives? Why isn’t he giving advice on how to prosecute the corrupt ex-Governors already charged to court? Why is he patently partisan in the case of one of the ex-Governors and seemingly frustrating the efforts of the EFCC to progress the case to its logical conclusion? Why does he constitute himself to be a stumbling block to the dispensation of justice? Why are he, and his Government, hiding under the guise of the Rule of Law, in continuation of the investigations and prosecutions of all the ex-Governors accused of corruption?

What is our Attorney-General’s take and position on the effect of the allegations and indictment of former governors accused of corruption and who are now Senators of the Federal Republic? Is their indictment not enough to negate their continued stay in the National Assembly?

One of our problems is that mediocres mostly constitute our national, states and local government leaderships. As a consequence of this, we are bound to have corrupt and inefficient, ineffective leaders, because mediocres try to hide their mediocrity by acquiring wealth at the expense of the people, making a lot of unnecessary noise and pretending to be all-knowing and intelligent. The charlatan also hides under the same cloak. They are always caught out eventually, because the truth about them will always out and their shortcomings exposed for all to see and when this happens, they start flexing muscles and exercising power and force and resort to bullying everybody around.

The invocation of the “Rule of Law" by our current administration has always been made in curiously defensive circumstances, as a result of great pressure from indicted ex-governors and party chieftains, and invariably; this will always be to the benefit, freedom, and, sometimes, escape of criminally indicted persons. I have argued about this matter of the invocation of the Rule of Law in other articles, that these people will invoke the Rule of Law when it suits them. This is now precisely what is happening. Well-meaning and sincere Nigerians should be very much concerned that the Rule of Law is now being used as an escapist strategy by the current administration to avoid bringing a lot of these corrupt ex-governors to justice. At present, what progress are we hearing about the cases against Nnamani, Orji Kalu, Nyame, Turaki and Dariye? Things seem to have died down and I won’t be surprised if we never hear anything more about them. Then, what about other ex-governors who we know are even worse than the ones apprehended so far? What is our legal luminary Attorney General’s take or position on them?

Just a quick reference to the role of the Attorney General in most countries. In most common law jurisdictions, the Attorney-General is the main legal advisor to the government and in some jurisdictions may in addition have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions. The Minister of Justice and Attorney General are combined into one cabinet position in some countries such as Nigeria.  The Attorney General is the chief law officer of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Minister of Justice is concerned with questions of policy and their relationship to the justice system. The Attorney General has supervisory powers over the prosecution of criminal offences, but is not personally involved with prosecutions; however, some prosecutions cannot be commenced without his consent, and he has the power to halt prosecutions generally, but with good reasons.

The Attorney General, assisted by the Solicitor General, is also the chief legal adviser to the Government. They are responsible for ensuring the rule of law is upheld. In addition, the Attorney General also has certain public interest functions, for example, in taking action to appeal unduly lenient sentences. The Attorney General and the Solicitor General also deal with questions of law arising on Government Bills and with issues of legal policy. They are concerned with all major international and domestic litigation involving the Government.

These are what Chief Aondoakaa should be concentrating his apparently limitless energies on. There are too many issues in his office that he should be attending to rather than spending ninety percent of his energies on humiliating the EFCC or appearing to be subverting the course of justice or taking the sides of corrupt ex-governors. I cannot say it better than Fabiyi again, that “all of the policy somersaults that Yar’Adua’s  administration has gone through have come about directly as a result of Aondoakaa's interventions. And these are no mere policy somersaults, for in each case, the issues at stake have been matters that were critical to the very survival of Nigeria's political stability and the strengthening of its economic viability. Underlying Nigeria's increasing economic attractiveness to global capital are two critical factors: the first is the acknowledgement by the international community that Nigeria, through the actions of the EFCC, appears to have finally shown a commitment to tackling corruption; the second is an increasing realization that Nigeria has an economic team in place that can consistently provide well considered policies that will bolster stability in the financial markets. Unless President Yar'Adua reins his Attorney General in, the gains that have been made in the last few years might be squandered”.

The Attorney General and Minister for Justice need a re-think, because his actions seem to be eroding the policies and promises of his own government. Maybe he’s just power-drunk. Maybe he is still overwhelmed by his sudden rise to the pinnacle of his profession and the country’s leadership. Maybe he is just being overzealous. Maybe he is just a mediocre and does not have an idea of what damage, chaos and inconsistency he’s causing to his government’s credibility. Whatever it is, he is being contradictory and detrimental to the good intentions of his principal, the President. I believe Aondoakaa, from his posture, action and utterances, is not serving the best interest of the Nigerian public and the Constitution of Nigeria, but has a hidden personal agenda.

If Yar’Adua’s Government is sincere, and I like to believe this is so, I don’t see how Aondoakaa will see out four years in this crucial and important role. It is too appears much for him to handle.

Akintokunbo Adejumo, a social and political commentator on Nigerian issues, lives and works in London, UK. A graduate of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria (1979) and University of Manitoba, Canada (1985), he also writes on topical issues for newspapers and internet media.

 He is also the Coordinator of CHAMPIONS FOR NIGERIA, an organisation devoted to celebrating genuine progress, excellence, commitment, selfless and unalloyed service to Nigeria and the people of Nigeria