Arewa Consultative Forum

Arewa Consultative Forum's Capital Punishment Claim: To Be or Not To Be?

Liberation Nigeria

The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), is not usually known to be a truly 'national pressure group' simply because it was setup as a political and cultural association of leaders of Northern Nigeria extraction, whose purpose it was to look into matters of serious concern to the people of the region, arising from the wave of violent religious and ethnic disturbances witnessed on a daily basis. The prevailing situation was tense and desperate, threatening the survival of the unity of the people, hence the founding of the forum more than a decade ago.

Ever since then, the ACF have not looked back, championing the cause of the North and it's people. Two of such, among others, included the forum's recommendation in 2001 that former Heads of State, Generals Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar defend themselves against allegations made against them at the Human Rights Investigations Commission, sitting in Abuja while the other was on the 16th of December 2009, where the forum issued a communiqué calling for further information on the health of the President, arguing in the process, that if a succession issue arose it should be resolved according to the constitution. This latter statement, which led to several others in the course of the late Yar'adua's incapacitation, almost tore the ACF apart with Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, a founding member, quitting the ACF as a result.

With the emergence of a Southerner as president coupled with the myriads of problem facing the country today, it is no surprise that the ACF in her comfort zone at Kaduna came out of her 'Northern shell' to bear it's mind on a national cankerworm as those of corruption.

The ACF ahead of it's zonal constitutional conferences, recommended capital punishment for corruption and

in its proposal submitted to the National Assembly,pointed out that “One crime that has proved capable of gravely harming or killing its victim in Nigeria is corruption". The statement went further to state that “...our laws have not recognised corruption for what it is. ACF recommends that corruption be recognised as a capital offence and made to carry capital punishment.”

Those words would have seemed quite heavy to keen observers and one which sounds too extreme on the alter of practicability, but if one considers the level at which corruption continues to eat deep into the country's socio-political and economic fabric, widening the gap between the ruler and ruled and deepening further the crisis of nationhood, the ACF statement should more than anything else be taken with much appreciation and seriousness.

Corruption is a hydra headed monster, an anomaly of the highest order, a fatal aberration, a colossal drawback and a pugnacious disease which has reduced the country to unparalled under-

development. Corruption is the reason the Lagos/Ibadan express road refuses to get a facelift despite the road contract awarded to a private consortium years back. It is the reason both the Harliburton and Siemens scandals are yet unresolved. Corruption is the reason this country cannot get its years of power outages fixed. It is the reason why hundred of scandals in the National Assembly refuses to go under the surgical knife of a prosecution judge and reason the oil cabal and subsidy feudal lords continues to allow the vast majority of the people wallow in misery

Corruption is the reason the vast masses of the people have become hewers of wood and drawers of water. It is the reason millions of people, reminiscent of the days of feudalism, have become who Frantz Fanon had termed 'the wretched of the earth'. It has led to a widening gap where those who can grab the nation's commonwealth do so at their peril, further plundering anything that comes their way and thereby systematically pushing aside the people who had agreed to form a social contract along with them. It is no wonder the country today is in a mess, with its rickety foundation almost willing to fall on everyone.

Since the war against corruption began few years back, what has been witnessed is a dawdle path to effective prosecution of corrupt officials or what this writer would term as 'humouric display behind the anti-corruption war'. Those who have either been accused by the drooling anti-corruption agencies of corruption or penned down for prosecution as a result of corrupt enrichment grow by the day, yet what is heard over and over again is an administration committed to the fight against the scourge of corruption.

To them, it is a top priority which they are fighting in all facets of the economy and which surprisingly they say is succeeding. The current administration's independence day speech even went a step further to state how the necessary agencies have put an end to several decades of endemic corruption associated with fertilizer and tractor procurement and distribution and also exposed decades of scam in the management of pensions and fuel subsidy, ensuring that the culprits are being brought to book.

As if Nigerians have not been fooled enough, the current administration did not realise it goofed when it claimed Transparency International (TI), in its latest report, 'noted that Nigeria is the second most improved country in the effort to curb corruption' despite the fact that only few notable Nigerians have been tried and sentenced for corruption, despite the fact that the subsidy thieves still walk freely in the land and despite the fact that the Lawan-Otedola bribery scandal remain swept under the carpet.

This writer make bold to say that the ACF statement on capital punishment for corruption is a pure attempt to correct an entrenched social ill that has bedevilled the country since the First Republic. It is a quick way to answer the corruption question in the country. It is a meal ticket to bringing sanity in the way we operate in government and the finest solution to a culture of impunity seemingly evident in all facets of the nation's polity.

If nations like China and Indonesia have applied and used capital punishment to solve the problem of corruption in their respective domain to make them economic giants, nothing stops Nigeria from doing same. A country can never attain economic and political triumph where impunity and corruption are warmly embraced. If corruption is properly dealt with using severe punishment like those the ACF had pointed out, the much touted cabal in the oil industry wouldn't have sprang up in the first place. Every political leader or individuals enthrusted with leadership position would rightly perform his or her duties. The country's electoral process would not be fraught with bribery scandals, monetary inducements and electoral malfeasance. The nation in general will be a better place for the vast majority of the people.

In as much as capital pubishment may look unfashionable in our contemporary international system, in a country like Nigeria where anything goes and where it is always business as usual, the need to look into the issue of capital punishment as a one stop solution to the monster called corruption is imperative. The days of dillydallying with corrupt officials, missing or absence of prosecuting judges, plea bargaining and all pretentious acts which impedes or obliterates the true fight against corruption must be over.

Nigeria must not remain a country where corruption thrives. It must be fought with strong political will with stringent measures put in place to put an end to it. The ACF has spoken, let those who have ears listen and get it right.