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A Case for the Annulment of the EFCC By Nosa James-Igbinadolor
I spent the last weekend suffering myself through the report of the Presidential Committee on the Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies otherwise known as the Stephen Oronsaye Committee. I had to endure through the vast, albeit well thought-out and well researched report including the seventy seven page Executive summary and the physically intolerable and mentally exacting six hundred and sixty page ‘main course’.
No doubt, the committee and its highly cerebral Chairman dissected through the clutter and chaos called the Nigerian Public Sector and provided veritable conclusions and suggestions that should serve as a platform to enable the reform of the officious anomie called Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies.
My take away from the report is that successive Nigerian governments including the Jonathan administration either as a result of intellectual withdrawal or political constraints have over the years increasingly resorted to the ultra-bureaucratisation of the socio-economic space in response to the failure of state institutions. This absence of auditable intelligence quotient at the highest levels of government has resulted in the mentally undemanding assumption that when an institution, e.g. a Parastatal is facing challenges and unable to effectively and efficiently meet its mandate, a new Parastatal should and must be created out of the sickly soul of the old one while mouthing pretentious fidelity to the capacity of the unhealthy Parastatal to meet its mandate.
The Oronsaye report noted this when it loudly cried out that “the Committee observed that new agencies are established from existing statutory bodies to perform the functions or part of the functions of another statutory body without repealing the earlier or conflicting legal provision. There is need for the drafters of the law to always take into account earlier laws and make specific provisions in subsequent ones to repeal them, especially when it is obvious that both organizations will perform the same or overlapping functions based on their enabling statutory provisions. Furthermore, there is a need to arrest the continuous increase in the number of parastatals and agencies set up to satisfy individual interests”. In order words when the Nigeria Police Force is clearly failing to effectively and efficiently curb crime, you do not respond to this failure by de-muscling the Police and creating the EFCC, you do not respond by pretending or assuming the wound is incurable, you respond by identifying the immediate and remote factors engendering the systemic failure and undertake a business process re-engineering that aids the Police achieve quantum leaps in performance by embracing innovative processes that result in improved service delivery. After all, the guiding principles in any strategic management process, whether in the public or private sector, are about understanding what changes are needed, how to implement and manage these changes, and how to create a roadmap for sustaining improvements that lead to better performance.
Talking about that hollow claimant to crime busting called the EFCC, the Oronsaye report pragmatically called for it “to be merged with other anti-corruption bodies – ICPC and CCB”. For an institution that thrives in prosecuting small time Advanced Fee fraudsters and romanticising about it as gargantuan successes, the justification for its continued existence is unquestionably lacking. The truth of the matter is that the EFCC is neither fit for purpose nor can its continued existence at the expense of tax payers’ monies be rationalised.
For an agency that was created to execute certain aspects of crime management hitherto carried out by the Police Criminal Investigations Department, The EFCC has since its creation howled louder and meaner than it strikes. At every point in time that the nation and its people have unanimously demanded for action against pillagers of the national patrimony, the EFCC has consistently responded hypocritically. The EFCC’s step by step operational manual for responding to legitimate demands for action against hate crimes of corruption reads like; issue a press release swearing justice, bare our feeble fangs, go through the pathetic motion of threatening hailstones and coals of fire on the perpetrators of the unspeakable heist, round up a few usual suspects, take them to court and then as usual put up the standard most-pitiful prosecutory charade ever seen anywhere in the world.
Since Nuhu Ribadu was hounded out of the commission, the EFCC has not only become a shadow of its once vibrant self, not only losing its “vava voom”, but sadly the commission has become an accessory to the rape of the national treasury and assets by refusing to robustly undertake its mandate of tackling financial crimes and prosecuting the confederation of the unrighteous that parasitize on Nigerians.
Of course, the EFCC has always been quick to blame everyone and everything apart from itself. Its media unit and its Chairman, Abubakar Lamorde never gets tired reeling out their reasons why for the last four years no noteworthy prosecution has taken place. They blame the judiciary when it suits them, if they do not blame the constitution, they blame defence lawyers as if accused are not liable to the most robust of defence. Yes, they also blame the media as well and then the silliest of all, they blame ordinary Nigerians.
After over thirty billion dollars has been stolen from the national treasury since 2003 when the EFCC was created, the commission has only succeeded in jailing two major personalities, as if former I-G Tafa Balogun and the vivacious Chief Bode George where responsible for stealing all these mind-blowing amount of monies. As a matter of fact, the jailing of Bode George had more to do with the hobbesian politics of Lagos state than with the prosecutory capabilities of the EFCC and its one hundred million naira per case gluttonous lawyers. Nor was it as a result of the agency’s altruistic desire to really fight corruption.
The EFCC’s slogan of “EFCC will get you anytime and anywhere” makes any rational mind perambulate between bouts of contemptible laughter and anger induced nausea. Every Nigerian knows that EFCC will only succeed in getting the Yahoo boys and not those whose crimes leave the soul of the nation lifeless and make us a laughing stock in the committee of nations.
No matter how appalling the Nigeria Police Force has been, they would no doubt have done a better job of fighting corruption by simply not going through the duplicitous motions that has become the operational procedure of the EFCC which in itself exacts a lot of time, emotions and monies.
Of course, our government does not care about the failed institution otherwise known as EFCC. The more scandalously inefficient it is, the better for the government, after all, this is no government that desires an independent interrogation of its actions and inactions no matter how reprehensibly criminal they might be.
The Oronsaye report was an exercise in patriotism and intellectual rigour, however, like any human exercise, it lacked perfection. What would have perfected the report would have been a sincere recommendation for the annulment of the EFCC. The annulment would put a closure to the tragic-comedy called EFCC, blot out the existence of the commission from our psyche and legalise the reality that the pretender to crime fighting never existed to truly fight crime.
Nosa James-Igbinadolor is a Political-Economist and Communications Consultant |