PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

Obasanjo, Ribadu and the Corruption Crusade

The late Dr. Bala Usman, radical historian and scourge of the Establishment during his life-time, was a difficult person to please.  However, at a national seminar on economic crimes organized by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,  EFCC, in July, the ever critical historian reportedly praised the leadership of the EFCC for its fight against corruption during his intervention from the floor.  Nuhu Ribadu, its executive chairman, Bala reportedly said, was the type of young men President Obasanjo, who was present at the seminar, should be earnestly grooming to take over the country’s mantle of leadership from 2007 when he would be ending his second tenure.

From some accounts of the seminar, it seems the president did not take kindly to Bala’s apparent insinuations about the president’s alleged sit-tight agenda.  One account, which has since been discredited, said the president had the microphone snatched away from the historian’s hands as he made his remarks.  Another account said the president did object to Bala’s comments but no one, according to even Bala himself, snatched any microphone from anyone.

In expressing his displeasure with Bala’s comments, the president, in what looked like a classic case of a Freudian slip, did, in effect, let out that he cannot trust anyone but himself with the political leadership of the country, not even the young men like Ribadu he seemed keen to promote as the country’s only future hope. “Let me tell you one thing”, Ben Shemang of the Voice of Nigeria quoted the president as telling the seminar in probably the most reliable account of the president’s encounter with Bala, “we are here to stay until God takes our lives(Laughter and applause)” (Daily Trust, October 7).

Herein lays the source of the widespread doubts about the sincerity of Obasanjo’s war on corruption, doubts which are bound to reflect on the integrity of the EFCC as probably the most formidable weapon any Nigerian leader has fashioned to engage the monster of corruption.  Many Nigerians, I suspect, want to believe that the young and determined executive chairman of the commission is sincerely committed to the crusade.  At the same time, however, they fear that the president himself merely created the commission essentially to square or squash opponents of his political agenda.

President Obasanjo is, of course, not the first Nigerian leader to declare war on corruption.  Before him , President Shehu Shagari initiated an Ethical Revolution and even set up the Public Complaints Commission under that indefatigable moral crusader, Alhaji Maitama Sule, to fight corruption in the public sector. 

However, the soldiers who threw Shagari out partly because he allegedly condoned corruption, jettisoned his softly-softly approach against the monster.  Instead, the new head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari, used the blunderbuss to deal with the scourge.  Just about anyone who held political office was presumed guilty of corruption.  And while many were tried and given stiff sentences by tribunals whose methods were at best controversial, many more languished under detention without trial.  In the end this blunderbuss approach undermined Buhari’s fight against corruption as the perception soon spread that his was more of a persecution of the political class and less of an honest crusade against corruption.

General Ibrahim Babangida, Buhari’s army chief who threw him out in a palace coup, used Buhari’s harsh methods partly to legitimize the coup.  He then quashed Buhari’s long jail sentences and released those detained without trial.  This, plus the reputation he soon acquired of using the carrot rather than the stick to neutralize political adversaries, created the impression that the self-styled military president was a master at suborning political enemies.  Few people ever gave him credit for his attempt at using persuasion rather than force to change the attitude of Nigerians to corruption through the creation of  MAMSER.

General Abacha, who tyrannized the country for five years after Babangida, never formally declared war on corruption.  He however established the National Economic Intelligence Commission which presaged the EFCC.  He also enacted laws on failed banks and against money laundering, laws which helped in great measure to sanitize the highly opaque financial sector. 

From all this, it is obvious that the war against corruption did not begin with President Obasanjo.  His approach, however, seemed the most systematic and the most determined.  Apart from the public complaints commission and its counterpart tribunal that he inherited, Obasanjo set up the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission and the EFCC, the first to deal essentially with corruption in the public sector, and the second to deal mainly with corruption in the private sector.

The EFCC, under the pro-active leadership of the 45 year-old Ribadu, soon proved the most effective of the three.  However, if care is not taken it may yet prove the waterloo of Obasanjo’s crusade against corruption.  If any evidence of this danger is needed, it lies in the highly embarrassing ease with which the Bayelsa State governor, Dipreiye Alamasiegha, on trial in London for money laundering, jumped bail and returned to Nigeria in spite of the apparent determination of the Nigerian authorities to make sure he got convicted.  One possible explanation for this embarrassing episode may be that the British authorities never took the Nigerian authorities seriously in their declared war on corruption,  in spite of, or indeed because of, the apparent overzealousness of Nigerian officials.

Set up some few years ago to “prevent, investigate, prosecute and penalize economic and financial crimes,” the EFCC was given the remit to enforce several laws that included those on money laundering, the advanced fee fraud, a.k.a “419”, and failed banks and miscellaneous offences.

By all accounts the EFCC under Ribadu has done a remarkable job of fighting the advance fee fraud which has made Nigeria a taboo in the global business world.  Only last week the commission secured a conviction in what has been the country’s biggest ever international fraud trial.

The story, which involved five other countries, Britain, Brazil, United States, Spain and Switzerland, started in 1995 when a 419 gang whose members included Frank Nwude, Nzeribe Okoli, Amaka Anajemba and her deceased husband, persuaded a senior official of Banco Noreste of Sao Paulo, Brazil, to transfer $242 million belonging to his employers to their various accounts for the execution of a fictitious contract in Nigeria.  In return the official was to earn $30 million.

The transactions took place over five years and only came to light when the bank was bought over by a Spanish interest.  The fraudulent bank official was arrested on a trip to the United States in 2002 and extradited to Switzerland where he had transferred his employer’s money to.  He was tried and jailed for over a year.

Meantime Nwude and company seemed to have been enjoying the fruits of their grand fraud.  Soon enough the fruits became bitter; in 2003/2004 they became guests of Ribadu’s EFCC and were soon put on trial.  They denied stealing any money and won the first round; a High Court in Abuja under Justice Lawal Gumi, discharged them for lack of jurisdiction.  The alleged crime, he said, was committed in Lagos and should therefore be tried in Lagos.  All this was in July 2004.

Undaunted Ribadu rearrested the 419ners and moved them to Lagos for trial.  This time Ribadu scored bull’s eye.  First, Amaka Anajemba was convicted in July this year, got a light sentence for turning state witness, but had all her assets in various countries seized.  Last week, on November 18, the rest of the gang got stiffer sentences and also had their assets seized.

The significance of these convictions for the fight against 419 and other financial crimes can hardly be overstated if only because  the odds against the EFCC’s success seemed almost insurmountable.  With a total budget of less than N500 million, EFCC’s fight against a gang with $242 million,   or over N3.5 billion, was akin to David fighting Goliath.  That the EFCC still won could only be attributable to the  overall integrity and the courage of its leadership.

Alas for those who held high hopes in Obasanjo’s anti-corruption crusade, the integrity and commitment that has been so apparent in the EFCC’s war against 419 and other financial crimes has not been matched by a consistency in the overall war against corruption.  Instead there is widespread perception that the EFCC is a tool for the selective pursuit of those who disagree with the president.

Ribadu himself would be the first to deny the charge of inconsistency against his organization.  In press interview after press interview, he has indeed rejected the charge.  Yet it seems it just would not go away.

The reason is pretty obvious.  In spite of Ribadu’s valiant war against corruption, the gap between what the president preaches against corruption and his own personal example has remained very wide.  Personal integrity is essential for success in the war against corruption and the president’s personal reputation remains high.  However, due process is even more essential than personal integrity for such success.  Yet no government has defied due process, even as it trumpeted its commitment to it, like Obasanjo’s.

Among the most telling evidences has been the fact that he has never implemented any budget faithfully since he took over power as elected president in May 1999.  More recent evidences include his secretive and single-handed award of multi-billion Naira contracts for power plants and for an Abuja millennium tower white elephant.

In what amounts to an inadvertent admission of the inconsistency of president’s war against corruption, an article in defense of Obasanjo on the website of the EFCC titled “Obasanjo, his critics and the war against corruption,” said, “Clearly Obasanjo’s critics have failed to realize that we are in a democracy and there are clear laws stating what he can do and what he cannot do…Any fair-minded person will admit that Obasanjo has demonstrated his sincerity and determination in tackling corruption.”

In thus defending Obasanjo, the EFCC seems to have forgotten that among the clear laws stating what he can do and can’t do, is the constitutional provision that he cannot spend one kobo from the nation’s treasury unless it is appropriated by the National Assembly.  Everybody, including the chaps at EFCC, know that the president has nothing but utter contempt for the federal legislators, much of it well deserved.

However, deserved or not, the law is still the law and if President Obasanjo wants his war against corruption to be taken seriously and if also he wants the war Ribadu and his men are gallantly fighting against corruption on his behalf not to end in vain, the president should, first and foremost, spend his remaining years in office keeping faith with his budget.  He may have less than two years left to the end of his current tenure (assuming, that is, that all the hoopla about his self-perpetuation agenda is just that – a hoopla) but it is never too late to do the right thing.