Malami, Magu and blues of anti-corruption war

Commentary@ITRealms:

Much as both labour to put up gestures suggesting cordiality, truth is there is no love lost between them. And interestingly, the one thing that came between them is corruption, which is also supposed to be the only thing that should see them basking in a harmonious relationship in this dispensation. What a paradox!

How to engage this terrible plague is the cause of the simmering discord in their affairs. Yet, between Abubakar Malami, Nigeria’s all-knowing Honourable Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, the one who never gives an inch in making the point that in all matters legal he is in charge, and Ibrahim Magu, the subordinate, less-obtrusive head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), it is not difficult to know who is more minded to waging a more concerted, frontal war against corruption which the administration they both serve promised to fight to a standstill.

First, a slice of these gentlemen’s background. As far as most Nigerians can remember, the one enjoyed a brief spell in a fuzzy limelight as junior to Dipo Opeseyi as attorneys for Muhammadu Buhari, then presidential candidate of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) battling in court to upturn the declaration of Goodluck Jonathan as winner of the 2011 presidential election.

The other earned glittering epaulettes as a tested, uncompromising anti-corruption warrior from the days of Nuhu Ribadu as Chairman of EFCC. Also, while the one, with no antecedent whatsoever of vigorous combat with societal wrong merely thrived in the shadows of redoubtable defenders of the law, the other was, and still is, enmeshed in bruising battles with highly placed fraudsters and economic saboteurs operating in and out of the shores of Nigeria.

But for Magu’s exploits, bolstered, of course, by President Buhari’s rhetoric and body language, there is no way this administration would today beat its chest and announce progress, no matter how minimal, in the war against corruption. Only Magu, and his principal, it seems, are the ones really focused on slaying the dragon of corruption in the country.

Of course, the belief out there is that under Buhari’s watch corruption is thriving despite his well-known anti-corruption stance. He owes it a duty to wipe off this belief. But the real cause for worry in this administration’s anti-corruption campaign chain is Malami, the country’s chief law officer who is holding an office that is supposed to be seen in the forefront of the charge against a monstrous vice that his government has sworn to do everything to permanently tame.

Instead, it is this same AGF that appears to be confronting corruption with kid gloves, when he should be slugging with it in the mud with bare knuckles. In the face of the overwhelming decadence corruption has inflicted on the country, and given the unusual decisiveness with which the ruling All Progressives Congress pledged to curb it, it ought to be Malami, not Magu, that should be talking of seeing the task at hand as a matter of life and death, or a “do or die” affair, to use the language compatriots would easily understand – if not for anything but to save Buhari’s face.

You expect Malami to be the one donning his wig and gown and pounding the courtrooms as the leader of government lawyers prosecuting the big cases of corruption. No, he would rather ensconce himself in the cushion of ego trip. There he throws his weight around and drums it into as many ears as care to listen that he has all the powers under the law to define the law.

Not a surprise though. Like all the Attorneys General of the Federation, especially since the founding of EFCC, this one too is a fortune-hunter, a deal-maker whose primary interest is not to combat corruption but to snuff out the country’s foremost anti-graft agency to enable him have a field day to bargain with looters for a share of the loot.

To offer a snippet of how these AGFs not only compromise the integrity of their office but also work very hard to render the EFCC ineffective, Michael Aondoakaa as AGF and Minister of Justice in 2008 connived with then EFCC Chairman, Farida Waziri, to scuttle the arrest and trial of Liyel Imoke who no longer enjoyed immunity as his election as Governor of Cross River State had then been annulled by the election petition tribunal. Tunde Ogunsakin, then Director of Operations at EFCC, ordered the arrest. Rather than end up in EFCC interrogation room, Imoke ended up at Aodoakaa’s house. And that was the end of the matter.  

Malami has sermonized on the poor prosecution of financial crimes and criticized the whistleblower policy for focusing on reward instead of the safety and protection of whistleblowers. But what has he done about it? What does it say of his office if an AGF whose government at inception swore to fight corruption with all its powers is only just waking up, after almost two years in office, to announce “plans” to create a central body to coordinate all criminal prosecutions in the country?

And on the protection of whistleblowers, pray, what has Malami done? At the moment, there are reports of persecutions of whistleblowers in many government offices, but not a whimper of disgust ever issued from his office. But for the civil society and the media which took up the fight, Ntia Thompson, a deputy director in the Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa (DTCA), an agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who was sacked for reporting fraud in his office might not have been reinstated.

At the moment, there is Murtala Ibrahim of the audit department of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), a victim of similar unconscionable high-handedness, who was sacked by the management of the bank since May 8 for refusing to help cover fraud in the bank. This is one of a whole slew of cases Malami should promptly wade into not only to show that he really cares about whistleblowers’ safety, but also that he is serious about strengthening the anti-corruption war.

Godwin Onyeacholem is a journalist. He can be reached through Email: gonyeacholem@gmail.com  

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The politics of Magu’s confirmation

Commentary@ITRealms:

Following an initial setback caused by a purported security report on which the senate relied for suspending Ibrahim Magu’s confirmation as the substantive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), President Muhammadu Buhari has rightly written back to the senate requesting Magu’s confirmation, having been convinced of the futility of the so-called report prepared by the Department of State Services (DSS).

Besides succumbing to wise counsel, Buhari’s decision aligns with the popular expectation of a great majority of the people who want to see Magu continue the excellent job he is doing in his acting role at the helm of the country’s foremost anti-corruption agency. Indeed, the voice for his retention has been so resounding that were Nigerians to cast a ballot regarding his continuation, the result would be returned overwhelmingly in his favour.

Yet, for him and the success of the anti-corruption campaign, the senate hurdle remains an albatross. Despite Buhari’s letter reiterating the crucial importance of checking the corruption scourge and appealing for a favourable acceptance of this nominee in view of the need to sustain the prevailing momentum and capacity of the EFCC, the body language of the senators is decidedly against this sentiment.

It does not matter to them that apart from the high integrity quotient of Buhari, their party’s and indeed Buhari’s flagship campaign promise of a frontal fight against corruption was the other major reason Nigerians voted massively for the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 presidential election. Nor do they feel embarrassed that despite belonging to the same APC party as President Buhari and being the majority in the upper parliament, APC senators are unable to muster the required insight and unity of purpose that would lead to a seamless confirmation of Buhari’s nominee as head of a strategic agency primed to actualize a top agenda in their party’s manifesto.

Understandably, some of them, including opposition PDP senators, are already being vigorously prosecuted for all manner of crimes by the EFCC. Thus, to them the nominee represents a creeping affliction that would effectively checkmate not just their own relentless pursuit of unconscionable excesses, but also that of similar selfish elite groups that have conspired to hold down the development of this country. Therefore, Chairman of EFCC can and should be anyone else but Magu, they must have resolved.

This is the ugly mindset that, in the first instance, arrogantly shunned due process and brazenly embraced a totally ill-advised request to the DSS for a security report on the acting EFCC Chair. In its entire history, until the Magu case, the Nigerian senate never asked for a security report on any nominee presented to it for confirmation by the presidency. Of course, the reason is clear. Before the presidency sends the name of any nominee to the senate, that nominee would have been vetted by the DSS. But this red chamber took that undistinguished route because Magu must be stopped anyhow. Hopefully, this would be the first and the last time such an abominable act would be carried out in the National Assembly.

Conscious of the potency of the threat he poses, the senate schemed for an alibi with which to nail Magu and found a willing tool in a messy DSS which helped finagle a report whose ambiguity exposed the malevolent intent of its colluding originators – a report containing preposterous allegations and recommendations that formed the basis of the senate’s refusal to proceed with the confirmation. The report was clearly aimed at achieving a predetermined goal as not only could the allegations contained therein be described as silly, but it also went ahead, curiously, to dish out recommendations for the senate.

This has left the politics of Magu’s confirmation, dirty and ill-tempered as it is, with a few unanswered questions. For example, if there was no evil agenda, what is the business of DSS in including recommendations in its report? Why wouldn’t they just stop at what they perceive as Magu’s ‘sins’ and leave the rest to the senators? Why did the DSS issue two different security reports and why did the senate discard the one that said Magu should be confirmed based on his brilliant performance and instead choose to work with the one that said Magu was not fit for confirmation? Could Buhari have forwarded his nominee’s name to the senate without the benefit of sighting a security report by the DSS? If the report were unfavourable could Buhari have still gone ahead, at the risk of his famed anti-corruption credential, to forward Magu’s name for confirmation?   

If there is any group that ought to be in the forefront of supporting the President and the party to succeed in the crusade against the monster called corruption, it should be the APC senators. Unfortunately, they have so far acted otherwise, presenting themselves in parliament as unrepentant antagonists of Buhari and the party, as well as playing the role of leading saboteurs of the anti-graft war. They have further underscored their hostility by hinting that they would summon the DSS boss to shed more light on the security report.

But they would be helping this country in a very significant way if they shed all prejudices and summon their patriotic instinct to do the right thing, by inviting Magu to the plenary with a view to confirming him as the substantive Chairman of EFCC.

Anything short of that is bound to seriously jeopardize the war against corruption and call the integrity of our senators to question.

*Godwin Onyeacholem is a journalist and could be reached ongonyeacholem@gmail.com   

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Still Waiting for the ‘Damning’ Report on Magu

Commentary@ITRealms:

Surely, there has to be a lot more to the Senate refusal to confirm Ibrahim Magu as Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) than the contents of what is being circulated in the media as “security report”. In all honesty, it is hard to see the ‘damning’ part of what the public has been fed with so far, or how it even qualifies as a security report in the first place.

To be sure, Magu's transgressions include allegations that he lives in a 20 million naira a year accommodation (or 40 million, whichever figure sounds more sexy) paid for by FCDA (or Magu's “questionable” businessman friend, whichever version is more fit for purpose); that he once flew in a private jet owned by, and in the company of the same ‘friend’, a retired Air Commodore; that he once flew first class to Saudi Arabia for Umrah; that he was once arrested and detained by his bosses for taking official EFCC files home from the office.

I have tried to list these allegations in their order of severity. However, it so happens that as you move from one to the next, you are not so sure about which is more flimsy among the charges. There are one or two more details such as the private jet in which he flew (from Maiduguri to Abuja) also had, as one of its passengers, a bank managing director under investigation at the time by EFCC.

Now, let’s forget the flimsiness of these allegations for a while, or the accuracy of the 'facts' for that matter, and look more dispassionately at the case, at least now that the shock value of the report has waned somewhat.

Starting with the N40 million rent, the substance of the SSS allegation appeared to hinge initially on the insinuation that Magu's residential accommodation was paid for by this businessman whose activities the DSS only recently determined to be on the wrong side of the law. However, the evidence has turned out to invalidate the narrative. First, documents that we have seen in the media, including contract details, show clearly that the rent was paid for by the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), the government agency that has in the past been responsible for accommodation of political appointees based in the federal capital.

So what is the source of the misrepresentation? It is not clear at this point whether it was deliberate misinformation by the DSS or the product of spin and propaganda by the hatchet man. But for what purpose really? It is also very questionable why a two-year rent term was first made to look as if it was rent paid for only one year, obviously for exaggerated effect. The padding of evidence can only mean that even the authors of the report are not very convinced about the strength of the initial evidence and its capacity to achieve the intended “damning” purpose.

The allegation about the private flight from Maiduguri in the company of the same “questionable” businessman was obviously constructed to achieve the same impression as the one about the link with the rented accommodation – guilt by association. Until Magu himself speaks, it is premature to reach any verdict one way or the other about the significance of this plane ride, since the DSS has not told us anything of substance beyond describing the physical encounter between the Acting EFCC Chairman and the owner of the private jet. However, it would be a real tragedy of national proportions if what the DSS does by way of top security intelligence gathering is to try to create a pattern from two disparate events with no connection whatsoever, in order to establish guilt by association.

The allegation about the first-class trip to Saudi Arabia would appear on the face of it to be more clear cut, considering that it is a more straightforward matter whether the man violated a federal government directive or not. Never mind that it is the most flimsy ground on which to base a 'security' report. The matter even becomes more academic if, as we have also read in the media, Magu paid for the ticket with his own money. Why should it matter to us how Magu decides to spend his own money, as long as he is not encroaching on any of our rights or offending our sensibilities? Except you can show that the money was corruptly acquired.

Now the one about the official files that were found in Magu's home during Farida Waziri's time is the most baffling, and raises the biggest question about the real purpose of the DSS secret memo to the Senate. Honestly, the DSS will have to clarify what is the problem with possession of confidential files for which the officer has been granted authorized access. In all the years that I served in the Civil Service, I am shocked to hear that taking files home to treat is one of the cardinal sins of the service. For those of us who did not recognize the distinction between private time and official hours in the amount of time and effort that we devoted to public service, the DSS report is beginning to make me feel like the biggest transgressor of my time.

But I will say this to Magu if he is listening: getting on the wrong side of Farida Waziri on something like that is nothing short of a big badge of honour.

Beyond that, the DSS should come clean with the real reasons for why the candidate is unworthy of the position of Chairman of EFCC. Because there is nothing to suggest that what we have been fed so far in the media is the product of any rigorous intelligence gathering or that it even qualifies to be described as security report.

For most Nigerians who have been on the receiving end of the scourge of corruption, the interest is simply in having an anti- corruption agency that is strong enough to confront the monster with all the force that we can muster. True, there is nothing that equates an effective anti-corruption agency only with Magu at the top. But the process of selecting the leadership of that institution should not become an arena for executing an agenda that erodes the credibility of that institution as well as undermines its future effectiveness.

In giving the DSS the benefit of the doubt, it is probable that they think the EFCC position is too serious and sensitive to allow any detail to go unnoticed. But it is precisely for that reason that Nigerians expect a supposedly serious institution like the DSS to treat the matter with the seriousness that it deserves and not with the underhandedness that they have handled the Magu report. In a proper democracy, issues relating to conflict of interest of public officials are placed in the public domain, not surreptitiously designated as 'security report'.

In the off-chance that the DSS has information about Magu that validly disqualifies the man from holding that position, by all means let’s have it. The EFCC and the DSS are both accountable to Nigerians. If they are holding on to a more serious version of this ‘security report’ it should be declassified for the sake of the integrity and credibility of the process – because the current version just doesn’t wash.

Contributed by Adebimpe Joseph writes from Gwarimpa, Abuja. 

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Magu, DSS, Saraki, Buhari and the intrigues of a corrupt cabal

Commentary@ITRealms:

"The President – whoever he is – has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.”

The prologue to this piece was part of the farewell address to the American people delivered in January 1953 by President Harry Truman. It was a categorical reference to the concept of “The buck stops here,” which Truman, 33^rd president of the United States, invented and espoused diligently. So passionate was Truman about this principle that he made the phrase into a desk sign that stood on his desk throughout his tenure.

“The BUCK STOPS here! This phrase is an irrefutable reminder of where the ultimate power lies in a democratic presidency, which one is minded to recommend to President Muhammadu Buhari in these very worrying times, especially in the wake of the Nigerian senate’s despicable rejection of his nominee, Ibrahim Magu, as substantive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. Clearly, if nothing else, Buhari should know that that rejection sounded the death knell for his vaunted war against corruption, as well as constitutes a huge embarrassment to his person and office.

And he should also take notice that rather than being the end, the senate’s act is just the beginning of the process of giving full expression to a familiar refrain of his and numerous other lieutenants in the APC administration: corruption is fighting back. Yes, corruption is fighting back, and the Buhari administration needs to summon the will to repel the attack and crush the monster. Otherwise, as Buhari himself has often stated, it will kill us. With the decision to block Magu from becoming EFCC chairman, there is no way corruption won’t kill us eventually if Buhari does not act like a true president. 

Now, it’s no longer about Magu, nor an utterly Senate populated by over-feds whom Nigerians would be too glad to do away with as quickly as possible. It’s about Buhari. It’s about the kind of president he wants to be, and whether he wants to continue to run a heavily tainted and compromised presidency where the one who runs the show is the highly discredited Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, a man who has been linked with multiple acts of corruption and who on the eve of the 2015 elections denounced Buhari as a “serial loser.”

In the subtle design to rubbish Buhari’s government and preserve the old order, Abba Kyari is ably supported by other willing collaborators among them the equally unpleasant DSS boss, Lawal Daura, and the senate president Bukola Saraki. But now is the time to urge Buhari to toe the path of Truman and point to Abba Kyari and the rest of the destructive gang where the buck stops.

With an impressive credential of personal integrity, and with fervent pre and post election resolve to wage an all-out war against a scourge that has gone down as the biggest cog in Nigeria’s development – a resolve for which he received an unequivocal endorsement from the vast majority of Nigerians – will Buhari buckle under the unrelenting onslaught of a vicious cabal whose singular interest is to perpetuate corruption as the directive principle of state policy? Will he continue to fold his arms and look the other way when his arch ally in the anti-corruption war, the man who has demonstrated rare courage in dealing corruption an unprecedented blow is being sought out by the cabal for destruction?

That the senate did what they did was not altogether surprising. Every discerning observer saw it coming. After more than one year of Magu as acting chairman, and six months after receiving a letter from the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, requesting the senate to confirm him as substantive chairman of EFCC, the senators reluctantly rustled up a pathetic engagement with Magu on the day they had scheduled to go on end-of-year recess. Instead of allowing the man to appear before them at plenary as the whole world expected, they arranged a sham executive session where the public was shut out.

It was at that dubious session that Magu’s fate was purportedly sealed. While the world was still waiting for the chambers to be thrown open and Magu invited for screening, it was a guilt-ridden, tremulous spokesman of the senate, Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, that appeared to read a terse statement announcing the senate's decision that Magu was not “fit” to be confirmed as substantive chairman based on a security report submitted by the DSS. 

What the spokesman failed to tell his audience was that there were indeed two security reports on Magu written the same day by the DSS. The one that clearly acquitted Magu and certified him qualified to lead the EFCC was discarded by the senate, and the negative report was picked just because they had an evil agenda that must be satisfied no matter what it takes. No wonder he refused to take questions.

It will be interesting to see how Buhari reacts to all of this. His reaction should determine the status of The Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-Corruption (PACAC) headed by Professor Itse Sagay, going forward. If Buhari would not see through the shenanigans of the Abba Kyaris, the Bukola Sarakis and assert himself as president by insisting that Magu remains his choice for the EFCC chair, Sagay should lead other members of the committee to resign the job and allow Buhari to fight corruption his own way.

Truly, if Magu was really corrupt, the Nigerian senate that we know would have filled the chamber with chorus of "Take a bow; Take a bow!"

Contributed by: Godwin Onyeacholem is a journalist. He can be reached on gonyeacholem@gmail.com; Follow him on Twitter @Gonyeacholem

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