--STILL ON MAGU: REINVENTING THE ANTIGRAFT WARby Ayo Olukotun
There are genuine and crucial reasons for staying on the topic of former Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, and more generally on the anti-graft war. After a baffling silence, the presidency made a public statement suspending Magu who has now been granted bail, and went ahead to appoint Mohammed Umar as Acting Chairman of the commission. More importantly, recent events and revelations of outsize corruption in several government departments such as the Niger Delta Development Commission and the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund, suggests an upscale of corruption in our public life, raising the question of how much has changed since the lootocracy of the President Goodluck Jonathan years in office.
In the case of NDDC, the figure is mind-boggling, hovering around 80 billion Naira, of stolen public funds. The scuffle between the Minister for Niger Delta, Mr. Godswill Akpabio and the former managing director, Joi Nuneh, who claimed to have slapped the Minister for sexually harassing her, only provides a tragicomic diversion for what is in essence, a national disaster of structured predation. Into what rational box, for example, do you put the sharing by NDDC officials of 1.5 billion Naira as so-called COVID-19 relief? Mark you, these are the scandals that have recently come to light. Only heaven knows how many more are in the offing. It turns out, therefore, that the Magu debacle, in which the anti-corruption Czar is in the dock for corruption of unimaginable proportion is itself a metaphor for what appears to be the dystopia of the anti-corruption struggle once pursued with so much gusto. One of the curious side dramas of the ongoing Magu presidential probe is the suspension of 12 EFCC directors, most of who have been involved in the investigation of the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami SAN. If this is not truly murky, then I'm afraid I don't know what that word means, for it would appear that both the accused and the accuser are caught in a web of possible wrong-doing, desperate power play and political corruption. Undoubtedly, the Magu affair, apart from signaling that there is widespread graft in the political arena, may also be opening a Pandora's box of obscenity and serial scams. That being so, it is suggested that the reformism and moral high-ground once associated with the anti-corruption fight, has not only ebbed but has been replaced by the opposite of what it intended to achieve. This provides the background for reinventing the reform project currently hopelessly adrift.
We can begin this quest by asking simple questions like, why did it take so long for the Presidency to notice that Magu has faltered and derailed, in terms of the mandate of anti-corruption? Will it be fair to say that but for the political duel between Magu and Malami, the nation would be none the wiser for all the alleged heist within the EFCC? Could it be that there are no mechanisms whatsoever for detecting when a public official holding high office has become a cynical manipulator of the system for private gain? The answers to these questions, some of them rhetorical, may well provide the foundation for recasting and recrafting the anti-corruption ideal. For example, policy monitoring is almost as important as policy formulation suggesting that it made little or no sense to have given the suspended Magu, the kind of leeway that does not recognize boundaries or suggest that he himself holds his power in circumstances of checks and balances. True, it may not be healthy to micromanage high public officials but it is dangerous, as recent events have shown, to give them the impression that they are free to carry on in the way and manner they like.
It is almost indefensible that the administration appointed Magu in the face of opposition, without requisite accountability provisions that would have ensured that he stuck to his brief. This government, as well as previous ones, spoke glowingly about performance audits designed to hold public officials to their contract and assignment, but as far as this writer is aware, little or no action followed the high-flown rhetoric. I bring this up so that we avoid a situation in which, some years down the line, the newly appointed helmsman of the EFCC will go the way of his predecessors, sacrificed to the gods of a system that perennially refuses to police itself. In the same vein, reimagining the EFCC would mean that it is insulated as much as possible from the hurly-burly of partisan politics, considering its tendency to erode the credibility and viability of anti-corruption agencies. Those reform agencies that became formidable in other parts of the world were granted relative autonomy, as well as adequately funded in order to provide a buffer between them and partisan politics. Were this to happen, it would attract the focus, discipline and commitment that the organization needs to catch-up on lost time and to thrive.
A corollary of this formulation is that anticorruption shall not be politicized or considered as one more tool to beat the opposition into submission, sadly, it was only recently that Buhari began to take seriously, the need to provide a level playing field for his reformist agenda, so that it looks less of a witch-hunt of opposition figures. Obviously, party loyalists who look out only for their interests are unlikely to care whether the anticorruption fight is one sided or not. Indeed, some of them would prefer that it is, so that they can safeguard their own political fortunes and illicit wealth. Someone hoping to build a legacy that would endure should be of a different mindset, however, given that he ought to be more concerned, not just about his place in history but about the longevity and stature of his intervention. Hence, a cardinal principle of a successful anti-corruption reform is that it be disentangled from the web of political partisanship. Fortunately, Buhari does not need to seek reelection and is therefore free from the political IOUs that are so subversive of the political will of reformers and their vision. He has time, therefore, to steer the struggle in the direction of principle and integrity. If we must strengthen the EFCC, as well as rescue it from the current doldrums, then we must take more seriously, the office of the Auditor-General, who tirelessly issues queries to several government agencies, including the EFCC and the Presidency, most of which are ostentatiously ignored. In the absence of a vibrant and vigilant civil society, the only way to get government agencies to be accountable is by ensuring that they are subjected to the routine appraisals of auditors as a form of horizontal accountability. There is little or no point crying foul after the horse has bolted from the stable while there was time to have prevented the action in the first instance. Too often, we only hear of the theft of resources through leaks to the media, whereas, the regulatory agencies of government ought to provide the first order of business.
Finally, the EFCC must open itself more to expertise across disciplines such as Criminology, Public Administration, Philosophy and other areas of policy that have bearing on law, crime and the detection of crime.
- Prof. Ayo Olukotun is the Oba (Dr.) Sikiru Adetona Chair of Governance, Department of Political Science, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye.
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