YNaija Editorial: Diezani’s arrest and Nigeria’s war against corruption

On the evening of Friday, 2nd October, news broke of the arrest of the immediate past Minister for Petroleum, Mrs. Dieziani Allison Madueke in the United Kingdom by the National Crime Agency on allegations of corruption and bribery.

The arrest came as no surprise to many people, as her five-year stint heading the lucrative ministry was dogged with constant allegations of corruption and money laundering. The only surprise was that the arrest was in London, rather than in Nigeria as it has been long expected that it will be so with the seeming zeal of President Muhammadu Buhari to fight corruption.

Her arrest was celebrated by Nigerians all over, even across partisan leanings; about everyone has been of the opinion that this hitherto powerful minister, who even refused to appear before the Senate to answer allegations of corruption against her, had dipped her hands in the public till and taken advantage of the opaque and arcane nature of our oil industry to enrich herself and her cronies. Not surprising, many credited President Buhari with this arrest as a demonstration of his seriousness to fight corruption.

However, we beg to differ in this regard, especially with the statement coming from the UK National Crime Agency that Mrs. Madueke had been under investigation since 2013. The Buhari administration can only take credit for this if this arrest was done on a request by it with the desire to have her extradited to Nigeria for trial; so far, there are no indications that this is so.

Nonetheless, her arrest offers a lot of lessons for the administration in proving that indeed, it is passionate about fighting corruption. Admittedly, the government has made all the right noises about anti-corruption and the reputation of the President which precedes him, and his body language so far, does portray him as someone who took accountability and transparency very seriously, a stark contrast to his predecessor.

However, body language is far from enough, and the right actions have to also be taken. For instance, while we have been almost daily inundated with headlines of massive frauds that took place under the immediate past administration, only one past government official has been invited for questioning for fraud, with no news of the outcome of the investigation. Without doubt, there is need for the anti0graft agencies need to act more and do far less trial by media.

Also, the slowness in appointing a cabinet and most especially, the Attorney-General of the Federation, has hampered the speed with which President Buhari would have hit the ground running with in this aspect. With the cabinet just nominated and yet to undergo senate screening, we might have to wait for a month or two before we have a Chief Law Officer that will drive the government battle against corruption from a legal viewpoint.

There has also been very little talk on the much-needed reforms that need to be done to the judicial system in order to make it easier to try persons suspected of corruption while holding public office or those who directly participated and benefited from it. The committee set up by President Buhari and headed by Prof. Itse Sagay to propose ideas for reforms to laws and judicial procedures with respect to corruption is yet to submit its report.

While all this is being awaited, not only is the president’s goodwill being frittered away, the time to show results in this anti-corruption battle courtesy of quick wins is being lost.

President Buhari needs to keep in mind that his body language cannot by itself act as a preventive or punitive measure for corruption. What is needed is to reform systems that allow corruption to take place and build strong institutions that will do what is necessary and expected of them no matter the desires of the president regarding fighting corruption.

This is a battle that needs to be fought at all three arms of government:

Like we have written before on this page, attention must be given to strengthening the anti-graft agencies and if possibly, merging them together in order to make them a leaner, meaner machine; there is a lot of overlap in the duties of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and the Special Fraud Unit of the Nigerian Police.

The legislative agenda of the administration must also include bills to reform the legal system or introduce new laws that will make administration of justice with respect to corruption faster. It bears repeating, for instance, that past legislative assemblies have been unable to pass the Non-Conviction Asset-Based Forfeiture Bill into law which will prevent suspects from moving assets that were likely illegally gotten or even worse, use it to pervert the course of justice. The Buhari administration will need to work with legislators to make sure that this is passed into law as quickly as possible.

Lastly, the judiciary needs to reform its procedures so that they are not used to delay trials. An achievement of the Jonathan administration is its signing into law the Administration of Criminal Justice Act which eliminates the use of technicalities to delay trials, making them run into many years. However, there is still work to be done in this regards in untangling procedures that can still be used to frustrate trials.

It is also important that rather than the Buhari administration shop for judges who will be serious in fighting corruption or are not compromised as it is rumored in many quarters, which will also rob the trials of fairness, it should allow the National Judicial Council, which is the regulatory body for the bench to perform its duties by disciplining judges who are found wanting. It should also ditch the idea of special courts for corruption and instead, use the existing court system by identifying loopholes and plugging them, whether it is by way of procedures or insufficient judges.

It is only by doing these things will institutions be strengthened to act on their own in the right manner, rather than building the anti-corruption battle around the person of the President, which does not ensure continuity.

Once again, this newspaper is firmly in support of the anti-corruption agenda of the Buhari administration and hopes that the right lessons are learnt from the current saga involving the former Petroleum Minister.

After all, it is back home that the real battle will be fought as we cannot keep expecting that the United Kingdom will do the needed work for us when we are the ones that feel the impact of the corruption most. That will amount to outsourcing our judiciary, and it should never be so.

We pray the administration starts to act fast on the needed reforms before it gets too late.

 

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