Increasingly controversial anti-graft war
Idowu Akinlotan
The
facts are truly and depressingly worrisome. First was the $2.1bn arms
scandal allegedly directed by the Office of the National Security
Adviser (ONSA), which has sucked in so many people, especially top
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders, and many companies, local and
international, in all sectors of the economy. While the dust was yet to
settle, the focus has shifted to arms procurement directed by top
officers in the Nigerian Air Force (NAF). A report by the Committee on
Audit of Defence Equipment set up to look into how and at what prices
NAF procured arms between 2007 and 2015 has established that another
$2bn and more was also spent in very questionable circumstances with
little result. President Muhammadu Buhari has, therefore, ordered a
probe of the 17 top officers and 21 firms involved in the scandal. The
list includes former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex
Badeh, and two former Air Marshals.
The audit committee gave a horrendous account of military equipment purportedly bought but were either not supplied, were obsolete, or were already mothballed. In virtually all the procurement, said the audit committee, the prices were horrifyingly inflated. The impression the report gave — and the public will remember that the ONSA scandal was not any different — was a military establishment gone absolutely raving mad with corruption. The EFCC has now taken over both the ONSA case and the NAF bazaar. Many officers will be hauled in for interrogation in the coming days, and after a while they will have their day in court. But far beyond the coming trials and the sickening amount involved is the fact that in the case of the NAF procurement, the audit committee was actually able to establish some links between the purchase of obsolete equipment and the death of air force officers in crashed helicopters.
The scale of the thievery perpetrated by those put in a position of trust, especially military officers who had a professional duty to ensure their men had access to fighting tools in order to fight and win, has led many commentators to insist that whatever constitutional rights of suspects were being allegedly violated should be overlooked as collateral damage in the great and transcendental war to save the nation. As they put it, national interest must always be prioritised above private interest. Lawyers are duplicitous and venal, they suggest, and the character of judges, sadly, cannot be certified. The government, they conclude, is therefore justified to take some extraordinary measures to protect national interest. The public must remember, they further suggest, that the thievery that attended arms procurement led to the prolongation of the Boko Haram war, and the death of many fine soldiers sent to war either improperly kitted or with poor and inadequate weapons.
This sentiment, which its protagonists insist is absolutely justified, is shared by President Buhari himself. In his maiden media chat, he was so openly outraged by an interviewer’s suggestion that he seemed to place his desire to punish suspects outside legal and constitutional provisions that he wondered why anyone would talk of bail in the light of the gravity of the offences the suspects committed. This sentiment, this outrage, is now almost so universal in the country that a few Nigerians, including this columnist, are beginning to worry that a national hysteria may be brewing capable of perpetrating a worse crime against the law and constitution in the name of fighting corruption. Corruption should be fought, and fought until justice is served for the millions, including fighting men, who have lost their lives because of the stealing by a few, because of the abuse of public trust by a few. But there is need for caution.
Of all those horrified by the scale of thievery, and of all those baying for blood, the president has the highest responsibility to ensure that public revenge is moderated and mediated according to the law and constitution. He has not discharged this responsibility in line with the oath he took. He is attempting to fight the corrupt outside the provisions of the law. It is true the law is inadequate. But until he can sponsor changes in the law, he is not at liberty to fight as he pleases, nor does he have the freedom to pronounce or think the suspects guilty until the courts have said so. Importantly too, he must be extra careful, notwithstanding his outrage, not to create a groundswell of lynch mentality upon which suspects would meet their doom, and the judiciary would be ridiculed and undermined. Should he and millions of his frenzied supporters create an atmosphere reminiscent of the United States McCarthy witch-hunt and the Chinese cultural revolution, they will open up the country to anarchy much worse than the financial scandal orchestrated by looters.
The president is not careful enough. And his refusal to exercise care
in prosecuting a great cause is manifesting in ugly colours apparently
because he does not have impressive understanding of the kind of society
he wants to help create. He has no social charter, no political
philosophy, and no nuanced understanding of the dangers constituted by
impunity, whether soft or brazen. The president must be told that while
he is engaged in a good cause to fight corruption, which he rightly
argues is a great national interest cause, he undermines that national
interest by inadvertently subverting the courts and the judiciary, and
giving the general impression that suspects can be lynched figuratively
on the pages of newspapers or literally on the streets, in prisons and
in EFCC custody. He must not have any illusion how national interest is
defined. He has a responsibility to define it as the constitution has
done, and be faithful to that definition.
From the alarming positions taken by many commentators, some of them eminent lawyers, the foundations for anarchy, self-help and legal and constitutional expediencies are being sown. They are wrong, and the president is wrong. A good cause can be damaged by the manner it is prosecuted, as even common sense teaches. The standards the society must uphold — and the president is the battering ram in the hands of the society — must transcend that of the suspects and other criminals. The society cannot be bigger or more civilised than the standards it embraces. Nothing on earth, therefore, justifies what the Buhari government is trying to do to the law and the constitution. For justice must not just be done, it must be seen to be done.
President Buhari must listen not only to those baying mindlessly for blood because in their opinion the Nigerian justice system appears inadequate to take care of the huge scale of malfeasance perpetrated by suspects. He must listen very carefully also to those who say he has a greater and more binding responsibility to fight his causes within the ambits of the law. The society is bigger than its thieves, more civilised than they are, and for the sake of coming generations, the president who is the chief custodian of the country’s laws and emblem of all that is good and noble about Nigeria, must ensure that at no time will the society descend to the brutish, reckless, self-help levels embraced by thieves who have nothing to lose, not even their names or dignity.
The next set of suspects the EFCC will bring to trial must show that the agency and the president have learnt from their mistakes. But if they will not change because of the overwhelming support they are receiving from the public, if they look more at the magnitude of the crime than the danger of undermining the constitution, if they keep arguing with scant regard for the laws of the land that public or national interest overrides private interest, they must also know that those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. Indeed, the Buhari presidency must take caution now, for there is no telling what he would do, or how dangerously he would whip up emotions once the searchlight is beamed to other sectors of the economy and the true scale of the stealing perpetrated in the past decade or so comes to light.
NATION
The audit committee gave a horrendous account of military equipment purportedly bought but were either not supplied, were obsolete, or were already mothballed. In virtually all the procurement, said the audit committee, the prices were horrifyingly inflated. The impression the report gave — and the public will remember that the ONSA scandal was not any different — was a military establishment gone absolutely raving mad with corruption. The EFCC has now taken over both the ONSA case and the NAF bazaar. Many officers will be hauled in for interrogation in the coming days, and after a while they will have their day in court. But far beyond the coming trials and the sickening amount involved is the fact that in the case of the NAF procurement, the audit committee was actually able to establish some links between the purchase of obsolete equipment and the death of air force officers in crashed helicopters.
The scale of the thievery perpetrated by those put in a position of trust, especially military officers who had a professional duty to ensure their men had access to fighting tools in order to fight and win, has led many commentators to insist that whatever constitutional rights of suspects were being allegedly violated should be overlooked as collateral damage in the great and transcendental war to save the nation. As they put it, national interest must always be prioritised above private interest. Lawyers are duplicitous and venal, they suggest, and the character of judges, sadly, cannot be certified. The government, they conclude, is therefore justified to take some extraordinary measures to protect national interest. The public must remember, they further suggest, that the thievery that attended arms procurement led to the prolongation of the Boko Haram war, and the death of many fine soldiers sent to war either improperly kitted or with poor and inadequate weapons.
This sentiment, which its protagonists insist is absolutely justified, is shared by President Buhari himself. In his maiden media chat, he was so openly outraged by an interviewer’s suggestion that he seemed to place his desire to punish suspects outside legal and constitutional provisions that he wondered why anyone would talk of bail in the light of the gravity of the offences the suspects committed. This sentiment, this outrage, is now almost so universal in the country that a few Nigerians, including this columnist, are beginning to worry that a national hysteria may be brewing capable of perpetrating a worse crime against the law and constitution in the name of fighting corruption. Corruption should be fought, and fought until justice is served for the millions, including fighting men, who have lost their lives because of the stealing by a few, because of the abuse of public trust by a few. But there is need for caution.
Of all those horrified by the scale of thievery, and of all those baying for blood, the president has the highest responsibility to ensure that public revenge is moderated and mediated according to the law and constitution. He has not discharged this responsibility in line with the oath he took. He is attempting to fight the corrupt outside the provisions of the law. It is true the law is inadequate. But until he can sponsor changes in the law, he is not at liberty to fight as he pleases, nor does he have the freedom to pronounce or think the suspects guilty until the courts have said so. Importantly too, he must be extra careful, notwithstanding his outrage, not to create a groundswell of lynch mentality upon which suspects would meet their doom, and the judiciary would be ridiculed and undermined. Should he and millions of his frenzied supporters create an atmosphere reminiscent of the United States McCarthy witch-hunt and the Chinese cultural revolution, they will open up the country to anarchy much worse than the financial scandal orchestrated by looters.
From the alarming positions taken by many commentators, some of them eminent lawyers, the foundations for anarchy, self-help and legal and constitutional expediencies are being sown. They are wrong, and the president is wrong. A good cause can be damaged by the manner it is prosecuted, as even common sense teaches. The standards the society must uphold — and the president is the battering ram in the hands of the society — must transcend that of the suspects and other criminals. The society cannot be bigger or more civilised than the standards it embraces. Nothing on earth, therefore, justifies what the Buhari government is trying to do to the law and the constitution. For justice must not just be done, it must be seen to be done.
President Buhari must listen not only to those baying mindlessly for blood because in their opinion the Nigerian justice system appears inadequate to take care of the huge scale of malfeasance perpetrated by suspects. He must listen very carefully also to those who say he has a greater and more binding responsibility to fight his causes within the ambits of the law. The society is bigger than its thieves, more civilised than they are, and for the sake of coming generations, the president who is the chief custodian of the country’s laws and emblem of all that is good and noble about Nigeria, must ensure that at no time will the society descend to the brutish, reckless, self-help levels embraced by thieves who have nothing to lose, not even their names or dignity.
The next set of suspects the EFCC will bring to trial must show that the agency and the president have learnt from their mistakes. But if they will not change because of the overwhelming support they are receiving from the public, if they look more at the magnitude of the crime than the danger of undermining the constitution, if they keep arguing with scant regard for the laws of the land that public or national interest overrides private interest, they must also know that those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. Indeed, the Buhari presidency must take caution now, for there is no telling what he would do, or how dangerously he would whip up emotions once the searchlight is beamed to other sectors of the economy and the true scale of the stealing perpetrated in the past decade or so comes to light.
NATION
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