By Okey Ndibe
Nigerians are
in the midst of a familiar feeding frenzy. On the menu, this time, former
National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki. Prosecutors allege that Mr.
Dasuki, a retired colonel of the Nigerian Army, took more than $2 billion,
which was budgeted for the purchase of military weapons, and divvied it up
among highly connected politicians.
*Ndibe |
It seems that every day the media unmask the names
of more beneficiaries. And each revelation fuels the frenzy. Resourceful
pundits have fashioned a verb out of Mr. Dasuki’s name. The phrase, to be
Dasukied (also Dasukification), has come to represent a sudden windfall or
diversion of funds to an illicit purpose.
Nigerians
are riveted, as attentive to the unfolding drama as Americans were when, in
1998, then President Bill Clinton was accused of carrying on an affair in the
White House with a young intern, Monica Lewinsky.
The
scandal Nigerians have christened Dasukigate has brought out the best and the
worst of us. The usual pedestrian kind of disputation has taken root in social
and print media. Some commentators have mistaken an indictment for a conviction.
There’s a disturbing part of our psyche that yearns for the institution of mob
justice. We forget those of us who advocate this mode, that it is a
monster that, in the end, spares no one. Others—typically Mr. Dasuki’s
supporters—have raised partisan hell, questioning the prosecution of Mr. Dasuki
when government prosecutors have turned a blind eye to the alleged graft by
members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
*Buhari |
There’s a
point, of course, in questioning the selectivity of prosecutions. Ever since Nigeria ’s
ostensible war against corruption began under Presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo,
it has been plagued by the reality and perception of its selective nature. Wily
politicians and public officials quickly discern that closeness to or gushing
affection for the ruling President is the surest inoculation against EFCC
trouble.
We are
witnessing the same trend today. The core of APC’s membership came from the
ruling PDP. For example, Jim Nwobodo, a former Minister and ex-Governor of Anambra State , last week defected to the APC. He
had just been named as a recipient of N100 million from Mr. Dasuki.
Mr.
Dasuki’s trial is in order, but President Muhammadu Buhari will labor under a
major moral deficit unless he finds a way to expand the war against corruption,
to make it party-neutral and tribe-blind.
If Mr.
Dasuki and his co-accused cohorts were found guilty and sentenced to long jail
terms, it would be an exclamatory boost. But that feat would not be enough to
establish President Buhari’s legacy as an anti-corruption warrior.
*Dasuki |
One task
that Mr. Buhari should undertake is the reform of the Nigerian judiciary.
Except in cases involving destitute defendants, who are often railroaded to
jail, even when innocent, Nigerian courts have no track record for expeditious
trials. Numerous cases filed by the EFCC five or more years ago are still
languishing in the courts, caught in a labyrinthine process that is easily
exploited by rich defendants able to afford high-priced lawyers.
Given the
judicial record, then, there’s the risk of Mr. Dasuki’s trial outlasting the
first term of Muhammadu Buhari’s Presidency. The arraignment of the former NSA
is important. But far more important, I believe, is a presidential proposal to
reform Nigeria ’s
judiciary. With the country’s judiciary plagued with too many corrupt judges
who sell the bench to the highest bidder, we need a more rigorous process for
selecting judges. The judiciary also needs to be retooled into a limber,
self-confident and independent organism, able to dispense justice in a
transparent way and at a faster pace.
The Dasuki
case also underlines the urgency of rethinking aspects of governance in Nigeria . I
believe that the decades of military rule have weakened institutions, such as
the auditor-general and tenders board, that were designed to ensure compliance
with certain standards in public transactions. Today, any man or woman who
occupies the post of State Governor or President has close to absolute powers.
A Nigerian Governor or President can order the illegal movement of vast sums of
public funds, and do so confident that no civil servant dare raise any
question. This unchecked facility lends itself to impunity. And such impunity
created the form of grave misappropriation of which Mr. Dasuki and a coterie of
beneficiaries are accused.
To convict
and jail the “Dasukis” of Nigeria
is far from enough, even if Mr. Buhari found the spine to drive suspected
embezzlers hiding in the APC’s tent straight into the hands of merciless
prosecutors. A more enduring achievement for the President is, again, to
initiate institutional reforms. He should lead the war to end the oddity called
the security vote, a corrupt contraption that enables Governors and the
President to superintend the disbursement of millions of dollars each month,
without scrutiny or oversight of any sort.
President
Buhari should also lead the cause for amending the odious immunity clause in Nigeria ’s
constitution. In most countries, the work of the immunity clause is narrow: to
shield specified public officials from being sued on accounts of acts that fall
within the legitimate exercise of their mandate. The drafters of Nigeria ’s
constitution choose a notoriously elastic immunity clause, providing shelter
from prosecution even to officials who used their office to commit brazen
crimes.
Eight
months into Buhari’s Presidency, we are at the early stages of the first
serious prosecution. And we’ve seen only reports of alleged financial scams by
the former NSA. We are yet to get details of what transpired in the oil
industry, within, say, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
It all
proves a point I made in a different column: the cancer of corruption has so
widely metastasized in Nigeria
that we simply don’t have the luxury of time to litigate our way to a solution.
Ponder this, for a moment: If we were to prosecute every local government
chairman, every commissioner, every vice chancellor, every minister, every
permanent secretary, every director, every businessman, every ex-governor,
every ex-president or ex-head of state, who embezzled or illicitly pocketed
public funds, where are we going to find the courtrooms, the prosecutors, the
judges?
Mr.
Buhari, so far, has waged his anti-corruption war with the same tools used by
his predecessors. That won’t do. He should do two things. One is to enunciate a
policy targeted at reducing opportunities and incentives for corruption. He
should adopt (or adapt) the Bribecode, a bold and impressive idea initiated by
Chuma Nwokolo, a fine Nigerian writer, lawyer, and patriot. The code, which
aims to identify and punish corporate corruption, is
here: http://bribecode.org/.
For a
second step, Mr. Buhari should send a bill to the National Assembly seeking the
establishment of a restitutions commission. The commission’s task would be to
give looters of public funds the opportunity to return all or most of what they
stole. Such a commission should have powers to scrutinize each “loot”
declaration to ensure its comprehensiveness. Mr. Buhari should set a period,
say 6 months, within which plunderers and recipients of illicit funds must
submit confessions and return their illegitimate acquisitions. Those who make
restitution should be spared prosecution, but banned from ever holding public
office.
Okey
Ndibe
okeyndibe@gmail.com
Please
follow me on twitter @okeyndibe
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