By Olu Fasan
Ola Olukoyede, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, recently appointed by Nigeria’s new president, Bola Tinubu, is saying the right things and making the right noises about fighting corruption in Nigeria. Recently, he struck a chord with me when he called for unexplained wealth legislation in Nigeria.
Unexplained wealth laws are the most powerful tool for tackling corruption, as I wrote in a piece titled: “Fighting corruption? Nigeria must tackle unexplained wealth” (Vanguard, November 22, 2021). Yet, despite my positive opinion of the new EFCC chairman, the stark reality is that the EFCC won’t and can’t make an iota of difference in stemming the inexorable rise of corruption in Nigeria. The agency is so bedevilled that it has become part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Last year, I wrote a piece titled, “Corruption: EFCC
is not fit for purpose; it’s time to scrap it!” (Vanguard, June 8, 2023). In that article, I made three points.
First, EFCC has now existed for 20 years, since its creation in 2003, yet
Nigeria remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world, still
languishing at the bottom of the Transparency International Corruption
Perceptions Index, ranked 150 out of 180 countries surveyed in 2022.
Second, the EFCC is so politicised that every new
president must appoint his own EFCC chairman. Third, virtually all EFCC
chairmen, since the agency’s inception, have been enmeshed in corruption
allegations. Of course, there’s the judiciary, which tends to side with corrupt
politicians by acquitting those charged with corruption purely on
technicalities. How can the EFCC be effective in those circumstances?
Unfortunately, those are the
invariant conditions under which Olukoyede’s EFCC operates. To make matters worse,
the Tinubu government lacks credibility on the anti-graft front. Earlier this
week, Tinubu told a delegation of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN:
“We’ll continue to fight corruption.” But how credible is that commitment when
his government is littered with people with unexplained and inexplicable
wealth? Truth is, fighting corruption in the Tinubu government must start from
within the government itself, and that goes beyond scapegoating small fries
like Betta Edu. It requires a surgical operation to drain the swamp.
Professor Wole Soyinka put it
powerfully in his recent Channels TV interview. He said the EFCC and the
Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC, should be questioning former
governors occupying critical positions in the Tinubu government now that they
no longer have immunity. “Are they answering questions from the EFCC?” he
asked, adding: “ICPC, EFCC, what are you doing about them? What happened? We’ve
been waiting.” Indeed, we are still waiting!
Granted that it can’t investigate
a sitting president or governor because of their immunity, but why would a
truly independent anti-graft agency not be able to investigate anyone else
without fear or favour? In 2022, the FBI launched a criminal investigation
against President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, over allegations of tax crimes,
drug use and illegal purchase of handgun.
The FBI did not dodge the
investigation because it involved the president’s son, and President Biden did
not stop the FBI from doing its job. Can that happen in Nigeria? Absolutely
not. Rather, the EFCC has, historically, been accused of being a political
tool, used by successive presidents to harass their political opponents or
pressured to turn a blind eye to the corrupt practices of their allies.
Recently, opposition governors
whose elections were validated by the Supreme Court lavished praise on Tinubu
for not interfering in the apex court’s verdicts. The inference is that he
could have interfered and that he probably interfered in other instances, such
as, perhaps, the controversial Nasarawa State governorship case.
Truth is, there are no real
checks and balances in the governance of Nigeria: the president is too powerful
and can manipulate any so-called independent body. For instance, although the
EFCC can, in theory, prosecute corruption cases independently, it will not
investigate or prosecute anyone if the president’s body language says: back
off! After all, under President Buhari, EFCC often stopped summoning prominent
PDP politicians accused of corruption once they decamped to APC. Indeed, a
former APC national chairman, Adam Oshiomhole, famously said: “Once you join
APC, all your sins are forgiven!”
Truth be told, political
interference is the EFCC’s Achilles heel. Nothing proves this better than the
fact that every new president must have his own EFCC chairman. In his book:
Reclaiming the Jewel of Africa, Dr Segun Aganga, a former minister, wrote
glowingly about Abdulrasheed Bawa, the former EFCC chairman. He said Bawa “has
demonstrated an informed or enlightened knowledge of the issues and how to deal
with them”, adding: “Chairman Bawa is young, passionate about his job, vibrant,
analytical and full of the right ideas that will take the EFCC into the 21st
century.”
Yet, no sooner had Tinubu become
president than he suspended and incarcerated Bawa, citing “weighty allegations
of abuse of office levelled against him.” But if you expect the “weighty
allegations” to lead to Bawa’s conviction, forget it: the case will soon fizzle
out. Tinubu needed to remove Bawa to bring in his own man, and Olukoyede is
Tinubu’s man!
Yet, besides political
interference, the EFCC itself is corrupt. Recently, Olukoyede himself confirmed
it. In his New Year message to the agency, he said: “The craze and quest for
gratification, bribes and other compromises by some of our investigators are
becoming too embarrassing.” A senior lawyer, Kayode Ajulo, SAN, responded
by calling for a presidential taskforce to unmask corrupt EFCC officials. Tell
me, where is the hope for tackling corruption in Nigeria when the staff of
EFCC, the anti-graft agency, are themselves corrupt?
Those of us who bang on about
corruption do so because of its corrosive political, economic and social
effects. Politically, corruption erodes democratic legitimacy. If someone
steals public funds and uses the loot to buy votes and win election, where’s
the legitimacy? Economically, corruption drains a country’s resources and
hampers its development. Socially, corruption breeds all evils. As someone
aptly put it, “corruption is the most incredible machine for manufacturing
poverty”. And, of course, it’s also a major cause of inequality, social
discontent, insecurity, name it!
Nigeria has industrial-scale corruption yet lacks
the political will and institutional capacity to tackle it frontally.
Successive governments pay lip service to the “war against corruption”. With a
powerless EFCC, Nigeria faces a spike in kleptocracy.
*Dr. Fasan is a commentator on public issues
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