EFCC: Fighting corruption or freeing the corrupt?

He said, “48 years after independence, just barely two years to 50 years of our attainment of independence … we are still discussing on how to provide water, electricity, building roads, building hospitals … Our 48 years of independence appear to me as wasted years.” In agreement I reflected about this sad verdict and subconsciously […]

He said, “48 years after independence, just barely two years to 50 years of our attainment of independence … we are still discussing on how to provide water, electricity, building roads, building hospitals … Our 48 years of independence appear to me as wasted years.”

In agreement I reflected about this sad verdict and subconsciously in sober mood thought deeply about Ribadu, EFCC and the war against corruption. Retrospectively, I sorrowfully remember the epidemic crooked structures the establishment of EFCC were meant to dismantle and how Nigerian corrupt politicians and some contractors have craftily averted justice to dishonestly live in mansions with enough millions in foreign accounts and enough food to feed their reptiles, dogs and cats while we ordinary Nigerians in the midst of plenty die in abject poverty, I shed profusely hot tears in regret. In my lonely curled lip, I painfully remember how wickedly our past leaders have corruptly planned for the future comfort of their children, then I rhetorically asked: How about us?

Because we, the Nigerian masses, have been unjustly left without electricity, without roads, without water, without hospitals, without schools, without any structure and invariably without future in the 21 first century; where is the conscience of Nigerian politicians? Despondently, they do not care about us. What did my generation do wrong?

It was on this undesirable note that I reluctantly, like a man who wants to commit suicide with his hands trembling, to pick the hanging rope, that I picked my pen to write down in protest, in sorrow and tears that my generation is not a wasted generation, but rather the rulingclass has failed us at all times beyond imagination. It was on this deplorable sorry state of Nigerian roads, the failure to have steady power supply, the collapse of Nigeria Airways without anybody prosecuted, the declaration by EFCC, Nigerian courts and judges that the former Governor of Delta state James Ibori was not a fraudster, a fugitive and ex-convict and the epidemic corrupt practices in all the parastatals recognised and institutionalised that I concluded that Nigeria is in trouble and that EFCC is stinkingly dishonest and regrettably a failure.

Thanks to General Olusegun Obasanjo’s foresight that established EFCC. Even though I am not his fan because of heavy corrupt practices that were said to have taken place under his administration but I am a patriotic honest critic. I am also not OBJ’s fan because he was said to have had only N20, 000 in his account when he found spiritual favour on the side of God who miraculously took him out from prison and rescued him from the hanging rope of the maximum ruler, the late Sani Abacha and made him president in his close to bankruptcy status.

But unbelievably, as soon as he was catapulted into this exalted position as a president, he forgot his loneliness and promises to God in his prison days and turned to a lion to defenceless Nigerian masses with a third term agenda that heated the polity close to an earthquake. However, we must equally recognise his good sides, and to be honest and fair to OBJ, the establishment of EFCC was one of those sides and credit must be given to him.

This idea is one initiative every progressive minded individual in Nigeria has never stopped to applaud for. EFCC is a body designated as the name suggests with the responsibilities of combing crimes in Nigeria. But has this agency lived up to the expectations of Nigerians? The answer is emphatically a big no. Rather, it was compromising and selective in approach that it turned out to be a body that is nothing but a toothless willing tool in the hands of the authorities that are in power against the principal aims.

If the accusations of social commentators should be considered, EFCC should mean “Example Free Cooperative Corrupters” which should be more befitting in view of its antecedents from inception till now. Social analysts believe that as long as one is in good books of Aso Rock one can steal but must be cooperative and obey the gambit of the whistle blower, then no shaking that one’s place in Aso Rock is assured when EFCC or election time comes. It was the accusation against the initiator of this good idea Olusegun Obasanjo by critics that he used the body to fight his political enemies to submission. Once more, we should be grateful to Obasanjo irrespective of EFCC’s selective prosecutions at least under him big fishes were caught no matter whether they were his friends or his political enemies, ‘tief na tief’.

Mallam Nihu Ribadu the first EFCC chairman was a TV show man who looked for accolades before Nigerians with the cunning unprofessional method of parading his suspects as criminals even before gathering evidences against them just to draw attention to himself. And unknowingly to Nigerians he was doing this for his political popularity in preparation to the last presidential election which he contested and lost.

On this note I am of the opinion that Malam Ribadu should be made to produce the evidences against the governors he had claimed during the election period in 2007 to be corrupt to the current chairman of EFCC for further actions because governance is all about continuity. If he is unable to do this he himself should be prosecuted for lying to Nigerians and abusing his office for personal political advantage like the way OBJ used presidential influence to build a personal library. Nigeria is the only country in the world where a high profiled corrupt public officer who stole millions of public funds entrusted in his hands was caught but instead of jailing him the government under EFCC and Ribadu went into negotiations with him and agreed on what he could return back and what he could keep in the guise of bargain plea, and in return he was shielded from going to prison.

This is exactly a scenario that we would not like to see again. But contrarily an ordinary Nigerian caught stealing a goat gets numerous years in prison or his/her hands cut off or both as a punishment in the name of Sharia laws. Meanwhile the real pen criminals and political killers, the Nigerian corrupt politicians are honoured by various governments and decorated by traditional king makers with unmerited big chieftaincy titles like “The lion that guides the town.” Of course they are lions. Yes, real lions indeed!

Uzoma Ahamefule, a Nigerian, writes from Vienna, [email protected]