EFCC: How not to fight corruption

My argument then was that the ‘quango’ was not doing anything its moribund predecessors did not do.  Obasanjo’s Jaji Declaration during his First Coming, Shagari’s Ethical Revolution, Babangida’s MAMSER, Abacha’s Failed Bank Tribunals and Buhari’s ‘War Against Indiscipline and Corruption’ all did the same ‘garagara’ in their days before they closed shop. No, it was […]

My argument then was that the ‘quango’ was not doing anything its moribund predecessors did not do.  Obasanjo’s Jaji Declaration during his First Coming, Shagari’s Ethical Revolution, Babangida’s MAMSER, Abacha’s Failed Bank Tribunals and Buhari’s ‘War Against Indiscipline and Corruption’ all did the same ‘garagara’ in their days before they closed shop. No, it was not just a simple matter of non-sustainability of policies. Even before the curtain was drawn on those contrivances they were showing considerable fatigue from fighting the symptom of a more fundamental social malaise.
The truth is that the EFCC – just like its predecessors- fundamentally but erroneously treats corruption as a moral lapse rather than an inherently systemic problem that is exacerbated in climes where the nation-building process has manifestly failed – as in Somalia – or engulfed in deep crisis – as in Nigeria and several other African countries. EFCC’s problem is worsened by a conflation of the supposed fight against corruption with political vendetta.
Given my long-held pessimistic view of EFCC’s prospects, it is understandable that I should come back to this topic when I read the Punch of 16 October 2013, which had the instructive headline: ‘EFCC broke, can’t pay lawyers’. I had captioned my 2009 piece, which I mentioned earlier, as ‘War on Corruption: Why the EFCC will Fail’.
The truth is that the EFCC failed a long time ago. Failure here is relative. In my opinion, the best way (methodologically speaking) to assess any organization set up to fight any societal malaise, is to use the ‘before’ and ‘after’ benchmark – that is to pose the question:  what was the situation before such an organization was set up, and what happened after it was set up? Procedural issues like how much money it succeeded in confiscating from people or how it has forced public figures to find other avenues of concealing their loot are really mere details. In any football match, no matter how technical a team is or how entertaining its football is, what really counts is the score-line.
There is of course a sense in which the EFCC may be said not to have failed completely, especially under Nuhu Ribadu, its pioneer chairman. This was in the domain of ‘naming and shaming’ through media trial. Ribadu prosecuted, tried and convicted many suspects even before it had begun the process of evidence gathering. The logic appeared to be simple:  since the Nigerian justice system is not blind – as it should be – but moves with the speed of a snail as it sniffs for lucre with a torchlight that assesses an accused’s social standing and proximity to critical political power centres, such a system could be bypassed and judgment taken directly to the court of public opinion. Media trial suits Nigerians’ morbid glorification of instant justice. True, some on the wrong side of the critical power wielders do get hassled by EFCC to help whip them into the line of the man calling the shots. For many Nigerians the art of publicly humiliating the high and mighty levels such people to the ground where they started, while shaming the justice system for allowing itself to be both commoditized and politicized.
My feeling is that EFCC has been retained by subsequent regimes since it was set up by Obasanjo because it satisfies the demands of international donor agencies and investors for the government to be seen as fighting corruption – in a ‘garagara’, Nigerian style. So the EFCC’s ‘garagara’, especially when it succeeds in arresting  and making a scapegoat of a high ranking public official that has fallen out of favour before a  presidential visit to the US or Europe, can  be regarded as a qualified success if such makes the President earn some praises from his hosts. In this sense, it is just a monkey game.
But EFCC’s symbolic successes must be distinguished from the substantial success expected of it. This substantial success can be framed in just one question: has corruption become less in the country since the EFCC was established? Anecdotal evidence, and the country’s rankings on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, will suggest that it has not. On the contrary my feeling is that the malaise has grown worse and we should become emboldened to ask the EFCC tough questions. In fact the report that the EFCC is now broke and cannot pay its lawyers should raise two further questions: How much is really spent on running the EFCC annually? Is the country getting value for money from that?
A major reason why the EFCC has failed is that it is using exactly the same strategies employed by its predecessors – treating corruption as a moral lapse rather than more of a systemic problem. Fighting corruption cannot work when the issue of the crisis in the country’s nation-building is unresolved. It cannot work when the justice system is rotten. And it cannot work when the agency has to keep an eye on how ethnic watchers will react to some of its prosecutions.  Resolving the crisis in the country’s nation-building and the ancillary issues that interface with it is clearly outside the mandate of the EFCC. This is why I believe any other contrivance in its image will also fail – unless the precedent questions are first answered.
 The  government is still regarded as ‘no man’s land – akin to the way working in the colonial enclave was regarded as ‘white man’s work’ – something, just from its name alone, tells volume of how alienating people regarded it. Developing any emotive attachment to such work was regarded as stupidity, not smartness. What was regarded as being really clever was the ability to outsmart that system – whether through foot-dragging, moonlighting or corruption and nepotism. For many Nigerians, the government conjures the image of ‘the white man’s work’. We cannot address this problem without getting back to the crisis in our nation-building project.
The EFCC compounds its problems by spreading itself too thin. The agency wants “to curb the menace of the corruption that constitutes the cog in the wheel of progress; protect national and foreign investments in the country; imbue the spirit of hard work in the citizenry and discourage ill-gotten wealth; identify illegally acquired wealth and confiscate it; build an upright workforce in both public and private sectors of the economy and; contribute to the global war against financial crimes.” Today the EFCC is also a debt collector. If the EFCC were to show the sort of prudence it preaches, I would have expected the agency to engage lawyers only on ‘no win, no fee’ basis.
I have long canvassed for a conditional amnesty for all that are standing trial for corruption. And why not? Several countries including Russia have tried that option. Besides if we can grant amnesty or plead for amnesty to be granted to brigands with blood in their hands, why not do the same to those who are standing trial for corruption? Their loot can help to reflate the economy rather than their hiding these away in foreign banks or using such to buy real estates in exotic places. Besides, with the conflation of corruption with vendetta, no one knows where the fight against corruption stops and where vendetta starts. Additionally, as Nigerians talk of a National Conference to discuss whether the ‘federating units’ still want to continue to live together, everyone deserves a new beginning.
Assuming that Nigerians decide that they want to continue living together, amnesty should be used as a therapy to heal wounds and to start afresh. All over the world amnesty programmes have been used to deal with problems that appear intractable. In 2004 for instance, George W Bush enacted a tax amnesty programme, which allowed US corporations to bring home, tax-free, the billions of dollars they stashed away in tax havens. The US also routinely offers amnesty to illegal immigrants who met certain conditions. Similarly, the Italian government in October 2009 launched a tax-amnesty plan, which allowed Italians to repatriate funds deposited in tax havens. In 2006, the government of Colombia granted amnesty to some 21,000 paramilitaries linked to drug cartels. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission offered amnesty to people who confessed and apologised for crimes committed under apartheid. Just before he became gravely ill and subsequently died, Yaradua also offered amnesty to militants of the Niger Delta in exchange for their laying down their guns. These instances suggest that there is a history of granting amnesty to people who have broken the law, including people who have committed murders, in exchange for everlasting peace or to ensure a new beginning.
Once the crisis in the country’s nation-building is resolved – which I see as the fundamental problem facing the country – fighting other challenges, including corruption, will become much easier. And with some luck, a Nigerian version of Mandela or Nyerere will emerge to unite a fractious nation and lead the charge.