Is there dirt behind the silk?

The Head of the Presidential Anti-Corruption Committee and Professor of law, Itse Sagay, cannot be accused of hiding his feelings. Last week, he called for disciplinary action against Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) and other senior lawyers found to be encouraging corrupt politicians and looters of the nation’s treasury. In his own words: “There are […]

The Head of the Presidential Anti-Corruption Committee and Professor of law, Itse Sagay, cannot be accused of hiding his feelings. Last week, he called for disciplinary action against Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) and other senior lawyers found to be encouraging corrupt politicians and looters of the nation’s treasury. In his own words: “There are some senior lawyers who have totally departed from anything that the calling of the law profession requires. They have thrown in their lot with the looters and have become, I won’t call them fellow looters, but definitely, they have started enjoying and sharing in the proceeds of crimes of these looters and because of that they are absolutely now against the anti-corruption law.” He called for an end to the impunity these lawyers have enjoyed and advocated for their exclusion from the profession. I completely agree with the learned professor.
This issue of senior lawyers and corruption is back on the national agenda following the comments of the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, last Wednesday to the Nigerian Bar Association, to join hands with the Commission to stamp out corruption in the country. He told the lawyers that: “Society is not served when prominent members of the bar not only take clearly tainted briefs, but even facilitate the commission of crimes by knowingly supplying the technical know-how and later, helping in the dispersal of the proceeds of crime.” He added that: “there were lawyers within the fold of the NBA who ought not to be among your noble ranks.” He concluded on the colourful note that I did not know could be said of silks: “they are vandals of the temple of justice.”
The same week, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission reopened investigation into the infamous Halliburton bribery case, which saw a foreign consortium of companies bribing Nigerian officials with over $180 million to win contracts to build the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas plant. A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Damian Dodo, was interrogated for eight hours by the EFCC on the issue. Of course the Halliburton scam was not prosecuted by previous administration because there is evidence from prosecutions done in other countries that three previous Nigerian Heads of State took their share of the $180 million Halliburton money. Foreign lawyers that facilitated the bribes have been jailed in their countries but no one in Nigeria has had to worry before the current moves by the EFCC. According to reports in the media, Mr. Dodo was questioned for his role in an alleged receipt of $26 million from Halliburton, along with a former minister and five other Senior Advocates of Nigeria. It will be recalled that in the US, Halliburton and its former subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), entered a guilty plea and agreed to pay $579 million fine for their crime of bribing Nigerian officials.
Also last week, a Federal High Court in Lagos refused to grant an application stopping the arraignment of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Chief Rickey Tarfa by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). He had been charged with unlawful obstruction of investigation and perversion of the course of justice before Justice Aishat Opesanwo of the Lagos State High Court. Mr. Tarfa benefitted from peer group support as 34 SAN colleagues turned up to argue that the learned silk cannot be charged in a court of law, as if silks are above the law. The senior lawyers even demanded that evidence that had been collected from Tarfa including his phone and vehicle should be returned immediately but the judge was not initiated. Mr.Tarfa has filed a N2.5 billion suit against the EFCC for daring to arrest him.
Of course we do not know whether these lawyers are guilty as charged and the law must be allowed to take its course. There are also many senior lawyers who do not accept briefs that are tainted with corruption so it should not be assumed that all of them are bad. What is exciting however is that for the first time, prosecutorial authorities are standing up to senior lawyers and treating them as citizens not demi gods. As we know, when citizens are suspected of criminal behaviour, they are investigated and if there is evidence of their involvement they are charged to court. As I have argued previously in this column, if we do not develop the resolve to charge corrupt senior lawyers to court, those who engage in mega corruption would continue to use their “technical know-how”, to quote Magu again, to escape punishment.
Nigerians look forward to a future in which public resources would be used for the public good. It was precisely for this reason that Nigerians rallied round to support President Buhari and get him to power largely on account of his anti-corruption credentials. In 1984-1985, the Buhari regime locked up the entire political class in jail for their corrupt past. They suffered for some time but eventually, his regime was overthrown and the jailbirds came back to power and expanded their corrupt acts with renewed vigour. The problem with Buhari’s first regime was that the approach to fighting corruption was ad hoc, using military tribunals rather than the normal instruments of the administration of justice. This time round, the institutions of justice are sitting up to advance the key principle of the rule of law – which even those who wear silk cannot be above the law.
One thing that has been scientifically proved about corruption is that when the system is able to punish those involved in corrupt practices the quantum decreases steadily. When there is immunity for engaging in corrupt practices however the quantum and scale of corrupt acts grows astronomically. Following the successes of Nuhu Ribadu in the EFCC and the way he was bundled out of the institution for doing his work well, confidence returned fully to the practitioners of grand corruption in Nigeria. Nigeria became the only country in the civilised world where corrupt persons could get court injunctions stopping the prosecutorial agencies and the courts from investigating and prosecuting their corrupt acts. The tide is changing. The wheels of justice are turning and our only prayer is that all those guilty of corruption must be prosecuted and go to jail if found to be guilty.