CRYING WOLF OVER CORRUPTION ALLEGATIONS

Politicians should realise that a clear conscience fears no accusations, WRITES BOLAJI ADEBIYI

It was the turn of former power brokers to weep earlier this week. They claimed that the new power holders were targeting them for daring to challenge their authority and trying to unseat them from the pot of delicious soup. What happened?

On Tuesday, the lead anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, invited Aminu Tambuwal, a two-term governor of Sokoto State and speaker of the House of Representatives, to discuss the suspicious withdrawal of a pricy N189 billion from the state’s treasury during his time in office at the seat of the Caliphate. He spent a night there resolving issues with the agency’s investigators.

While the former governor, now a senator, was clearing himself at the agency’s headquarters in Abuja, his friends in the newly formed coalition of opposition elements, the African Democratic Congress, raised the alarm that the ruling All Progressives Congress was using the anti-graft body to hunt down leading opposition top-shots. They alleged that many others had been requested to visit the commission’s office to answer queries about their tour of duty.

However, the EFCC responded that the opposition’s claim of harassment was false, contending that the anti-graft fight was across political divides. It stated that dozens of governors were under scrutiny for sundry malfeasance.

Based on the sequence of events, it is tempting to sympathise with the troubled politicians. As the opposition coalition has asked, why is the EFCC suddenly stepping up to its duties at the moment the suspects decided to join the alliance? Besides the fact that time does not limit the investigation and prosecution of crime, this route has been taken many times: corruption suspect politicians claiming victimisation and the anti-graft agency denying political motivation.  

Except opposition elements are engaging in propaganda politics, they should realise that these supposedly targeted invitations and investigations do not signal any significant adversarial consequence, as they have been mainly noise rather than substance. The EFCC’s reputation for hot air is well-known from its inception.

Instituted by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration in 2001 to curb the growing menace of graft, the commission’s unusual methods and recourse to trial by the media quickly learnt it to the accusation of being a tool for the repression of dissent. Somehow, its abysmal record in terms of conviction of politically exposed persons relative to the mammoth publicity accorded alleged evidence of corruption tended to justify the claim that it was essentially a lousy agency.

For example, during Obasanjo’s era, there was much fuss about widespread corruption among governors, more than a dozen of whom the then anti-graft chief claimed would face prosecution once they lost their immunity after leaving office. What actually happened when many of them left office in 2007? Not much, apart from a few convictions—perhaps two or three at most. In fact, two of them even became president. They had been falsely accused and unfairly maligned without any evidence to back the charges, let alone secure a conviction.  

So, nowadays opposition elements should take comfort in the commission’s unenviable history, knowing that nothing will happen in the end, as long as they are innocent. They should not doubt this, given the experience of Ayo Fayose, two-term governor of Ekiti State.

Harassed out of the office by the EFCC under Obasanjo’s imperial rule in 2003, stormy petrel Fayose regained his position in 2014 with an unprecedented, overwhelming victory in a standalone governorship election conducted by his Peoples Democratic Party. By 2015, his party was defeated in the general election that brought Muhammadu Buhari’s APC presidency, pushing him into the opposition fold. He immediately came under intense hostility from the anti-graft body, which alleged massive corruption against him, threatening to arrest him after his tenure. 

He did not wait to be arrested when he left office in 2022. Like Daniel in the Holy Bible, Fayose stepped into the lion’s den, reporting at the Abuja EFCC headquarters amidst media fanfare. Questioned for about three days, he was granted administrative bail and charged in court a few months later. The commission that made so much fuss about mountains of evidence could not sustain its allegations in court for three years of criminal trial. Last month, the court asked Fayose to go home for want of evidence.

The point is that opposition politicians should spare the public their fuss; after all, a clear conscience fears no accusation. Anyone accused of a misdemeanour should confidently approach the commission to answer its queries and prepare for the impending legal battle. That was what President Bola Tinubu and Bukola Saraki, a former Senate president, did in 2011 and 2015, respectively.

Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria had become a thorn in the side of President Goodluck Jonathan’s nascent government, organising a nationwide protest against the petrol subsidy removal that lasted seven days in January 2011. Coincidentally, the Code of Conduct Bureau, in March, queried his asset declaration, four years after he had left office. Six months later, he was in the dock at the Code of Conduct Tribunal answering to a three-count charge of operating 10 foreign accounts while in office between 1999 and 2007.

Rather than whine about an obvious political victimisation, he assembled a team of 10 silks, led by Wole Olanipekun, to prove his innocence. Unlike many other politically exposed accused politicians who engage in legal gymnastics to delay trial, Tinubu was eager to contest the charge and confront the attempt to humiliate him. Once, while his defence team was arguing against his being docked, an effort to shame him, the former governor calmly walked into the dock and took his seat.

The prosecution collapsed within two months as Danladi Umar, the head of the three-man tribunal, dismissed the charge as defective and shoddy. The legal defeat was so complete that the federal government chose not to pursue an appeal.

It was Saraki’s turn four years later. He had seized the Senate presidency despite opposition from President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling APC leadership. Everything was thrown at him. Four months after he forcibly took office, he found himself in the Code of Conduct Tribunal, accused of false declaration of assets. A 13-count, later 16-count, charge was brought against him.

Like Tinubu, incidentally, he was one of his critics; Saraki did not waste time complaining about political harassment. He assembled a formidable legal team to confront his persecutors. Joseph Daudu, a senior advocate of Nigeria, led the initial legal team that challenged a preliminary objection at the Supreme Court. When the apex court returned the matter to the tribunal, Kanu Agabi, another reputable senior advocate of Nigeria, took over the defence. In the end, Danladi Umar, the same judge who dismissed the case against Tinubu, discarded the 16-count charge.

What is needed is for politicians and public officers to behave with decorum while in office, ensuring they serve without blemish. This way, they can leave office with a clear conscience and fear no accusations out of office.

Adebiyi is the media assistant to the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Abubakar Bagudu.