By Gerry Uwah
Nigeria’s war on corruption is faltering. Corruption has staged a devastating and demoralising counteroff ensive against prosecutors of the war. In the last two years since the war started, not one high net worth politician or civil servant has been convicted and sent to jail for the mindless treasury looting that has rendered Nigeria a beggar nation. Th e federal government’s war on corruption is a one-handed campaign. Only a handful of men in the executive arm of government are putting up a hard fi ght. On the other hand, corruption has the full fury and might of the country’s legislature and judiciary behind it.
Th e legislature is working on a law that would eventually give legal teeth to treasury looting. Th e judiciary has made the process of proving the guilt of bare-faced treasury looters more diffi cult than pushing a camel through the eye of a needle. Th e way the judiciary is structured, even if the men in Brazil who prosecuted their former president and one-time fi nance minister and secured their conviction and jail terms were hired to prosecute Nigeria’s treasury looters, they would fail on technical grounds. Th ree months ago, Bala Ngilari, former governor of Adamawa State, was sentenced to fi ve years imprisonment for off ences bordering on treasury looting. Last week, the Court of Appeal in Yola acquitted and discharged him. Justice Ambrose Mamadi had jailed Ngilari for failing to follow the due process in the award of contract for the purchase of 25 Toyota Corolla cars at a unit cost of N6.56 million at a time when the showroom price of the car hovered around N4 million. Some days after his conviction and imprisonment, Ngilari walked out of prison a free man, courtesy of a fake medical report concocted by prison offi cials in collaboration with court offi cials. Now the appellate court has fi nally unfettered him. Th e Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) freed Bukola Saraki on technical grounds despite the mountain of evidence presented by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). In its judgment, the tribunal did not say that Saraki did not collect salaries as governor of Kwara State for one year after he was elected senator, as EFCC evidence suggested. Saraki was freed because EFCC operatives did not take his statement during investigation. Th e tribunal also argued that the prosecution failed to call the auditor-general of Kwara State to testify that Saraki was collecting salaries in two places. Everyone knows that the governor of Kwara State is Saraki’s appointee. His auditor-general would apparently have been a bad witness in EFCC’s case. Th e evidence required by the tribunal to prove the case against the senate president is practically impossible. Th at is what makes Saraki a righteous man. Th e Economic Amnesty Bill now in the House of Representatives seeks total amnesty for treasury looters who confess their sins and return 70 per cent of what they stole. Under the bill to legitimize corruption, the treasury looter would invest 30 per cent of his loot in a venture that would create jobs. Th e scene is therefore set for bare-faced looting of Nigeria’s treasury. Anyone with access to public funds can now steal N10 billion, confess and return N7 billion to government, use the remaining N3 billion to open his business and in the name of creating jobs, enslave the people he stole from. Th is time the treasury looter does not need to spend a dime settling lawyers, investigators, prosecutors and judges. He does not even risk prosecution for impoverishing his people. Nigeria is a strange country. Th at is why we are light years behind in infrastructure development. Th e Brazilians and South Koreans have set the pace in the fi ght against corruption. Nigeria must copy from them or remain in the dark. Dilma Rousseff , Brazil’s fi rst female president was impeached for corruption during her second term. She now risks prison term after prosecution. Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s onetime popular president, is serving a 10-year jail term for corruption during a tenure that was marked by strident developments in infrastructure. Michel Temer, the incumbent president who succeeded Rousseff has already been indicted by the Supreme Court for bribery.
Th e prosecutors are just waiting either for his impeachment or end of tenure. Antonio Polocci, Brazil’s one-time fi nance minister is serving a 12-year jail term for diverting government money to fund his party. Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s fi rst female president was impeached in March not for treasury looting. Her crime was that of forcing the country’s multinational fi rms to donate millions of dollars to an NGO she had interest in. She would refund the illegal funds, stand trial and almost certainly serve a jail term. Th at is how decent societies tackle criminals in high places. It is easy to prove a case against their treasury looters. In Nigeria, treasury looters and some senior advocates who live on the proceeds of that crime are celebrating the faltering war against graft because the process of proving looters’ guilt is extremely diffi cult. Something must happen to reverse the trend. With Nigeria’s population growing at twice the economic growth rate, very soon the 110 million people kept below poverty line by treasury looters would make the country unsafe for everyone.
