The federal government has handed Ibrahim Magu over for trial by the men and women he is either investigating or prosecuting. Some of the senators drilling the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) are either being investigated or under prosecution by the EFCC for financial crimes. The senate is now the accuser, prosecutor and judge rolled into one.
No one can protect Magu from the cruel decisions of his biased prosecutors and judges.
The constitution empowers the senate to confirm the appointment of the chairman of EFCC. The president can only appoint an acting chairman pending when the senate would confirm the appointment.
Ironically the people now judging Magu are just using the constitutional privilege to take a pound of flesh from their tormentor. No one expects a fair trial under that circumstance.
Bukola Saraki, the president of the senate is standing trial before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) for false assets declaration. Last year during the trial of the embattled senate president, Magu’s EFCC paraded a star witness who presented documents suggesting that Saraki collected salary as governor of Kwara State several months after he became a senator.
The senate is decked out with at least eight sitting senators who are former state governors. Most of them are being investigated by Magu, while the assets of a number of them have been seized by EFCC.
Joshua Dariye, a former governor of Plateau State is being prosecuted by Magu’s EFCC for money laundering. Like the late Diepreye Solomon Peter Alamieyeseigha, a former governor of Bayelsa State, Dariye is wanted in Britain for jumping bail.
The senate minority leader, Godswill Obot Akpabio, the immediate past governor of Akwa Ibom State is being investigated by Magu.
There are speculations that Akpabio might have to account for N108 billion. His wife’s Five Star secondary school in Uyo is regarded by Magu’s EFCC as being built with the proceeds of crime. There were fears last month that the school has been confiscated by the anti-graft agency.
The fingers of Stella Oduah, a former minister of aviation, are still smeared with the scandalous purchase of two units of over-priced armoured BMW limousines.
The embattled senator rushed to court with request for an injunction barring Magu’s men from arresting her and re-opening the sordid scandal. The court had rejected the request in a ruling that makes the senator a sitting duck for EFCC investigators and prosecutors.
These are the pedigree of the men and women judging Magu.
If the popular saying: “Those who go to equity must go with clean hands” is to be applied in the case of the senate confirmation hearing of Ibrahim Magu, the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as presently constituted lacks the moral right to judge Magu.
Ironically the senate is a confirmation authority. Its negative verdicts lack the finality of the rulings of a court of justice.
It is only its positive verdicts that are binding. Consequently, the order by Saraki that with the senate’s rejection of Magu, he ceases to be the acting chairman of EFCC, borders on presumptuousness on the part of the senate president. President Muhammadu Buhari can torment the conscience of the indicted men in the senate by throwing Magu back on the senate 10 times for confirmation.
Magu’s case in the controversial confirmation hearing in the senate is worsened by the fact that the senate is not a law court.
Candidates seeking confirmation cannot be defended by legal practitioners. If the constitution had envisaged the predicament of Magu and allowed candidates presented for confirmation to be defended by legal practitioners, Magu’s defence team would have adopted the strategy of the senate president’s defence team at the CCT by seeking to disqualify all the senators being investigated by EFCC from sitting in the confirmation hearing. That would have disqualified a third of the senators and made it difficult for the senate to form a quorum for the confirmation hearing.
Femi Fani-Kayode’s defence team used the strategy successfully at a Federal High Court in Lagos where the former minister of aviation is standing trial for allegedly laundering N4.6 billion.
The defence team argued that the trial judge, Justice Muslim Hassan as the head of EFCC’s legal department, signed the money laundering charges slammed on Fani-Kayode some years ago.
The now embattled Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia acquitted and discharged him. Last week, Justice Hassan disqualified himself from the trial and returned the case file to the chief judge of the Federal High Court.
Architects of the 1999 constitution did not envisage a situation where a candidate presented for confirmation would be accused, prosecuted and tried by the people he is prosecuting. Magu is therefore a lonely loser. He cannot get a fair trial.
Besides the controversial letters from the Department of State Services (DSS), the senate’s grudge against Magu is alleged illegal detention and seizure of property of suspected public treasury looters. That sounds more like a desperate bid for self protection.
From all indications, Ibrahim Magu is not a saint. However, his crimes pale into insignificance when measured against the looting spree of the men and women now judging the prosecutor.
Besides the controversial letters from the Department of State Services (DSS), the senate’s grudge against Magu is alleged illegal detention and seizure of property of suspected public treasury looters
