I had
maintained a studied indifference thus far, on the present fate of the Acting
Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu. This
had been my stance on his five-year tenure. I had hardly commented on the
activities of the EFCC under Magu. There is no meat for me in running regular
frets on what Magu did or did not do as the boss of EFCC, as many Nigerians do.
For me, fighting corruption is not show business and no EFCC chairman can
fight corruption on the erratic wavelength of Nigerians and their discordant
impressions.
No anti-corruption fighter can satisfy everybody. With the
expansive reach of corruption, it is a futile business expecting all Nigerians
to be on the same page, supporting any anti-corruption fight, no matter how
thorough. Those who are caught in the anti-corruption fight-and they are legion
in Nigeria- will never ever concede that an anti-corruption fighter is doing
well. They will look for stones to throw at him. This is understandable because
corruption must fight back. This dilemma makes the anti-corruption fight a
tricky affair. No matter how thorough you fight corruption, there will never be
a convergence of opinion that you have done well. In fact, the more thorough
and more dedicated an anti-corruption fighter is, the more the enemies he
makes, from the culprits he catches and their subalterns who live on the favour
or expectation of such from the corrupt culprits of the anti-graft fight.
So, for me, the attitude a focused anti-corruption fighter
should maintain is explaining where doubts have been created, use legal means to
deal with those that defame for no just reason, and move on doing what you are
doing. I agree that no anti-corruption fighter has experienced the kind of
scrutiny that Magu is receiving presently. The knowledge that he is not free
from inquest will hone any anti-corruption fighter to be clean in doing a
cleansing job. I don’t support those that feel that Magu should not have been
subjected to the kind of probe he is presently undergoing. The issue is to
ensure he receives a fair hearing and I believe that is what President Buhari had
in mind when he recalled a Justice Salami who out rightly rejected a National
Judicial Council offer to head a panel for the cleansing of the judiciary, to
head the panel that is probing Magu.
I equally know that one who is fighting an anti-corruption war
grows a cult of fanatics who are always inspired by the desire to fumigate the
system of endemic rot. They always do not have personal attachments for their
actions-unlike those that haul stones at an anti-corruption fighter. They are
always driven by patriotic desire to salvage the system from the deep claws of
corruption and offer priceless support to the anti-corruption czar. The danger
in their support is that if not well managed, it may degenerate to a cult
attachment to their idol to the extent that they believe he is above question
and everything he does is right.
But then, there are some, like me, who take no sides. This group
are equally driven by the desire to see the system work but additionally
desires a situation where emotions and unnecessary feelings are not mobilized
to any side so as not to make the anti-corruption fighter cave in to pressure
to compromise the fight. To us, the end determines the success or otherwise of
an anti-corruption fight. For us, the belief is that fight against
corruption should be stripped of tendencies that may make the anti-corruption fighter
derail under the impression of infallibility and immunity. So that was my
attitude on Magu’s tenure ship of EFCC. This is why this is the first opinion I
would be holding n Magu in his five-year tenure at the anti-graft body.
It is germane to understand that Magu fires several watts of
emotion on both his friends and foes. It is also apparent that the EFCC
chairmanship is laden with so many booby-traps and banana peels. Depending on
which side of the aisle one is, taking sides on what and how an EFCC chairman
does is an irresistible attraction to many Nigerians. It is either one is
defending the perpetrators or beneficiaries of corruption who have formed a
permanent assault ring on any EFCC chairman (not only Magi) that frontally
confronts corruption or standing fanatically with any EFCC chairman that
confronts the decibel. It is understandable that the fate of Magu has set off
divergent fireworks in attack or defence of him. Almost all these fireworks are
interest-driven and stem from where one stands on the anti-corruption scale. It
is difficult to preen off self-interests from these many interventions. It is
either one is defending the corrupt victims of Magu’s actions or one is fired
by the zeal to protect a patriotic anti-corruption fighter from lynching by his
corrupt victims. To us that stand in the middle of this firework, the reasoning
is that we all should ceasefire until the panel probing him presently finishes
its task.
If Magu is cleared and vindicated of the charges against him, he
and his supporters will score strongly and further entrench the onslaught
against corruption. If he is indicted of the charges against him, he wouldn’t
be vindicating his traducers and enemies but would have shown his human
weaknesses which is the same trait that has brought down all his predecessors.
This is perhaps the single greatest tragedy of the EFCC chairmanship. It is a
very difficult job that requires someone way above board to do. It comes with
temptations that are very difficult for human beings to resist.
But Magu’s problem is exacerbated by the man he works for;
President Muhamadu Buhari. Seen largely by Nigerians as a man that operates at
far higher than the average integrity level of Nigerians, Buhari has come to
personify the hard-to-find integrity that has been massively lacking in
Nigerian public service. Working with him comes with a huge expectation to tow
his line. For one to work with Buhari, he is expected to be above board, like
Caesar’s wife for when one runs into trouble, he is on his own, as the popular
lingo goes. This introduces its own excruciating pressure on those working
with him to shred their human frailties and assume his extraordinary moral
height. That is why Magu is not quietly eased off as EFCC chairman like those
before him who committed more heinous infractions and who compromised and
weakened the war against graft.
So, if Magu is indicted of corruption charges, he is just being
another Nigerian on such job. The problem is he is working for a regime that
values honesty and integrity for if Magu had worked for any other regime, he
would have been seen as a tremendous success given what he achieved as EFCC
boss. He would have been simply eased off to walk away with his misdemeanors
and continue his life. Arguably, he is the most successful and longest-serving
EFCC boss to date and that should purchase him exculpation should he be found
with dents, as the charges against him allege were he to work with those
regimes before Buhari. But not so with Buhari who desires to see his
employees as he is so Magu is being dragged to the jury like a common felon
where he would have been decked with confetti. That is the cost of working with
Buhari.
I believe that President Buhari is minded by fairness in
peopling the panel that is investigating Magu. In appointing Justice Ayo
Salami, a retired jurist with redoubtable credentials and integrity in the
moth-ridden Nigerian judiciary to head the panel, Buhari wants to serve justice
irrespective of the emotions deployed by both the pro-Magu and anti-Magu sides.
Justice Salami is one judge that has shown that he can never be manipulated.
That he even agreed to head the panel shows that whatever the outcome will be,
there would be measurable credibility encasing it. For both sides, this then
offers tremendous opportunity to prove their positions without fear that
anybody will influence or manipulate the outcome for whatever reason.
As I said, whatever the outcome of the panel’s findings will
either free or indict Magu. If it indicts Magu, it would be a sad proof that no
EFCC chairman has survived the booby-traps that come with the chairmanship of
the commission. If, on the other hand, it frees Magus of these charges, it
would prove that he had built durable credibility that had waged through the
entrenched plots of the corrupt to deliver a damn good fight against
corruption. But it bears repeating here that if in the event the panel indicts
Magu, it doesn’t necessarily vindicate the cult of anti-Magu coyotes who are
victims of his anti-corruption fight because they will always have issues with
any fight that frees them of the stolen heist they desperately seek to protect
by attacking every EFCC chairman. Fact is that they will still deploy the same
tactics against Magu’s successor if he eventually goes and if such in-coming
EFCC boss fights them.
But the entire case has one big winner; the Buhari regime’s
anti-corruption policy. Whether the panel frees or indicts Magu, one big
beneficiary is the anti-corruption policy that does nothing to protect the
hunter. It shows that we have a policy that does not protect anybody; a system
that will not wink if Magu tastes the same diet he is dishing to others. If the
anti-corruption boss could be made to face inquisition arising from his fight
against corruption, the regime has proved that there are no sacred cows and
indeed that justice is blind when the issue is about ridding Nigeria of that
single greatest atrophy that has hobbled its growth as a country.
Peter Claver Oparah.
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com
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