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MAGU’S TRAVAILS AND THE ANTI-CORRUPTION FIGHT

Suspended EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu, says he deserves better (Punch)

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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