THE EFCC AND THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION

Miffed by the historic exertions of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission

(EFCC), and terrified that their fraudulently preened feathers may be ruffled by the commission once they leave office, about 19 state governors had dispatched their attorneys general to challenge the laws establishing the commission at the supreme court. Given the travails of the immediate past governor of the state and the unalloyed support accorded him by his picked successor who is the incumbent governor, it is no surprise that it is Kogi State that is is leading the comical charge for what is in essence a battle for the country’s soul.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was always going to offer Nigeria a pill or a poison. It was going to be either of them, never both, and never at the same time. When Olusegun Obasanjo as president from 1999, floated the commission through the National Assembly, two things were clear: that corruption was already a massive problem to the country, and that the war against the vice would be long and brutal.

At inception, Obasanjo recruited Nuhu Ribadu as the pioneer chairman of the commission and thrust him into the anti-corruption crucible where he was up against some of Nigeria’s smoothest and most ruthless operators. So many cages were rattled in those days as many of Nigeria’s exotic but corrupt birds were deplumed.

In her book Fighting corruption is dangerous, globally renowned Nigerian economist and current President of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala, writes about the risky and dangerous job of fighting corruption in “a society where a small elite is spreading corruption….”

The small elite described in Okonjo- Iweala’s epic evisceration of corruption in Nigeria would include many governors, ex-governors and those who through them are feeding fat on Nigeria’s resources.

Shorn of all its lumbering legalese, their argument at the supreme court is that the laws establishing the EFCC  being unconstitutional could not have validly founded the commission. In other words, they want Nigeria’s highest court to disband the country’s most recognizable and most effective corruption fighter.  Three states of  Anambra, Ebonyi and Adamawa having realized their stupidity have pulled out of the suit, while the attorney general of Benue State, Fidelis Mynin,  has fetched himself suspension from office for joining the circus  without informing his principal.

It Is simply inconceivable that the supreme court would strike down the laws establishing the commission thereby defanging the commission that has been at the forefront of fighting the cancer of corruption in Nigeria since the country returned to democracy.

The attorneys general, stooges of their principals, who remain in the suit are not interested in the fight against corruption, and it is because corruption benefits them who form the core of Okonjo-Iweala’s aptly described “small elite who spread corruption.”

They do not mind what laws may burn and which Nigerians are buried, as long as they enjoy unfettered access to the resources of their states without the EFCC breathing down their necks.

It is not to imply that the commission is without its own frightening skeletons. Allegations that the commission is easily distracted and drawn into political dirty jobs are not without basis in a country where institutions of government suffer executive indiscretion.

But the necessity of the evil that EFCC is and does is balanced out by the fact that corruption has reigned so freely in Nigeria  for so long that there is hardly anyone in the political establishment who has not been touched. This makes the EFCC always armed with a scent to pursue, even if its motives for launching into those pursuits are far from pure.

In seeking to strip the EFCC of its powers, some governors must believe they can effectively set up bodies within their states to fight corruption. The question then is whether these bodies, as partisan as they are expected to be from the onset will have the independence to investigate the governors and their cronies who are often the biggest spreaders of corruption in their states. The answer is surely negative.

The state governors who are desperate to remove every last impediment to looting their states dry, must understand that Nigerians, long crushed by the caprices of corruption, know  their signature moves too well to be deceived by what is an exercise in mass hubris and hysteria. They who stump their states with strategic lawlessness cannot now be pretending to be so concerned about legality.

It is a symptom of Nigeria’s demise and the roles some do-nothing state governors have played in it that those who steal public funds would rush to the supreme court and water public funds in a bid to annihilate a commission established to prevent the plunder of public funds. All Nigerians and not just those from the remaining16 states must be scandalized.

Nigerians are alarmed that rather than focus on governance, the governors are desperate to kill off the ticks who are the last source of discomfort for the cows desperate to eat all the grass available in Nigeria.

The signs are ominous indeed.

Ike Willie-Nwobu,

Ikewilly9@gmail.com