CCT Probe: Clinton’s Pills For Saraki

A similar scenario to the ongoing Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) trial of the President of Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, played out in faraway United States recently. When the Court of Appeal adjourned its judgment on Saraki’s appeal against the jurisdiction of the CCT, sine die (till further notice) some legal minds believed that hearing into the matter scheduled for Wednesday October 21, 2015; would also be put off indefinitely. But the CCT merely adjourned till November 5, 6.

Many critical observers have always seen the president of senate’s travails at the CCT as a comic show of political persecution and naked display of legal retribution. The recent US example shows that political wickedness is not native to Nigeria alone. Former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been taking her own dose of political persecution based on her use of private Email while on seat as secretary of state and her conduct during the attack on US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi, during which Ambassador John Christopher Stevens was killed. Shortly after the attack, many investigative panels were set up to locate the remote causes, but also points of possible security cum intelligence failure. And because Mrs. Clinton was then secretary of state, most of those who know of her presidential ambition tried to fetch some political capital out of the unfortunate attack.

Despite the fact that five House Committees including Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, Judiciary as well as Oversight and Government Reform, held their separate inquiries, as soon as Clinton announced her entry into the 2016 US presidential election, a House select committee was set up to probe into the Benghazi incident anew. The hearing was billed to hold on Tuesday October 20, 2015. But thirty minutes to the hearing, something happened. The Democratic Party front-runner announced her ‘withdrawal’ from the 2016 presidential election. There was general unease in Washington. Perhaps in response to the news of Mrs. Clinton’s ‘withdrawal from the race’, the House select committee cancelled its Benghazi hearings.

The New Yorker reported that while the former secretary’s stunning notice was made by 9:00 a.m. the committee chairman Trey Gowdy’s decision to cancel the hearings came at 9:04. Gowdy was said to have gleefully explained that though the select committee had been engaged in a month-long preparation for the hearing, “however, after meeting with fellow committee members over the past four minutes, we’ve come to the conclusion that we know all we need to know about Benghazi.” He denied that the cancellation had anything to do with Clinton’s sudden departure from the race. But no sooner was the hearing called off than Mrs. Clinton held a sudden press conference at 9:13 to inform journalists she was getting back into the race. She declared: “I was just trying to prove a point.” That same day she addressed campaign rallies in Iowa and New Hampshire.

While that drama was playing out in Washington, back home in Abuja, the Court of Appeal put forward its expected judgment on the appeal filed by the president of Senate, Dr. Saraki, challenging the jurisdiction of the CCT to try him based on its stunted composition. Further to that interruption, a lot of non-partisan observers believed that the scheduled hearing at the CCT last Tuesday would not hold or that even if it held, it would be to formally adjourn the matter to an indeterminate date. Contrary to that popular conjecture, the tribunal sat and instead of an indefinite date, it set a return date of November 5, 6; to begin hearing on the controversial brief.

By its choice of date, CCT gave itself out as if it was on a mission to prove what is already known. Moreover by fixing a definite date as against the appellate court’s open-ended dateline, it is either the CCT wants to equate itself to the Court of Appeal or to preempt it. The perceived overzealousness of CCT feeds the staid impression that Saraki’s travail is politically motivated, especially when placed side by side with the fact that former Lagos governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, was let loose from similar charges when it was discovered that he was not made privy to the charges before his arraignment. It is the CCT’s short adjournment that makes Saraki’s case analogous to Clinton’s. As such, if the president of Senate was to imitate the former American Secretary of State and announced his resignation from the position, there is no strong indication that the CCT would not adjourn the matter sine die!

From the proceedings in the National Assembly and at the federal level within the past five months, it is becoming obvious that politicians are taking the Nigerian masses for a ride. Almost 75 percent of what they do revolves around their personal political interests and aggrandizement. It is possible that it was the sake of settling political scores that CCB decided on the archaeological excavation of their nearly 13 years of ineptitude to activate the CCT into morbid action. Holding back the NASS from the myriad of socio-economic challenges dogging Nigeria’s development at this point in time seems retrogressive. What if an electoral offences tribunal is set up and it begins to look into the 2003 election? If former president Olusegun Obasanjo is found guilty, what manner of punishment could restore the damage caused by that charge of electoral malfeasance? To some extent, that is what the trial of Saraki over his 2003 declaration of assets simulates. What the APC government should have done was to draw a line against the past and begin a process of setting the necessary foundation to combat graft. But, having chosen to focus on the immediate past, the party’s attempt to reach back to 2003, while glossing over the infringements on good governance by the executive, leaves it with the stain of guilt of political persecution.

The current impasse in the senate vis-à-vis the prosecution of President Buhari’s anti-corruption fight reveals the emptiness of the president’s anti-corruption architecture. As the dingdong continues between the senate and the CCT, which is being used as a bait to get at the president of Senate, APC may by its insistence on having its way in the appointment of floor functionaries in the senate, irritate Nigerians with the suggestion that it was indeed an Alliance for Political Compensation (APC); when that happens, the millions of Nigerians that voted for change might feel shortchanged. Given such an avoidable scenario, the President may be charged with failure of leadership. In international relations as well as politics, leadership is perceived as having a noble idea and being
able to communicate it to win converts for responsible performance of noble deeds. Nigerians would thus be left to wonder what would have been the outcome if Buhari had, for instance, in a national broadcast thanked Nigerians for electing him and announcing to the whole nation that having been elected on the three-fold pillars of anti-corruption, fight against insurgency and improvement of socio-economic conditions of Nigerians, hence forth any act of corruption or attempt to compromise national security would be met with the full weight of state censure. Such stance could be seen as, not only drawing a line, but providing a clean slate to undertake a change in the country. Such frame was what the late Bola Ige said is the best approach to probing former administrations. He explained that by so doing the people, for whom government exits, are better placed to judge between the past and the present and draw their conclusions without dissipating energy and wasting scarce resources. By failing to toe Ige’s line of reasoning, APC leaders are giving Nigerians the impression that the mandate given to them is self-serving.

On the flip side, the trial of Saraki over alleged sins of yesterday tends to support the ongoing perception that Buhari’s anti-corruption battle, being dead on arrival, is one-sided to the extent of its distraction from the delivery of good governance. The president’s non-aligned posture presents a mixed cup. But a president who has an agenda to turnaround the fortunes and methods of national life, seeing the level of distraction and political bickering, as provided by the insistence of party apparatchiks to reward certain lieutenants, ought to wade in and make the best of limited time to put the right foot forward. The failure to provide political solution to Saraki’s ordeal, which in the main has been proven to be politically activated, is a big minus to APC and the presidency. Moving slowly, but surely may be a good excuse in the interim, but over time, it would be clear that indolence fetches no returns.

APC leaders should let by-gone be by-gone and allow the National Assembly the much needed stability to paddle their canoe. The effect of absence of enabling bills to kindle the wheels of government policy would be seen in the first quarter of 2016. Already the economy has started groaning. If Ndume and other floor functionaries rejected the party’s carrot to settle for juicy committee chairmanship, It would be in the interest of APC to find ways of appeasing them instead of continuing to hold the nation in tension and suspended animation. The failure of the peace process has further shown that Saraki is being punished for not toeing the party line, unlike the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, by compensating those that lost in the election of principal
officers in the senate. Like the dramatization of her ordeal by Mrs. Clinton, the APC has demonstrated through the stress on pacifying its preferred candidates for Senate leadership, that it can sacrifice anything including national interest for parochial benefits. This may not augur well for the party in the long run. There is too much hate and division in the country that getting the citizens together on the path to healing should be the first indicators of change. Only that could vindicate Nigerians that voted APC.