Onwubiko: Let EFCC operate within ambit of constitution

Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko is the head of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), a former federal commissioner of the Nigerian Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and a member of the Presidential Committee On Dialogue And Restoration Of Peace in Northern Nigeria (PCCDR) tells ADAMU ABUH that much more needs to be done to reposition the anti-graft war to be effective.

Is the anti-corruption fight on course?
The anti-corruption crusade is half-heartedly pursued and the operatives of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) lack the investigative skills to efficiently and diligently generate concrete and unassailable body of evidence to sufficiently nail suspects arrested for alleged corrupt practices and allied economic crimes.

The EFCC under the current dispensation has been operated and administered like a youth wing of the new national ruling party of All Progressives Congress (APC) of President Muhammadu Buhari and it operates like a Nazi war time hit men or hit squad of the dictatorial regime in power now to specifically target political opponents and other high civil society leaders who are independent minded and who have powerfully opposed some infractions and vices of the Federal Government under Buhari.

High profile political opponents are arrested, persecuted and tried in the media through the use of subterfuge and propaganda to demonise them before the public, even before filing the matters in the competent courts of law for adjudication. The use of psychological and physical torture are widespread necessitating our call for the Nigerian National Assembly to make law to compel the Nigerian government to publish clear transparent guidelines on how civil society groups and interested members of the media can have access to monitor the human rights situations in these detention facilities of EFCC, given that some suspects have died in mysterious circumstances whilst in EFCC detentions.

How all-embracing is the anti-graft campaign to accommodate all segments, just as the War Against Indiscipline was carried out in 1983/84?
It is not all-embracing, as it is more or less targeted at only political opponents to the party in power at the center and a few advanced fee fraud suspects. EFCC needs to be professionalised and the enabling law strengthened to free it from the apron strings of the Presidency, because as it is now, the Chairman of the EFCC takes direct orders from the President, who, in actual fact, is the national leader of the political party that sponsored him to office.

Loyalty of the EFCC chairman and his directors are to the President, meaning that when relations of the President commit horrendous financial crimes, including stealing of humongous amount of public fund the anti-graft agency would simply look the other way whilst these sophisticated crimes are committed, but once the political opponents are seen to be too media savvy and critical of Buhari, the EFCC is deployed as attack dogs to snooze around for incriminating evidence no matter how ridiculously unsustainable in the court of law against.

Lawyer Adegboruwa and Chief Femi Fani-Kayode are good examples of opponents of President Muhammadu Buhari who have recently been witch hunted by EFCC under Ibrahim Magu. The EFCC chairman must be made to be answerable to an independent body of ombudsmen and not the Presidency nor the National Assembly, as both arms are composed of Nigerians with a lot of ethical baggage. The war against corruption can’t be fought like the war against indiscipline that was operated by a military coupist who took power through the back door by the barrels of the gun and never complied with the constitutional provisions, such as fair hearing, because the Military junta operated with decrees in such a way that the Nigerian Constitution stood suspended. The EFCC must operate within the ambit of the Constitution and must stop all manifestations of media trial of suspects.

What aspects can be added to make the war welcoming and attractive to all?
Let the office of chairman off EFCC be advertised and let civilian scholars of security studies apply. Let the enabling Act of EFCC be fundamentally overhauled to make it easy for this to happen. The current provision making it only available for police officers is unsustainable, because the Nigeria Police Force is highly corrupt and is in need of reforms. So bringing a person from this background to head the EFCC is like appointing a bank thief the managing director of a bank. It can’t work. If you give a dog fresh meat to keep, that dog can’t have the disciplinary virtues to keep that meat intact for the owner without helping himself to or part of it, depending on the period of absence of the depositor. Operatives of EFCC must be picked on their merit and persons of suspicious backgrounds must not be employed as agents. Nigeria must have a national crime data bank to sift armed robbers from potential recruits into EFCC.

What do you make of those who have tacitly admitted stealing and are willing to refund what they stole?
Those who are alleged to have returned their loots are few and far between. We have to draw our conclusion from the quality of convictions recorded by competent courts of law and not by the quantum of media generated propaganda. President Buhari should show good example by doing just the simplest thing of showing Nigerians his secondary school certificate to demonstrate that he believes in the ideals of transparency, probity and accountability.

The plaintiff who recently filed a civil suit to compel him to so showcase his school certificate, which qualified him to contest election was harassed and intimidated and threatened with assassination, just so he could drop his court case against Buhari.

The anti-corruption crusade under this government for now is cosmetic and make belief. Corruption hasn’t reduced, but the practitioners have learnt to be many steps ahead of the noisy EFCC under Magu.