Only A Good Govt Can Stop Corruption

Q: Some people have advocated the Rawlings’ approach of execution of those….
A: I don’t agree with that. How are we sure innocent people have not been killed even in Ghana? I don’t think it’s an option that any lawyer or any person interested in justice would subscribe to. I don’t believe in the option of killing people. Suppose you kill people and business goes on as usual, then you’ve wasted lives. Probably it worked in Ghana, I don’t know. I must ask a Ghanaian whether that’s what changed his mind. But the Nigerian is a different breed from the Ghanaian. We’re vibrant, let’s face it. We are aggressive, let’s accept it. We are very excitable. What worked in Ghana may not work in Nigeria and that is a chance I don’t want to take. They didn’t have to kill anybody in India to have integrity. They didn’t have to slaughter anybody in England to have integrity. There are many countries where they didn’t take such barbaric steps to have integrity. If they have integrity in those countries, why can’t we have integrity in Nigeria? The option I will want to suggest is having a government that cares for the people. The major cause of corruption in Nigeria is sense of insecurity of the people. Social insecurity - you do not know what is going to happen to you tomorrow. You do not know whether you are going to get food to eat tomorrow. You do not know whether if you leave your job tomorrow, you are going to starve to death, whether you are going to be able to take care of your family. The fear of insecurity among Nigerians is very much real. Unless we take care of that fear of insecurity, we will be preaching to Nigerians but it won’t work. We must have government at all levels that is very much caring. Look at the countries we want to compare Nigeria with - if you go to England and you have no job, you won’t starve. If you don’t have accommodation, you won’t still sleep under the bridge. At least, somebody is thinking about you. Who is thinking about Nigerians? In the past, when we had integrity in Nigeria, we had a communal sense of living. If I didn’t have food, I wouldn’t starve. I would go and eat in another place within the community. If I had a problem, the community would rise to my support. But we’ve removed that and introduced modern way of living, modern governance. Government must be totally caring for the people and that is not there now. That’s why in ICPC, we are looking at other agencies that can drive this fresh attitude to fresh responsibility. We’ve had discussions with the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund. We are trying to encourage more agencies to come along with us to ensure that social responsibility is restored as primary concern of government. Until we do that, we can’t make any headway. The Nigerian citizen is under tremendous stress, even ordinary getting to work is a problem. If you live in a place like Lagos, when you wake up in the morning, getting to work is like a nightmare. In other countries, it’s not like that. So, Nigerians have developed a selfish attitude by their circumstances. Selfish, in the sense that to survive in Nigeria, you must think about yourself first. You must think about how you are going to get employment. Tell me, in what areas of life does the Nigerian not have to think about himself? When you wake up in the morning, you are conditioned to think about yourself, you don’t care about the other fellow. We can change that gradually by a making the government caring. When we do that, the people will gradually transform. Why do you want to risk going to jail if somebody is looking after your interest? We must restore governance to that level to restore society to the level which we want. I think that’s a better option than killing innocent people.

Q: What’s happening to some of the high profile cases ICPC has been handling, like the Sagem ID card scandal, the Siemens probe…
A: Let’s start with the Siemens case. In the Siemens case, we tried to be proactive when we read about the case; we started investigation though there was no petition before us. But suddenly we were asked to hands off.

Q: By who?
A: That was during the previous regime. We were asked to hands off by government, I won’t mention one particular person. We were asked to transfer whatever we’ve collected to EFCC. I had no problem with that for the simple reason that I had no petition about Siemens before me, we were just being pro-active. If I had petition before me in the Siemens case, nothing would have made me hand off the case because that would be interfering with the independence of the Commission. But when we started an investigation in which our standing was shaky, you can’t start defending your shaky situation. So, we have no problem handing over the Siemens case, it is still in court. It has always been in court. Appeals went up and down, right and left, I mean, that’s the Nigerian judicial system and we have no mandate to do anything about it. Once we have done our own bit and we have put the case in institutions that should deal with it, we wait and see what comes out of it.

Q: What about the case of the former Senate President, Aldophius Wabara who recently challenged you in a newspaper to hasten up about his trial as he may not have much years to spend on earth?
A: I read that and I must confess that I sympathised with him. The challenge unfortunately was thrown to a wrong agency. It is a challenge for the court. I agree with him because I think it’s unfair to keep anybody under that kind of suspense. But I am not a minder of the judicial system; we have to keep strictly to our own mandate. Even if we wanted to fast-track the case, what could we do? We just have to wait for the system to work. The prosecutor may ask for accelerated hearing, and the judge will tell him that your case is not the only one before me. Apart from the judges, there is the system itself. In our system, you can go on appeal to the Supreme Court and come down again and go up again, as many times as you want. The law permits you to do that.

Q: The judiciary seems to be slowing down the war against corruption then?
A: I don’t think the judiciary is slowing down the war against corruption. I think the system itself is not assisting the judiciary to perform at an optimum level. In a legal system, you have the judiciary, the prosecutor, but do not forget that you also have the legal system. All these must work at maximum efficiency and commitment before you can get a good judicial system. If the legal profession decides to manipulate the law in a way that will cause delay within what is legally permissible, what can you do about it? That’s why at every opportunity, we try to impress it on legal professionals that they have a responsibility in this matter. One has come across instances, not in case of corruption, where it was regarded as cleverness to delay a case as long as possible. As for the judiciary itself, I know that the National Judicial Council, NJC, is anxious to get it to work more effectively. I know that the NJC has a committee that evaluates performance of judges. I do know also that judges who do not perform risk being removed for non-performance. If a judge has not given a judgment for three months continuously, he gets a query; if he had not done so for six months, he will be kicked out. The NJC is also encouraging judges to take firm control of their courts. The consequence of all these may not immediately manifest now, because they still have to deal with backlog of cases that have accumulated over the period of sluggishness.

Q: Some people have advocated the establishment of special courts for the trial of cases of corruption as a way of speeding up the trial process?
A: That’s an option that is being looked at. I know there is a bill before the National Assembly for a special court. I know the bill has been circulated for comments. But with benefit of past experience…the Federal High Court was set up with the objective of speeding up revenue cases; it was formerly known as Federal Revenue Court and the purpose was to create a special court to deal with the challenges of those days in terms of customs duties, inland revenue cases and so on. But we all know the history, it soon got bogged down again. Now, we are looking for another specialised court. Probably, it would work for some time. It’s just an option. Nobody can guarantee that it’s the solution.

Q: But what is delaying the appointment of an Independent Counsel who you said is necessary for you to investigate governors?
A: We can go after those persons who have ceased to have immunity. We don’t need an Independent Counsel to do that. And we are now scrutinising the files to see whether there are cases we can now pursue. Many of these allegations were as far back as 2003 and we need to see which of them are motivated by election purposes. Whenever elections are coming, we get a deluge of petitions. Right now, maybe we have one or two petitions against serving governors. But it’s not our responsibility to appoint an independent counsel. What the law say is that when we come across such cases, we pass it on to the Chief Justice who will study the allegations and consider if it is worthwhile appointing an Independent Counsel to investigate. Now, when the Independent Counsel investigates, it reports to the legislature. And it’s for the legislature to take it from there.

Q: So you have some ex-governors now under your searchlight?
A: That’s the category I said we are looking at their files

Q: How many of them are you investigating now?
A: They are about 20 to 23.

Q: That’s quite a number?
A: It’s quite a number

Q: But, how soon can we expect action on it?
A: Yes, we will expedite action on it and in the next two weeks, we will know which of them are going to be investigated or not. Some of them are already being prosecuted for money laundering. Money laundering is not within our mandate.

Q: Have you received petitions regarding some judges now presiding at Election Petitions Tribunals across the country?A: I read in regard to what you write. And I did read that a report was made to NJC. But no report has reached us.

Q: But if you got any petition concerning the judges at Election Petitions Tribunals, will you take it up?
A: Certainly, without hesitation, because no judge should be reluctant to submit to investigation. If you are innocent, investigation will clear you. But if you are not, investigation will nail you. But to live in perpetual suspicion is not even to the benefit of the judge.

Q: Is the probe of the Managing Director of Niger Delta Development Commission still on?
A: That’s a long-standing case. The length of investigation, to me personally, is embarrassing. I have not got a report that the investigation has been concluded. Even recently, I asked that I should be briefed on the status of the case. By next week, I should receive the briefing. We have had series of interim reports and we have asked them to go back and do what they should do.

Q: Have you received any petition against former President Olusegun Obasanjo?
A: Yes, I think I have come across a petition which we are looking at. You see, what people don’t realise is that you may get a petition which says that ‘Olusegun Obasanjo is a bad person; he has stolen a lot of money. Investigate him!’ How do you investigate such? So, when I say we have petitions, it doesn’t mean we have petitions that will carry us very far. What I do when I get a petition is that I send it to the Legal Unit of the chairman’s office to study and analyse. Sometimes, they come up to say there is no way we can proceed with this because it’s so vague. In other cases, if they say we should proceed, we will proceed. As I said, nobody should feel offended if we investigate him because investigation starts from the position of innocence. And if you have something that could be found, then it will be found. As a lawyer and a judge, I am subject to the law and it’s what the law says we should do that we will do. You don’t look at the status to whether you are going to investigate or not. Is there an allegation that shows criminality? Many Nigerians, and that’s why we are embarking on vigorous education, don’t know that not every bad conduct is criminal. The law has to criminalise it. If the law says if you come to this commission and you don’t greet the chairman if you meet him on the staircase, it’s an offence, good. But if the law hasn’t said that, I can’t say you have committed an offence though it’s not a good conduct.

Q: Can we really win the war against corruption?
A: I believe it is winnable. And that’s why everyday, we are developing preventive, educative strategies. We are going into massive public enlightenment. That’s why I said that the best way to win the war against corruption is to transform the people. And I said the surest way to transform the people is to have a caring government that will put the people at the forefront of its responsibilities. Let me give you an example: why is it that you can take a wild animal and make it tame? It’s not by flogging alone, but by caring as well. How can you make a people live like animals? It’s harsh to say, but majority of our people are living like animals. They are living in slums. When you peep into where they are living, you will wonder why any nation can tolerate people living in that type of environment. Now, you take these people and expect them not to behave like animals, you are wasting your time. However well dressed you are, if you want to take a bus in Lagos, you have to struggle like an animal. It sinks into you gradually and when such people start to produce children, it’s already in their gene. We are in a scramble society. As we scramble for offices, we scramble for employment, we scramble for buses, tell me what we don’t scramble for? Nigerians have developed that scramble mentality that even if you have space for 20 and there are ten of them, they still scramble. You have your boarding pass, with your seat number there, but you still scramble. It’s because intuitively, we have scramble mentality. So, we must roll it back. I believe that once we scientifically look at the problem, study it, and then we can look for the solution. But Nigerians are looking for the easy way out - kill them, jail them, prosecute them! But for how long has it worked? We must look at this other slow, steady and durable solution and that’s what we are doing.

Q: Is the Commission interested in the probe conducted into the energy sector by the House of Representatives?
A: I do not really expect to receive any petition. What may happen is that at the end of the day the House of Representatives will decide what to do with the report. They may send it to us. They may send it to another agency. It doesn’t really matter. But we appreciate what they are doing. We’re not following what they are doing merely for the purpose of prosecution. If we follow what they are doing merely for the purpose of prosecution, we are not going to derive maximum benefit from it. What we are doing is we are waiting for them to complete the exercise. Whether it is sent to us for prosecution or not, we are going to ask them if they can kindly give us the transcript. Then, through the transcript we will see how the system has permitted such things to happen. Contracts awarded to unregistered companies, contracts awarded, no performance until the House Representatives started to investigate. We will now work from what we know through the transcript to see where the system is faulty and then suggest a reform and a review of that system. Even before they started, we already had on the table design of system review of contracts. You know, in Nigeria today, if I ask anybody how many contracts have been awarded, nobody can tell me. Who is asking questions about abandoned projects? Who is asking about projects which money has been collected and no performance at all? There are many things wrong with the contract system. So, we are going to look at all these and we will use the Energy probe as a case study. We are also looking at roads contracts. We’ve collected some documents in relation to road contracts, not primarily for the purpose of prosecution, but to make sure that the system is reformed and monitorable, so that this thing will not be possible again.