THE bill currently being considered at the House of
Representatives, seeking amnesty for treasury looters, is another
cold, hard evidence of the absence of coordination among the
different arms of government in the ongoing anti-corruption
crusade. While only a section of the executive arm appears to be
enthusiastic about the anti-graft war, both the judicial and the
legislative arms have been, at best, nonchalant about containing
the rampaging corruption that is threatening the very existence of
Nigeria.
This, on the face value, may appear odd, but there is hardly any
other way of explaining a situation where the executive, all of a
sudden, does not seem to know how to prosecute cases and all
corruption cases before the courts are being thrown out on the
basis of “lacking diligent prosecution”, regardless of the weight
of evidence presented. This is why there has been no conviction so
far of high profile persons even in cases where the suspects
appeared to have been caught red-handed and heavy sums of money
recovered. Even when ill-gotten wealth is traced to certain
individuals and it is obvious that, given such people’s incomes, it
is not possible for them to have legitimately acquired such wealth,
the courts find it convenient to dismiss such cases on the grounds
of one technicality or the other.
At the same time, the legislature, which has so far been
reluctant to pass certain anti-corruption bills before it, has
suddenly had a brainwave and believes the best way to further the
cause of the war against graft is to grant amnesty to the
criminals. According to reports, the Economic Amnesty Bill
sponsored by Linus Okorie of the Peoples Democratic Party seeks to
grant total amnesty to those caught with their fingers in the till,
once they are able to return 70 per cent of their loot. This is
morally reprehensible, if not outright preposterous. It confirms a
widely-held perception that our lawmakers are bent on derailing the
war on graft.
In decent parts of the world, people do not only have to return
proceeds of ill-gotten wealth, they also face the grim prospects of
lengthy periods in jail. Brazil, a country that is taking the
anti-corruption war very seriously, has already demonstrated how to
deal with such a situation. In a landmark judgement last week, the
country’s former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was
convicted of corruption and money laundering and sentenced to close
to 10 years in prison.
The 71-year-old former leader, who was hailed for his innovative
and progressive leadership, becomes the latest victim of the raging
corruption scandal in that country’s oil industry, code-named
Operation Car Wash, which precipitately ended the tenure of the
country’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, less than a year
ago. Her successor, incumbent Michel Temer, has already been
indicted of bribery by the Supreme Court. The country’s finance
minister, Antonio Polocci, had earlier bagged 12 years in
connection with funnelling government money to the Workers Party,
the same offence for which Sambo Dasuki, a former National Security
Adviser, is being held and an allegation for which the trial of
Diezani Alison-Madueke, a former Minister of Petroleum Resources,
is being sought.
In South Korea, the Constitutional Court, on March 10, upheld
the National Assembly’s decision to impeach the country’s president
after finding her guilty on corruption charges. Park Geun-hye was
removed for not only conspiring with a confidante to extort money
from big firms, but for also attempting to conceal her wrongdoings.
She was not asked to return the money or half of it and then go
scot-free; rather, she faces the prospect of going to jail after
returning whatever must have come to her from the deal. That is how
to fight corruption.
That such a bill was conceived at all under a government that is
waging a campaign against corruption beggars belief; it shows the
extent to which corruption is fighting back. Perhaps the only
logical explanation for this is that the lawmakers are not
comfortable with the rate at which stolen public funds are being
recovered or they want to frustrate the process outright. Rather
than help the government’s cause, the bill will only encourage
people to steal as much as possible, knowing that 30 per cent of
whatever they steal is theirs. As a former governor of the old
Kaduna State, Balarabe Musa, observed, the law would only
legitimise corruption. That is not the kind of bill our lawmakers
are paid to pass.
At a recent one-day conference on Financial System Integrity
Improvement, the Secretary of the Presidential Advisory Committee
Against Corruption, Bolaji Owasanoye, called on the lawmakers to
pass certain bills before them that would enhance the fight against
corruption. He said, “This is with regard, in particular, to
certain key (pieces of) legislation such as Proceeds of Crime,
Witness Protection, Whistle-blower, Crime Data…, which have been
hanging there.” Although the Senate eventually passed the
Whistle-blower Bill into law on Wednesday, what excuses do the
lawmakers have for delaying the passage of these other bills?
It is sad that granting of amnesty to criminals has become a way
of life in Nigeria, an official government policy. Something that
started with militants attacking oil installations in the Niger
Delta has now been stretched to cover almost all forms of
criminalities. At a point, the clamour was so loud for the granting
of amnesty to members of the Boko Haram sect, even though the
jihadists had stated their objectives clearly and there was nothing
pecuniary about them. The vogue now is for governments to ask
criminals to submit their guns and they would not only be granted
amnesty but would be rewarded financially. Such gestures have been
recorded in Rivers, Imo and Benue, among other states.
Instead of working at cross purposes, all arms of the government
and the generality of the Nigerian public need to come together to
tackle the hydra called corruption. Corruption is the reason why
there are no good health facilities in the country. It is
responsible for the decay in education, the absence of good roads
and other infrastructure. For Nigeria to develop, the fight against
corruption has to be total.
THE bill currently being considered at the House of
Representatives, seeking amnesty for treasury looters, is another
cold, hard evidence of the absence of coordination among the
different arms of government in the ongoing anti-corruption
crusade. While only a section of the executive arm appears to be
enthusiastic about the anti-graft war, both the judicial and the
legislative arms have been, at best, nonchalant about containing
the rampaging corruption that is threatening the very existence of
Nigeria.
This, on the face value, may appear odd, but there is hardly any
other way of explaining a situation where the executive, all of a
sudden, does not seem to know how to prosecute cases and all
corruption cases before the courts are being thrown out on the
basis of “lacking diligent prosecution”, regardless of the weight
of evidence presented. This is why there has been no conviction so
far of high profile persons even in cases where the suspects
appeared to have been caught red-handed and heavy sums of money
recovered. Even when ill-gotten wealth is traced to certain
individuals and it is obvious that, given such people’s incomes, it
is not possible for them to have legitimately acquired such wealth,
the courts find it convenient to dismiss such cases on the grounds
of one technicality or the other.
At the same time, the legislature, which has so far been
reluctant to pass certain anti-corruption bills before it, has
suddenly had a brainwave and believes the best way to further the
cause of the war against graft is to grant amnesty to the
criminals. According to reports, the Economic Amnesty Bill
sponsored by Linus Okorie of the Peoples Democratic Party seeks to
grant total amnesty to those caught with their fingers in the till,
once they are able to return 70 per cent of their loot. This is
morally reprehensible, if not outright preposterous. It confirms a
widely-held perception that our lawmakers are bent on derailing the
war on graft.
In decent parts of the world, people do not only have to return
proceeds of ill-gotten wealth, they also face the grim prospects of
lengthy periods in jail. Brazil, a country that is taking the
anti-corruption war very seriously, has already demonstrated how to
deal with such a situation. In a landmark judgement last week, the
country’s former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was
convicted of corruption and money laundering and sentenced to close
to 10 years in prison.
The 71-year-old former leader, who was hailed for his innovative
and progressive leadership, becomes the latest victim of the raging
corruption scandal in that country’s oil industry, code-named
Operation Car Wash, which precipitately ended the tenure of the
country’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, less than a year
ago. Her successor, incumbent Michel Temer, has already been
indicted of bribery by the Supreme Court. The country’s finance
minister, Antonio Polocci, had earlier bagged 12 years in
connection with funnelling government money to the Workers Party,
the same offence for which Sambo Dasuki, a former National Security
Adviser, is being held and an allegation for which the trial of
Diezani Alison-Madueke, a former Minister of Petroleum Resources,
is being sought.
In South Korea, the Constitutional Court, on March 10, upheld
the National Assembly’s decision to impeach the country’s president
after finding her guilty on corruption charges. Park Geun-hye was
removed for not only conspiring with a confidante to extort money
from big firms, but for also attempting to conceal her wrongdoings.
She was not asked to return the money or half of it and then go
scot-free; rather, she faces the prospect of going to jail after
returning whatever must have come to her from the deal. That is how
to fight corruption.
That such a bill was conceived at all under a government that is
waging a campaign against corruption beggars belief; it shows the
extent to which corruption is fighting back. Perhaps the only
logical explanation for this is that the lawmakers are not
comfortable with the rate at which stolen public funds are being
recovered or they want to frustrate the process outright. Rather
than help the government’s cause, the bill will only encourage
people to steal as much as possible, knowing that 30 per cent of
whatever they steal is theirs. As a former governor of the old
Kaduna State, Balarabe Musa, observed, the law would only
legitimise corruption. That is not the kind of bill our lawmakers
are paid to pass.
At a recent one-day conference on Financial System Integrity
Improvement, the Secretary of the Presidential Advisory Committee
Against Corruption, Bolaji Owasanoye, called on the lawmakers to
pass certain bills before them that would enhance the fight against
corruption. He said, “This is with regard, in particular, to
certain key (pieces of) legislation such as Proceeds of Crime,
Witness Protection, Whistle-blower, Crime Data…, which have been
hanging there.” Although the Senate eventually passed the
Whistle-blower Bill into law on Wednesday, what excuses do the
lawmakers have for delaying the passage of these other bills?
It is sad that granting of amnesty to criminals has become a way
of life in Nigeria, an official government policy. Something that
started with militants attacking oil installations in the Niger
Delta has now been stretched to cover almost all forms of
criminalities. At a point, the clamour was so loud for the granting
of amnesty to members of the Boko Haram sect, even though the
jihadists had stated their objectives clearly and there was nothing
pecuniary about them. The vogue now is for governments to ask
criminals to submit their guns and they would not only be granted
amnesty but would be rewarded financially. Such gestures have been
recorded in Rivers, Imo and Benue, among other states.
Instead of working at cross purposes, all arms of the government
and the generality of the Nigerian public need to come together to
tackle the hydra called corruption. Corruption is the reason why
there are no good health facilities in the country. It is
responsible for the decay in education, the absence of good roads
and other infrastructure. For Nigeria to develop, the fight against
corruption has to be total.
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