Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against
Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay, in this interview with GBENRO ADEOYE,
insists that the fight against corruption has not been weakened by
President Muhammadu Buhari’s absence
As the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory
Committee Against Corruption, how would you rate the war against
corruption in the country?
I think it has been immensely successful regardless of what the
public may perceive.
The public will disagree very much with that
assessment essentially as there have been no convictions since the
administration came to power with a promise to fight corruption to
a standstill.
I think the mistake the generality of Nigerians are making is
that they only rate the war against corruption on the basis of the
number of convictions, but the war is much wider than that. A lot
has been done. For example, high profile looting at the executive
level has been eliminated. We don’t have people like a minister in
the previous administration, being investigated for corruption
along with her associates, in the present administration. That is a
major achievement. Nobody dares take a kobo that does not belong to
them or misuse any public fund. But nobody is thinking of that.
Under the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, it
was a common thing. There, everybody was having a ball, toying with
our common patrimony, taking billions and billions of naira out of
the country. What of the military? All the money that was provided
for the military to fight Boko Haram was diverted and shared among
some people. So our soldiers were being killed, while the officers
were getting richer at the expense of the country. What of subsidy
scam? This government ended subsidy scam. About N382bn subsidy scam
was wrongly claimed and fraudulently misappropriated. There is
nothing like that now. We know the assets the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices
and Other Related Offences Commission have recovered; they
discovered $9m in one house somewhere, $43m in another place. So
you cannot measure the success of the fight based on the number of
convictions alone.
People often ask what PACAC has achieved beyond
accusing people of being corrupt.
As for the PACAC, it is a think-tank; it is not an
anti-corruption agency with executive powers. It is a think-tank
that is supposed to provide leadership, direction and also build
capacity for the anti-corruption agencies and in that process,
PACAC has done a lot. It has organised training for judges and
prosecutors on interpretation of the Administration of Criminal
Justice Act. Judges at federal and state levels in all the six
geo-political zones, including judges in the Appeal Court and the
Supreme Court have all been brought into the process of dialogue
about how to handle corruption cases. Experienced foreign judges
that handled corruption cases in many countries were there.
First, over 160 prosecutors at the federal level were trained on
how to draft charges because there are a lot of complaints about
the drafting of charges. We have also completed the same thing for
state prosecutors. We also decided that the prosecution and
imprisonment of looters is not the only way to fight corruption. We
can also fight it by recovering what they have looted, pending when
they can be convicted. So we have a concept called Non-Conviction
Based Asset Forfeiture. We don’t have any law as a single act
containing this but when PACAC, the EFCC, and other agencies looked
into the existing laws and the Acts of the agencies, we found
individual clauses and items that empower them to actually seize
suspicious properties, get an interim forfeiture order and invite
anyone who owns such properties to come and establish proof of
ownership. And lots of assets have been seized. Many of them have
been permanently seized because the owners failed to come forward.
This includes money in local and foreign currencies and buildings,
particularly in Abuja.
How much has been seized and how many
properties?
I don’t have the figure but ICPC alone had seized a large number
before the EFCC started its own. Whole estates have been taken over
like that. One other thing we did was to train the agencies on how
to preserve assets like jewellery, cars and other properties. For
example, a watch belonging to Diezani Alison-Madueke (former
Minister of Petroleum) worth hundreds of thousands of pounds has
been seized. Or if you forfeit a car and leave it there, it will
depreciate in value. So we got experts from all over the world who
gave lectures about how agencies can preserve such properties. We
were taught that when cars and other things that depreciate quickly
are seized, the agencies can sell them and put the money in the
bank. If the owner is able to prove that he is the genuine owner of
the property, his money will be returned with interest. Otherwise,
by the time the case is finally decided, there will be no car to
hand over to the person involved. The knowledge that has been
acquired is being put into practice. We have a manual on guidelines
for prosecution and management of corruption cases.
But many Nigerians say the war has gone cold since
President Muhammadu Buhari left for the UK and that it appears he
took the anti-corruption war with him.
That is absolute nonsense. That is the mildest way I can put it.
The acting president is as fervent in this fight against corruption
as the President. They are together in it and one is not more
passionate than the other. Under the acting president, so many
things have happened. We have had dialogues and discussed ways to
improve the war against corruption. We have spoken with various
segments of the society-religious, business, professional, to see
how they are dealing with corruption internally. We have brought
them together to encourage them to monitor their people so that
they are not agents of corruption. People are using so many
sophisticated ways of taking money out of the country, so we did a
lot of research and held a conference on how to stem the illicit
financial flows.
You heard what the minister of finance (Kemi Adeosun) said; we
are trying to identify properties owned by Nigerians abroad,
particularly in the US and the UK. There is something like a census
of properties going on and people’s names will be attached to the
properties they own and the information will be given to the EFCC
and the ICPC. They will now commence proceedings to seize those
properties unless those people can explain where they got the money
to buy them from. And even if they legitimately bought those
properties, what taxes are they paying to Nigeria for them to have
been able to afford those properties? All those things are going on
right now and if anybody says that the anti-corruption war has gone
cold, then the person is totally ignorant. It is getting hotter in
fact.
But how come whistleblowers have stopped blowing
their ‘whistles’ since the President left the country? Why did the
EFCC suddenly stop discovering hidden suspected
loots?
This thing comes in waves. When the whistle blowing principle
first started, there was a lot of excitement and people went and
started identifying those things. The first lots have been
identified. But it won’t come with so much steam anymore; it will
be gradual because there is a limit to what people can find out
about what is being hidden. But a lot has been brought out; you see
all those cases being investigated like the amount the military men
and others have accumulated. You know the case of the former
military chief, who was earning almost N500m every month from the
funds of the air force, which he headed at one time. Then $43m was
discovered in Ikoyi.
But the fight against corruption is only being
fought in the media and Nigerians wonder when the government will
actually start prosecuting all the people he claims are
corrupt.
As I said to you, without convicting someone, we have got a lot
of money back. I don’t want to mention names. Cases have gone to
court, about $15m here and there; all those things have been
reported.
Our attitude to media trial is that we will ‘media try’. We will
try them in the media; the money they stole is not anonymous so
they cannot be anonymous. If we say so much has been looted, we
must name the person who looted it. And the court has given an
order that every name should be mentioned, we are compiling that
now and they will be exposed. So don’t think you can steal, loot
and then the anti-corruption agencies will be afraid of mentioning
your name, no. your name will be mentioned and even if you are not
convicted, for the rest of your existence, you and your family will
be tainted because of what you looted and what was got from you.
When you fly that private jet, Nigerians will know that it is their
money that was used to buy it. That name will follow that person
all his life. So yes, there will be media trial, it will
continue.
But doesn’t the law say that you are innocent until
proven guilty? As a lawyer, do you think it is fair if someone that
was tried in the media was later found out to be innocent? Are you
saying they are guilty when the court has not adjudged them to be
corrupt? Isn’t the onus on the agencies to prove that these people
are guilty?
My answer to that is that if they are innocent, let them sue for
defamation. That is all. In that case, they will now have to prove.
The problem of proof is big so if they feel that their names have
been disparaged, let them sue. Not a single one of them will sue
because they know they are looters who are getting away with it
with the help of some Senior Advocates of Nigeria. It is
deliberate, we will expose them.
Speaking of SANs, some of them have accused this
government of trying to blackmail and intimidate them into not
doing their job when all over the world; everyone has right to a
lawyer. Is this government saying people don’t have the right to be
defended by lawyers in criminal cases?
I entirely agree with the SANs who said that, it is a
constitutional right, every Nigerian is entitled to defence and the
law says you are innocent until you are proved guilty. But the
legal ethics of our profession insist that if you are aware that
your client is actually guilty of the offence, what you should do
is to let him plead guilty and then plead for the sentence to be
reduced. You cannot go on defending on the basis of innocence when
you know that there is guilt and those are the ones we are talking
about; the ones who know that their client is guilty. We have some
cases in which it has been established that money was collected
from the Central Bank of Nigeria, put in an aircraft and taken
somewhere and later put in a bank. This was money belonging to the
state, taken straight from the CBN. Now, which lawyer can
innocently say that he did not know that that client is a looter?
So that is the kind of thing we are talking about.
You mentioned SANs now. You have attacked the Senate
and judges before now. Some Nigerians say you and the presidency
appear to be taking the war too personal, abusing everyone as if
you are the only ones that are clean in the
country.
Well, who are the people saying this? They belong to our own
class; these are the elite. And they are a tiny minority of the
country who are profiting and feeding from corruption. But 99.99
per cent of Nigerians suffering and are wretched because of
corruption are with us. Go to the market place and take a census.
What you will hear is, ‘We are praying for you, we are with you,
please carry on, this is the only way this country can be saved,”
that is what they are all saying. So these groups of parasites, who
have sucked the blood out of this country and want to kill it, are
the ones saying what you have just said. And who is going to listen
to them and abandon the vast majority of poor Nigerians who have
been rendered wretched because of the crimes of these few people,
so we are representing the oppressed.
Several times today, you have mentioned that some
money and properties have been recovered from looters. If that is
the case, are they just going to be there while Nigeria continues
to say it has no money?
No, they are not going to be there. You are right, we need the
money. First, there is one set of money and assets like properties
and so on that has been permanently forfeited; that is available to
spend. But some of them are temporarily forfeited and awaiting
either the end of the case or the process by which the purported
owner will come and establish how he acquired the money legally.
The administration is taking care of all of them but we can only
have access to the ones permanently forfeited. And the process that
has to be gone through now is to bring a bill before the National
Assembly to appropriate that one for the use of the government.
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has just moved the
ICPC Chairman, Ekpo Nta, to another agency, even though you said
earlier in this interview that the agency had seized many
properties, before the EFCC started doing so. If he was doing well,
why then did the Presidency redeploy him?
One, I am not privileged to know why. But there must have been a
reason. It is possible he has reached the zenith of his performance
and needs to go and establish his capacity somewhere else. No, I
will disagree with anyone who says he has not done anything. But
again, the person who was posted to take over from him now is one
of the hardest working, brilliant and dynamic human beings I have
ever known. I have no doubt that he is going to bring more life to
the ICPC. Ekpo has done his best and I appreciate him a lot because
he has done some quiet jobs – corruption risk assessment in various
agencies to enable those agencies guide against corruption. He also
took the crusade to schools so that children can grow up knowing
that corruption is wrong. So he has done that and he should be
credited. A fresh blood with a fresh mandate is there now and we
will even see better results. So one has done well and we can carry
on and do even better and get more results for the benefit of this
country.
A lot of Nigerians have felt insulted with the way
the Presidency and even your committee have insisted that Ibrahim
Magu must head the EFCC as if he is the only Nigerian with
integrity, when there are millions of Nigerians who can do the
job.
No, there are not millions. No, no, there are no millions of
Nigerians at all. Integrity is a rare quality in Nigeria.
Are you saying Magu is the only person with
integrity?
No, he is not the only person but we don’t want to start doing
research now, looking for somebody else when the man who is there
is doing an excellent job and has done no wrong. There are two
things here. One, we will not allow somebody to be victimised by
people who are afraid that since they cannot influence him and
bribe him, he is going to investigate and probe them, and if
necessary, arrest and prosecute them. There are people like that
who just want to get him out of the way because of their
wrongdoing.
Two, he has done nothing wrong, so our sense of justice is that
we will not allow somebody to be oppressed because he is dedicated
to his responsibilities. And we know he is innocent.
But some people felt the whole drama with the Senate
was totally unnecessary, especially as it was a government agency –
Department of State Services – that brought out a report that the
Senate considered in rejecting Magu’s nomination, which it had the
right to do.
That has been investigated. The Attorney-General of the
Federation investigated it and then sent the report to the
Presidency, who looked at it and both of them came to the
conclusion that there was no basis for that accusation. The house
he was living in, which they said he paid N40m for, he didn’t pay
for it. It was a house given to him by a government agency and they
just told him to move in, so he knew nothing about the process of
getting the house and the payment. He just carried his suitcase and
moved into the house. How can you now accuse him of corruption when
he never handled money or negotiated anything? That was an unfair
accusation. He was a victim of injustice in that case. And nobody
wanted to know, they didn’t ask him to explain. One other reason
they gave was that he was found in an aircraft with someone who was
under investigation. But the truth of the matter is that both he
and the person involved were part of an investigation on
procurement of arms by the army. They were both there, and if you
are working in the same committee with someone, you will know each
other somehow. And Magu was travelling from Kaduna to Lagos or
something like that, he got to the airport and wanted to check in
and this gentleman came and said why bother to take commercial
aircraft, I have my private jet here and about to leave. So Magu
travelled with him. So things were raked up so that mud could be
thrown at him. We felt such injustice should not be allowed to
succeed; otherwise, you can pull anybody down anytime if we allow
things like that to succeed.
But when you talk about Alison-Madueke and others,
you talk like you have already pronounced them guilty. Can we say
they are corrupt when the court has not said so?
They cannot be sent to prison if they have not been convicted.
But nothing stops the prosecution and anti-graft agencies of the
country from saying you stole. That is all we are saying. So if you
think you are wrong, you know what to do. Let us take the case of
Diezani, you know yourself that a yacht worth $80m has been seized
by the American government. A flat in New York, which cost $50m,
has also been seized. Other properties are being seized, which
belong to Diezani and her associates all over the world. Imagine
furnishing your house with millions of dollars. All those things
are being investigated. It will be a big mistake to say let us deal
with the issues silently; you don’t know how long these cases will
take. The public must know what has happened to their assets. When
this government is complaining that there is no money, Nigerians
are entitled to know what happened to their money. This is what
happened to their money; a few people sat down and started taking
billions of dollars out of the system. When a former CBN Governor,
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, was saying $20bn was missing, a lot of people
doubted him. He was even suspended and eventually sacked. Now it
has been established. Well, already to my knowledge, apart from the
over $2bn that a former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki,
shared, well over $15bn has been identified and it came from the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. So this government came in
and was handicapped. All the money was gone, from the federation
account, to sovereign wealth account, to crude oil account.
Everything was empty. So we were in a hole and this administration
had to first dig us out of that hole before it started to build.
That is why it was not obvious that there was any improvement in
life. Now the building up has started and we can see the process
now. This is a government that has come on a rescue mission. I will
say with full confidence that without this administration or if the
old administration had come back; by now, a lot of us would be
refugees in other countries because there was no money in this
country to survive on. A lot more will be crossing the Sahara
desert. People like me will be applying to go to the US or the UK
to become teachers again.
In the newspapers today, Governor Ayo Fayose,
through his aide, called you a rogue and described you as senile;
saying corruption still goes on in this government under your nose.
How would you react to that?
I’m told that he abused me. Which paper was that? I can go and
get it. I heard about it. No Nigerian will take Fayose seriously.
He is a man who just speaks as if he is a little child. He is sort
of ‘Trumpian’ Nigerian because he talks anyhow without logic and
reason. This is a man who said the President was on a life support
machine, that he could not recognise people, and that he had
pictures, only for some governors to go there and laugh with the
President. They said he was doing fine and that they would not be
surprised if he arrived sooner than later and that he was just
there because the doctors had not given him the go ahead to
leave. They would want him to be fully recovered so that when
he returns; there will be no question of relapse of any sort. That
office of governor is an important office; you have to be a
responsible man. For a whole governor to utter blatant lies, no
matter how much you hate a person, it is not responsible to do
that. That is what I was trying to say (before he attacked me now).
I have stronger words I could use for Fayose, but I don’t want to
say those words. But I think he should go and reflect. In the last
three years, has he behaved responsibly? Has he behaved like a
governor? Does he see himself fit for public office? Or has he
ridiculed himself and become a laughing stock? And it is not too
late for him to apologise to this country. He can apologise to the
President and in the spirit of Christianity and Islam, he will be
forgiven. But he has hurt Nigerians and the President very gravely.
And he should really feel a sense of remorse for his
activities.
But people say you are always attacking people and
using abusive words. As I mentioned earlier, the Senate, the House
of Representatives, judges, lawyers and now Fayose. Why are you
controversial?
I am passionate about saving this country from corruption; I am
very passionate about that. There is no group that I have taken on
that has not done something very damaging and disruptive to this
country, in relation to corruption. I am even trying to mellow down
so that the people will not think I am doing this because of a
personal reason. No, I am here based on principle. But if you go to
the Senate, a lot of them are under investigation, particularly
ex-governors for what they did when they were managing the
resources of their states. So what do you want me to say when we
are talking about billions stolen per person? And why am I taking
them on? They are depriving the people of this country and of their
states of their welfare and condemning them to misery. The same
applies to all the other groups I have taken on- politicians,
members of the House of Representatives, whoever. They are people
who have wronged Nigerians and I feel a strong passion to do
something on their behalf. Remember, I issued a statement about an
agency, where they bought about 70 cars with money meant for
infrastructure, and some of the cars cost N78m.
What have been your challenges since you joined the
anti-corruption crusade of this administration?
Let us start with our own faults. Yes, maybe some of our
prosecutions have not been perfect. But the imperfection and
inefficiency have been grossly exaggerated.
Grossly exaggerated? There have been no convictions
so far.
There have been few convictions but certainly, not enough. But
if you look at it, that is why I said yes, we also have our own
faults, which we are correcting in terms of training, procedures,
and telling the anti-graft corruption agencies to have what it
takes.
Yes, there were some issues but the major issue, which I don’t
want to belabour so that no one may again accuse me of running down
an institution, is one that concerns judges. The judges are the
gatekeepers in the resolution of corruption cases because we cannot
arrest people and jail them. They have to go through the judicial
process. I want to say it with all sense of responsibility that
there are some judges that are not fully committed to the fight
against corruption and will look for the slightest excuse to let a
looter off the hook. And as long as those judges are in position,
we are in trouble. There are some judges who are not hearing
criminal cases but interfere in cases going on, by trying to
encourage the judges actually hearing the cases not to convict. So
that aspect is very important. A vast majority of judges are
upright, clean and have integrity but there are few that are very
influential and powerful, who are simply frustrating the fight
against corruption.
Culled: Punch
Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against
Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay, in this interview with GBENRO ADEOYE,
insists that the fight against corruption has not been weakened by
President Muhammadu Buhari’s absence
As the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory
Committee Against Corruption, how would you rate the war against
corruption in the country?
I think it has been immensely successful regardless of what the
public may perceive.
The public will disagree very much with that
assessment essentially as there have been no convictions since the
administration came to power with a promise to fight corruption to
a standstill.
I think the mistake the generality of Nigerians are making is
that they only rate the war against corruption on the basis of the
number of convictions, but the war is much wider than that. A lot
has been done. For example, high profile looting at the executive
level has been eliminated. We don’t have people like a minister in
the previous administration, being investigated for corruption
along with her associates, in the present administration. That is a
major achievement. Nobody dares take a kobo that does not belong to
them or misuse any public fund. But nobody is thinking of that.
Under the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, it
was a common thing. There, everybody was having a ball, toying with
our common patrimony, taking billions and billions of naira out of
the country. What of the military? All the money that was provided
for the military to fight Boko Haram was diverted and shared among
some people. So our soldiers were being killed, while the officers
were getting richer at the expense of the country. What of subsidy
scam? This government ended subsidy scam. About N382bn subsidy scam
was wrongly claimed and fraudulently misappropriated. There is
nothing like that now. We know the assets the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices
and Other Related Offences Commission have recovered; they
discovered $9m in one house somewhere, $43m in another place. So
you cannot measure the success of the fight based on the number of
convictions alone.
People often ask what PACAC has achieved beyond
accusing people of being corrupt.
As for the PACAC, it is a think-tank; it is not an
anti-corruption agency with executive powers. It is a think-tank
that is supposed to provide leadership, direction and also build
capacity for the anti-corruption agencies and in that process,
PACAC has done a lot. It has organised training for judges and
prosecutors on interpretation of the Administration of Criminal
Justice Act. Judges at federal and state levels in all the six
geo-political zones, including judges in the Appeal Court and the
Supreme Court have all been brought into the process of dialogue
about how to handle corruption cases. Experienced foreign judges
that handled corruption cases in many countries were there.
First, over 160 prosecutors at the federal level were trained on
how to draft charges because there are a lot of complaints about
the drafting of charges. We have also completed the same thing for
state prosecutors. We also decided that the prosecution and
imprisonment of looters is not the only way to fight corruption. We
can also fight it by recovering what they have looted, pending when
they can be convicted. So we have a concept called Non-Conviction
Based Asset Forfeiture. We don’t have any law as a single act
containing this but when PACAC, the EFCC, and other agencies looked
into the existing laws and the Acts of the agencies, we found
individual clauses and items that empower them to actually seize
suspicious properties, get an interim forfeiture order and invite
anyone who owns such properties to come and establish proof of
ownership. And lots of assets have been seized. Many of them have
been permanently seized because the owners failed to come forward.
This includes money in local and foreign currencies and buildings,
particularly in Abuja.
How much has been seized and how many
properties?
I don’t have the figure but ICPC alone had seized a large number
before the EFCC started its own. Whole estates have been taken over
like that. One other thing we did was to train the agencies on how
to preserve assets like jewellery, cars and other properties. For
example, a watch belonging to Diezani Alison-Madueke (former
Minister of Petroleum) worth hundreds of thousands of pounds has
been seized. Or if you forfeit a car and leave it there, it will
depreciate in value. So we got experts from all over the world who
gave lectures about how agencies can preserve such properties. We
were taught that when cars and other things that depreciate quickly
are seized, the agencies can sell them and put the money in the
bank. If the owner is able to prove that he is the genuine owner of
the property, his money will be returned with interest. Otherwise,
by the time the case is finally decided, there will be no car to
hand over to the person involved. The knowledge that has been
acquired is being put into practice. We have a manual on guidelines
for prosecution and management of corruption cases.
But many Nigerians say the war has gone cold since
President Muhammadu Buhari left for the UK and that it appears he
took the anti-corruption war with him.
That is absolute nonsense. That is the mildest way I can put it.
The acting president is as fervent in this fight against corruption
as the President. They are together in it and one is not more
passionate than the other. Under the acting president, so many
things have happened. We have had dialogues and discussed ways to
improve the war against corruption. We have spoken with various
segments of the society-religious, business, professional, to see
how they are dealing with corruption internally. We have brought
them together to encourage them to monitor their people so that
they are not agents of corruption. People are using so many
sophisticated ways of taking money out of the country, so we did a
lot of research and held a conference on how to stem the illicit
financial flows.
You heard what the minister of finance (Kemi Adeosun) said; we
are trying to identify properties owned by Nigerians abroad,
particularly in the US and the UK. There is something like a census
of properties going on and people’s names will be attached to the
properties they own and the information will be given to the EFCC
and the ICPC. They will now commence proceedings to seize those
properties unless those people can explain where they got the money
to buy them from. And even if they legitimately bought those
properties, what taxes are they paying to Nigeria for them to have
been able to afford those properties? All those things are going on
right now and if anybody says that the anti-corruption war has gone
cold, then the person is totally ignorant. It is getting hotter in
fact.
But how come whistleblowers have stopped blowing
their ‘whistles’ since the President left the country? Why did the
EFCC suddenly stop discovering hidden suspected
loots?
This thing comes in waves. When the whistle blowing principle
first started, there was a lot of excitement and people went and
started identifying those things. The first lots have been
identified. But it won’t come with so much steam anymore; it will
be gradual because there is a limit to what people can find out
about what is being hidden. But a lot has been brought out; you see
all those cases being investigated like the amount the military men
and others have accumulated. You know the case of the former
military chief, who was earning almost N500m every month from the
funds of the air force, which he headed at one time. Then $43m was
discovered in Ikoyi.
But the fight against corruption is only being
fought in the media and Nigerians wonder when the government will
actually start prosecuting all the people he claims are
corrupt.
As I said to you, without convicting someone, we have got a lot
of money back. I don’t want to mention names. Cases have gone to
court, about $15m here and there; all those things have been
reported.
Our attitude to media trial is that we will ‘media try’. We will
try them in the media; the money they stole is not anonymous so
they cannot be anonymous. If we say so much has been looted, we
must name the person who looted it. And the court has given an
order that every name should be mentioned, we are compiling that
now and they will be exposed. So don’t think you can steal, loot
and then the anti-corruption agencies will be afraid of mentioning
your name, no. your name will be mentioned and even if you are not
convicted, for the rest of your existence, you and your family will
be tainted because of what you looted and what was got from you.
When you fly that private jet, Nigerians will know that it is their
money that was used to buy it. That name will follow that person
all his life. So yes, there will be media trial, it will
continue.
But doesn’t the law say that you are innocent until
proven guilty? As a lawyer, do you think it is fair if someone that
was tried in the media was later found out to be innocent? Are you
saying they are guilty when the court has not adjudged them to be
corrupt? Isn’t the onus on the agencies to prove that these people
are guilty?
My answer to that is that if they are innocent, let them sue for
defamation. That is all. In that case, they will now have to prove.
The problem of proof is big so if they feel that their names have
been disparaged, let them sue. Not a single one of them will sue
because they know they are looters who are getting away with it
with the help of some Senior Advocates of Nigeria. It is
deliberate, we will expose them.
Speaking of SANs, some of them have accused this
government of trying to blackmail and intimidate them into not
doing their job when all over the world; everyone has right to a
lawyer. Is this government saying people don’t have the right to be
defended by lawyers in criminal cases?
I entirely agree with the SANs who said that, it is a
constitutional right, every Nigerian is entitled to defence and the
law says you are innocent until you are proved guilty. But the
legal ethics of our profession insist that if you are aware that
your client is actually guilty of the offence, what you should do
is to let him plead guilty and then plead for the sentence to be
reduced. You cannot go on defending on the basis of innocence when
you know that there is guilt and those are the ones we are talking
about; the ones who know that their client is guilty. We have some
cases in which it has been established that money was collected
from the Central Bank of Nigeria, put in an aircraft and taken
somewhere and later put in a bank. This was money belonging to the
state, taken straight from the CBN. Now, which lawyer can
innocently say that he did not know that that client is a looter?
So that is the kind of thing we are talking about.
You mentioned SANs now. You have attacked the Senate
and judges before now. Some Nigerians say you and the presidency
appear to be taking the war too personal, abusing everyone as if
you are the only ones that are clean in the
country.
Well, who are the people saying this? They belong to our own
class; these are the elite. And they are a tiny minority of the
country who are profiting and feeding from corruption. But 99.99
per cent of Nigerians suffering and are wretched because of
corruption are with us. Go to the market place and take a census.
What you will hear is, ‘We are praying for you, we are with you,
please carry on, this is the only way this country can be saved,”
that is what they are all saying. So these groups of parasites, who
have sucked the blood out of this country and want to kill it, are
the ones saying what you have just said. And who is going to listen
to them and abandon the vast majority of poor Nigerians who have
been rendered wretched because of the crimes of these few people,
so we are representing the oppressed.
Several times today, you have mentioned that some
money and properties have been recovered from looters. If that is
the case, are they just going to be there while Nigeria continues
to say it has no money?
No, they are not going to be there. You are right, we need the
money. First, there is one set of money and assets like properties
and so on that has been permanently forfeited; that is available to
spend. But some of them are temporarily forfeited and awaiting
either the end of the case or the process by which the purported
owner will come and establish how he acquired the money legally.
The administration is taking care of all of them but we can only
have access to the ones permanently forfeited. And the process that
has to be gone through now is to bring a bill before the National
Assembly to appropriate that one for the use of the government.
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has just moved the
ICPC Chairman, Ekpo Nta, to another agency, even though you said
earlier in this interview that the agency had seized many
properties, before the EFCC started doing so. If he was doing well,
why then did the Presidency redeploy him?
One, I am not privileged to know why. But there must have been a
reason. It is possible he has reached the zenith of his performance
and needs to go and establish his capacity somewhere else. No, I
will disagree with anyone who says he has not done anything. But
again, the person who was posted to take over from him now is one
of the hardest working, brilliant and dynamic human beings I have
ever known. I have no doubt that he is going to bring more life to
the ICPC. Ekpo has done his best and I appreciate him a lot because
he has done some quiet jobs – corruption risk assessment in various
agencies to enable those agencies guide against corruption. He also
took the crusade to schools so that children can grow up knowing
that corruption is wrong. So he has done that and he should be
credited. A fresh blood with a fresh mandate is there now and we
will even see better results. So one has done well and we can carry
on and do even better and get more results for the benefit of this
country.
A lot of Nigerians have felt insulted with the way
the Presidency and even your committee have insisted that Ibrahim
Magu must head the EFCC as if he is the only Nigerian with
integrity, when there are millions of Nigerians who can do the
job.
No, there are not millions. No, no, there are no millions of
Nigerians at all. Integrity is a rare quality in Nigeria.
Are you saying Magu is the only person with
integrity?
No, he is not the only person but we don’t want to start doing
research now, looking for somebody else when the man who is there
is doing an excellent job and has done no wrong. There are two
things here. One, we will not allow somebody to be victimised by
people who are afraid that since they cannot influence him and
bribe him, he is going to investigate and probe them, and if
necessary, arrest and prosecute them. There are people like that
who just want to get him out of the way because of their
wrongdoing.
Two, he has done nothing wrong, so our sense of justice is that
we will not allow somebody to be oppressed because he is dedicated
to his responsibilities. And we know he is innocent.
But some people felt the whole drama with the Senate
was totally unnecessary, especially as it was a government agency –
Department of State Services – that brought out a report that the
Senate considered in rejecting Magu’s nomination, which it had the
right to do.
That has been investigated. The Attorney-General of the
Federation investigated it and then sent the report to the
Presidency, who looked at it and both of them came to the
conclusion that there was no basis for that accusation. The house
he was living in, which they said he paid N40m for, he didn’t pay
for it. It was a house given to him by a government agency and they
just told him to move in, so he knew nothing about the process of
getting the house and the payment. He just carried his suitcase and
moved into the house. How can you now accuse him of corruption when
he never handled money or negotiated anything? That was an unfair
accusation. He was a victim of injustice in that case. And nobody
wanted to know, they didn’t ask him to explain. One other reason
they gave was that he was found in an aircraft with someone who was
under investigation. But the truth of the matter is that both he
and the person involved were part of an investigation on
procurement of arms by the army. They were both there, and if you
are working in the same committee with someone, you will know each
other somehow. And Magu was travelling from Kaduna to Lagos or
something like that, he got to the airport and wanted to check in
and this gentleman came and said why bother to take commercial
aircraft, I have my private jet here and about to leave. So Magu
travelled with him. So things were raked up so that mud could be
thrown at him. We felt such injustice should not be allowed to
succeed; otherwise, you can pull anybody down anytime if we allow
things like that to succeed.
But when you talk about Alison-Madueke and others,
you talk like you have already pronounced them guilty. Can we say
they are corrupt when the court has not said so?
They cannot be sent to prison if they have not been convicted.
But nothing stops the prosecution and anti-graft agencies of the
country from saying you stole. That is all we are saying. So if you
think you are wrong, you know what to do. Let us take the case of
Diezani, you know yourself that a yacht worth $80m has been seized
by the American government. A flat in New York, which cost $50m,
has also been seized. Other properties are being seized, which
belong to Diezani and her associates all over the world. Imagine
furnishing your house with millions of dollars. All those things
are being investigated. It will be a big mistake to say let us deal
with the issues silently; you don’t know how long these cases will
take. The public must know what has happened to their assets. When
this government is complaining that there is no money, Nigerians
are entitled to know what happened to their money. This is what
happened to their money; a few people sat down and started taking
billions of dollars out of the system. When a former CBN Governor,
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, was saying $20bn was missing, a lot of people
doubted him. He was even suspended and eventually sacked. Now it
has been established. Well, already to my knowledge, apart from the
over $2bn that a former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki,
shared, well over $15bn has been identified and it came from the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. So this government came in
and was handicapped. All the money was gone, from the federation
account, to sovereign wealth account, to crude oil account.
Everything was empty. So we were in a hole and this administration
had to first dig us out of that hole before it started to build.
That is why it was not obvious that there was any improvement in
life. Now the building up has started and we can see the process
now. This is a government that has come on a rescue mission. I will
say with full confidence that without this administration or if the
old administration had come back; by now, a lot of us would be
refugees in other countries because there was no money in this
country to survive on. A lot more will be crossing the Sahara
desert. People like me will be applying to go to the US or the UK
to become teachers again.
In the newspapers today, Governor Ayo Fayose,
through his aide, called you a rogue and described you as senile;
saying corruption still goes on in this government under your nose.
How would you react to that?
I’m told that he abused me. Which paper was that? I can go and
get it. I heard about it. No Nigerian will take Fayose seriously.
He is a man who just speaks as if he is a little child. He is sort
of ‘Trumpian’ Nigerian because he talks anyhow without logic and
reason. This is a man who said the President was on a life support
machine, that he could not recognise people, and that he had
pictures, only for some governors to go there and laugh with the
President. They said he was doing fine and that they would not be
surprised if he arrived sooner than later and that he was just
there because the doctors had not given him the go ahead to
leave. They would want him to be fully recovered so that when
he returns; there will be no question of relapse of any sort. That
office of governor is an important office; you have to be a
responsible man. For a whole governor to utter blatant lies, no
matter how much you hate a person, it is not responsible to do
that. That is what I was trying to say (before he attacked me now).
I have stronger words I could use for Fayose, but I don’t want to
say those words. But I think he should go and reflect. In the last
three years, has he behaved responsibly? Has he behaved like a
governor? Does he see himself fit for public office? Or has he
ridiculed himself and become a laughing stock? And it is not too
late for him to apologise to this country. He can apologise to the
President and in the spirit of Christianity and Islam, he will be
forgiven. But he has hurt Nigerians and the President very gravely.
And he should really feel a sense of remorse for his
activities.
But people say you are always attacking people and
using abusive words. As I mentioned earlier, the Senate, the House
of Representatives, judges, lawyers and now Fayose. Why are you
controversial?
I am passionate about saving this country from corruption; I am
very passionate about that. There is no group that I have taken on
that has not done something very damaging and disruptive to this
country, in relation to corruption. I am even trying to mellow down
so that the people will not think I am doing this because of a
personal reason. No, I am here based on principle. But if you go to
the Senate, a lot of them are under investigation, particularly
ex-governors for what they did when they were managing the
resources of their states. So what do you want me to say when we
are talking about billions stolen per person? And why am I taking
them on? They are depriving the people of this country and of their
states of their welfare and condemning them to misery. The same
applies to all the other groups I have taken on- politicians,
members of the House of Representatives, whoever. They are people
who have wronged Nigerians and I feel a strong passion to do
something on their behalf. Remember, I issued a statement about an
agency, where they bought about 70 cars with money meant for
infrastructure, and some of the cars cost N78m.
What have been your challenges since you joined the
anti-corruption crusade of this administration?
Let us start with our own faults. Yes, maybe some of our
prosecutions have not been perfect. But the imperfection and
inefficiency have been grossly exaggerated.
Grossly exaggerated? There have been no convictions
so far.
There have been few convictions but certainly, not enough. But
if you look at it, that is why I said yes, we also have our own
faults, which we are correcting in terms of training, procedures,
and telling the anti-graft corruption agencies to have what it
takes.
Yes, there were some issues but the major issue, which I don’t
want to belabour so that no one may again accuse me of running down
an institution, is one that concerns judges. The judges are the
gatekeepers in the resolution of corruption cases because we cannot
arrest people and jail them. They have to go through the judicial
process. I want to say it with all sense of responsibility that
there are some judges that are not fully committed to the fight
against corruption and will look for the slightest excuse to let a
looter off the hook. And as long as those judges are in position,
we are in trouble. There are some judges who are not hearing
criminal cases but interfere in cases going on, by trying to
encourage the judges actually hearing the cases not to convict. So
that aspect is very important. A vast majority of judges are
upright, clean and have integrity but there are few that are very
influential and powerful, who are simply frustrating the fight
against corruption.
Culled: Punch
Read more https://www.nairalaw.com/media-trial-for-looters-is-deliberate-prof-sagay/