Need For Commission On Political Corruption

The idea behind the proposal for a setting up of a commission on political corruption is to create opportunity for Nigerians who have defrauded Nigeria to openly declare their corrupt deeds and request for pardon on agreed terms to be set by the Commission. Instead of setting agendas here and there for the incoming government, Nigerians should work hard at providing the incoming government with a comprehensive report with which to begin the anti-corruption campaign afresh in Nigeria.

By Bob Majiri Oghene Etemiku

In sixteen years, Nigeria has fought corruption with all its might. In those sixteen years and three civilian administrations, Nigeria made the mistake of setting up two corruption fighting bodies.

They are the EFCC and the ICPC, which have been described by critics as no different from the corruption fighting agencies in Bangladesh – notorious for being more corrupt than the corruption that they fight.

After sixteen years and after three civilian administrations, we are proud to say that at least five heavy politically exposed persons, three of them former presidents, a former vice president in the Halliburton scandal, are strutting about Nigeria as elder statesmen where their accomplices in Europe and America have already served jail terms.

Armed with the brooms of the EFCC and ICPC, we have succeeded in sweeping the Siemens scandal and the Fuel Subsidy and Pensions Scams under the carpet.

It is sad to note as well that nearly all the cases of corruption that our ACAs have been pursuing for 16 years involving ex governors, ex legislators and ex this and ex that, amount to a figure – N1,354,132,400,000.00 – that I have no idea how to pronounce.

And as a matter of fact, one of those ex-governors in one of the states in the South-South has secured a perpetual injunction from prosecution on corruption charges.

After sixteen years of ‘fighting’ corruption, we suddenly woke up one morning to discover that a secret agreement which purportedly took place on the 14th of July 2014, grants perpetual immunity to the beneficiaries of a $5billion heist.

But just last week, I ran into the chap who has been fighting tooth and nail to get the POCA – Proceeds of Crime Act legislation passed.

How long he has campaigned to get that bill passed is how long he has been frustrated in his attempts.

So the question I ask is this: how do you expect that the people who the bill seeks to indict, and who populate the legislative assembly, would want to fast track the passage of a bill that would put them to jail?
The POCA bill is one that seeks to get indicted, persons who have invested stolen monies into businesses that have yielded a legitimate income from the proceeds of crime.

But you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to be able to steal government money in Nigeria. United Nations SARI (i) – Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative – report helps us to understand how our monies get out of Nigeria and never, ever come back.

First, because our financial tracking mechanisms are weak and can be exploited, it is easy to wire the monies abroad to safe havens.

Technically, the report says that this is ‘placement.’ Then with the help of those who know how to exploit and manipulate weakness and lacunas in the system, these monies are then layered (the common term is ‘money laundering’) via a vast network of banks and financial institutions that defy international borders and boundaries.

And these are institutions that have laws that do not help with the repatriation of monies wired to these foreign countries.

The last part – ‘integration’ of the proceeds from crime – is often the easy part, and this is because any man or woman without visible means of generating those gargantuan sums of money can easily walk into any bank anywhere in Nigeria and execute a transaction involving millions of dollars.

My friend in a Finnish university told me that in that country, you cannot take more than two thousand Euros from any bank without having the police come knock on your door asking how you came about such monies.

According to him, there are no ACAs in Finland, and that is because everyone is a police officer and an ACA in his or her own right.

Therefore, that corruption is our bane is common knowledge. I have tried to describe ‘bane’ to a group of civil society people.

I likened it to a fly that keeps pestering and keeps trying to get into our nice cup of tea on a very cold morning.

Most of the time we try to shoo it away, gently, but we eventually and inadvertently slap our cup of tea and splash the tea all over certain vital documents on our table.

That fly is a pest, and it buzzes about us in our homes, churches, mosques and offices. Through ineffectual judicial processes, we keep trying to shoo it away.

The insecticide we need for that house fly is not just an anti-corruption agency. We need to rejig and rework how we fight corruption.

The first paragraph of article 37 of the United Nation Convention Against Corruption, UNCAC, has provided us with an unconventional leeway for that fight.

It recommends to each country to take appropriate measures to encourage persons who participate or who have participated in the commission of an offence established in accordance with this Convention to supply information useful to competent authorities for investigative and evidentiary purposes and to provide factual, specific help to competent authorities that may contribute to depriving offenders of the proceeds of crime and to recovering such proceeds.

And as a matter of fact since 2006, the World Bank has designed and worked with a template, Voluntary Disclosure Programme, VDP, that allows those who have stolen public monies to come to an arrangement where they return those stolen monies without the encumbrances and adumbrations of litigation.

In the light of this fact, and in the light of the fact that we have successfully failed to curtail the tide of corruption, we propose a public commission on political corruption.

The idea behind the proposal for a setting up of a commission on political corruption is to create opportunity for Nigerians who have defrauded Nigeria to openly declare their corrupt deeds and request for pardon on agreed terms to be set by the Commission.

Instead of setting agendas here and there for the incoming government, Nigerians should work hard at providing the incoming government with a comprehensive report with which to begin the anti-corruption campaign afresh in Nigeria.

Any Nigerian convicted of corruption cases, those who are currently undergoing trial on corruption cases and those who have been indicted by various reports should be given an opportunity to testify of their involvement on the issues against them.

We believe as well that others who have corruptly enriched themselves with public funds should be given the opportunity to testify before the commission and openly present their positions.

Thereafter, they can ask for and be granted a pardon after they have returned monies that they have stolen, together with proceeds from such crimes.

If within the one year that this commission on political corruption holds and well known cases fail to show up and testify and confess, then the full weight of the law should fall on them.

Paragraph one of the draft Civil Society Coalition Statement issued on May 8, 2015, and ahead of the 6th Conference of State parties in St. Petersburg, urges us all to recall that corruption weakens public institutions and the rule of law.

Corruption damages the competitive and private investment climate, jeopardizes sustainable development and fosters instability and damages people’s sense of shared obligations and rights.

Those who have listened to me talk about this commission on political corruption have lampooned the idea.

They have said that it would breed impunity and undermine the fortunes of the institutions that are place to fight corruption.

That is not so. The commission on political corruption is not an idea to wish away our ACAs – rather, it is an opportunity to strengthen them, harmonise and empower them while the commission is underway.

Bob Majiri Oghene Etemiku writes from the Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice, ANEEJ, Abuja.