- says Buhari’s anti-corruption fight is dead, buried
In this interview with The PREMIER, Russian trained medical doctor and second republic lawmaker, Junaid Mohammed, discusses President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption fight and returned the verdict that it is dead. Excerpts:
I remember speaking with you some time ago when Magu’s confirmation was rejected by the senate. You had shown strong support for him at the time.
Now that we are hearing all of these allegations against him, do you still stand by what you had said then that he was being witch-hunte?.
Well, let me make this generalised statement. First and foremost, the development in the EFCC and of course, the so-called anti corruption war merely confirms what I must have told you when I spoke about the nepotism in President Buhari’s government.
And I also said that from all indications, if indeed Buhari is serious about fighting corruption, he is on his own. He is alone in the government. There is nobody else in the government who believes in that anticorruption fight. And I said, his own mantra, his own true attitude would come when time passed and that we are going to know whether he is serious about fighting corruption, given the characters that he has surrounded himself with I think the time has come for us to pass a valid judgment.
The judgment is simple and straightforward, and its from my own point of view. It is passed in good faith. The first is that the anti corruption war has failed, its finished and its over because you don’t fight this kind of war or any kind of war by frustrating the people you have appointed to fight the war.
If you are really serious and you find some short coming with the people, whether Magu or Ribadu or Lamurde or Farida Waziri. If they are not doing well, remove them and put some people. But you cannot claim to be fighting a war while you are also doing noting about the people who are with you and are frustrating the war.
What I mention in that interview with you three years or more ago is that I said that one, fighting a war in the case of Nigeria is like fighting a war to survive an existential threat.
Because unless corruption can be tamed in this country there is no way the country can survive and make progress. And a nation that does nothing but just survive, is no better than an animal because an animal is something that just live by the day. Everyday they survive is a call for congratulation. But a nation of human beings must aspire to a higher order, a higher ambition.
And if it fails to do that, then clearly whatever it says about itself, it is a failure. Now, when the EFCC was formed under Obasanjo, I had occasion to discuss with him when I saw the text of the enabling Act. And I made certain observations to Obasanjo. I said to him that it seems they want to tag the EFCC into a police organisation.
And unfortunately the police in Nigeria have a very lousy reputation. They are corrupt, they are unfair, they have very bad issues with self esteem and self respect, and that some of them are involved in armed robbery, some of them lend their weapons to armed robbers to go and do armed robbery.
So, I said that kind of organisation cannot be trusted by Nigerians. Without public trust, there is no way you can fight corruption. Secondly, I told Obasanjo that the ideal thing would have been to create a separate organisation.
That organisation will be independent of the Attorney General because all the Attorney Generals in Nigeria were political appointees, and they wield so much power and they are accountable to nobody except the president. And it will be bad if the president has no knowledge of the law and morality.
So, I said it would have been better if we did what the South Africans did by having what they call Independent National Prosecuting Authority. And of course take prosecution against bribe and put there. And make sure that the Independent National Prosecution Authority is not under the Attorney General. It should be under the President himself.
Thirdly, you also make sure that the office of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) is taken away from the office of the Attorney General who is a political appointee and put there so that you know when a case is being prosecuted is being prosecuted in the best interest of the country.
And that only the elected President has the right to tell them what to do and what not to do in accordance with the law. Obasanjo agreed with me, but said time. But I also told Obasanjo and I said I could see his problem because essentially the EFCC was his own personal initiative with the encouragement of certain countries who are willing to give us money and to train some of the people who would work in the EFCC. And they are also making the creation of the EFCC conditional for them to forgive our debts.
During Obasanjo’s first term we were busy trying to negotiate with them under a system that is called HIPC 1 and HIPC 2 for them to forego some of their debts, not only the interest but the principal. And they say look your country is corrupt and we are not going to let go some of the money you owe us unless you create this organisation. I discuss this issue openly with Obasanjo that if after we have created the EFCC and we see this problem what are we going to do about it.
And he said we amend the enabling law. And I said but you know that to amend the enabling law, you have to amend the constitution and the Nigerian constitution has been deliberately made so difficult to amend. Obasajo agreed with me.
Another thing also, and you can cross check this piece with Obasanjo. And I told Obasanjo that you are a man with a very strong personality. Like Obasanjo or hate him, the fact is that you can’t deny the fact that he has a very strong personality. I told him that I fear to think what will happen if in the future you left the presidency and somebody came who is either lousy or who has no personality. Normally I used to call him Kabiyesi. I said Kabiyesi you are a man we can confront whether we like you or we don’t like you.
But if we have a lacklustre fellow who comes and become president whether by accident or whatever, then we are going to have a very serious problems because he will not be able to even understand what is at stake. I also said that there is the issue of you doing your home work from the time you were a staff officer to the time you became a minster under Gowon, later you became number two under Murtala and later you became a head of state. Everybody who has worked with you knows you are very intelligent and hardworking.
You cannot guarantee I n this interview with The PREMIER, Russian trained medical doctor and second republic lawmaker, Junaid Mohammed, discusses President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption fight and returned the verdict that it is dead. Excerpts: Nigerians or anybody else that after you the person who will come will have the same grip and have the same gut and will also have strong personality and would have also done his homework. Now, all those that I told Obasanjo has now come to pass under Buhari.
So, you can now see why we have a problem. In addition, I knew Magu since I was in OMPADEC in Port Harcourt. He was a DPO under a friend who was the commissioner of police. So, if I speak about him…he hasn’t given me a house, I have not asked him to forgive me if I am found in any shady deals in business or whatever it is. So, what I said about Magu is still what I stand for. Given the kind of humiliation he went through, and not only him, all the people who have been head of the EFCC – Ribadu, who was disgraced out of office.
In fact they wanted to arrest him until he had to run. Lamurde was unceremoniously eased. And this garrulous woman came and made some noise and in a jiffy, she was thrown out and now Magu. Now, if you want to fight corruption or any national issue, you are going to do it not with angels but people here.
Now, if you make it a habit of disgracing these people publicly and even piling up charges against them, then nobody will do the fight for you. That is the danger of what we are doing now. As far as I am concerned, given what has happened to Magu, the anti corrupting war is dead and buried. Those against Magu you told me about four years ago, are they still the same people after him now I mentioned the Attorney General of the Federation, and the law makes him the superintending minister of the EFCC.
Now, anybody who knows this Malami, and Malami was practicing here in Kano. Anybody who knows him, knows what he can do. This man is Attorney General who decides what to do about EFCC cases, and has veto power. And when he cannot have his way, he goes and whisper some dangerous stuff into Buhari’s ear.
And Buhari is by nature gullible. You can see that the whole thing was going to happen this way. It is not surprising. What is surprising is that it took so long for this showdown to happen. Even among his fellow friends and lawyers, they know Malami as a hustler. If the president is a believer in the rule of law, when charges where made against Magu, who ever made the charges, the attorney general in this case, put pen to paper. What he should do, he should call Magu and ask Magu to respond.
And after receiving Magu’s response, if he is not happy with the two submissions by Magu and the attorney general, then he can now put up a panel to go and investigate. He didn’t do that. He simply received the nonsense from the so called attorney general and then call one lawyer from Ilorin who left the judiciary in a cloud, Isa Salami, to now come and investigate Magu in a secret panel. And up till today the government has refused to confirm if the report of the panel will be made public.
Now, trying somebody of that calibre in secret is no way to get the truth, and you will never get to the truth that way. Secondly, the issues are stacked against Magu because by having him arrested and keeping him for ten days without any serious charge, you are already giving the impression that he is guilty as charged. So, whether he is right or wrong is beside the point. It is the issue of doing justice under the rule of law. And the only way you can get to the truth in a democracy is to being fair.
And no matter what crime he committed, under the English common law system we inherited from the British, he is innocent until found guilty. Since the issues he is accused of, are issues of crime, a crime has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt before you can accuse somebody.
All these where not done. So you begin to wonder, is Buhari a true believer in the fight against corruption? Or are some people around him, some of whom in fact don’t have any definable position in government but who are exercising executive authority.
And if you recall, when Magu’s name was first submitted, the senate under Bukola Saraki and his fellow corrupt principal officers rejected him. Later, Buhari wrote another letter to the senate
With Magu’s name, and the director of the SSS, one bloody buffoon call Lawan Daura whose only qualification is that he comes from Daura. He finished his career here in Kano as a director of the SSS.
We all knew him, we know the kind of out of the gutter personality he was. Now, that man wrote a letter in the same government to the senate and said Magu should not be cleared.
So, the question is who is in-charge? Buhari or Lawal Daura. To cut a long story short, Magu was never confirmed as a substantive chairman, and this man who contributed in undermining him Lawal Daura, was not dealt with by Buhari. It was another matter when Buhari was sick in London and he was found to have messed up.
Then Osinbajo, the vice president, told the President he was going to dismiss him. Buhari gave the go-ahead and the man was dismissed, otherwise he would have been on his seat until today.
So, you can see why we should stop deceiving ourselves. The anti corruption war is over. If another government comes, or another president comes, if he is sincere and serious, perhaps it’s possible to revive it.
But at the moment, the whole thing is not only in coma, but dead. Akpabio and the lawmakers have been exchanging accusations. What do you make of the probe of the NDDC? I don’t know how much you know about my personal history, but I have served in the National Assembly twice (second republic).
Secondly, I was also a federal commissioner in OMPADEC which became NDDC. With due modesty, if I say something about the National Assembly or indeed the NDDC of today, I am talking from some measure of experience which is credible.
First and foremost, I think setting up the OMPADEC was a mistake in the way it was done. For the avoidance of doubt, I believe in the stated mission of OMPADEC and the reason why it was setup. That is, to do something to minimise the pollution and the deprivation which afflict the people,
who live in the Niger Delta area where oil is exploited. But I also believe, given the generalised irresponsibility of the Nigerian political elite, whether in the Niger Delta or outside, unless we take the trouble to make sure that we have people of sound character, who have competence in various areas of management and pollution control, and who are known to have a history of very serious integrity, the thing was going to fail.
And I said as a matter of principle that they should locate the headquarters not in any of the competing oil producing states, but in Abuja, the national capital, because they are not going to do the work physically themselves.
They are going to recruit people, construction companies, grading companies and other companies who specialise in various aspects who come under the remit of OMPADEC, now NDDC. And I insisted that the money that should be made available should be public. And that every year before the budget of the NDDC is released, the budget has to be audited. It’s after the audited budget has been passed by the National Assembly that we should even begin to start talking about the subsequent financial year of the NDDC.
Now, for whatever reason, politicians came into it and some people wanted to use OMPADEC, later NDDC in order to enhance their political career. That was the beginning of the end. Now, as if that was not enough of a problem, when Yar’Adua was in power, in a very misguided manner he decided to set up what he called the ministry for the Niger Delta. Now, every ministry in the federal government has a responsibility in each of the states of the Niger Delta.
So, setting up the ministry of the Niger Delta was a stupid duplication which has no use to purpose. It makes the issue of corruption worse. And of course if you create a ministry for the Niger Delta it stands to reason that you are only going to appoint somebody from the Niger Delta the minister.
That is against the basic principle of public administration and management which is based on competence and does not base in where you come from, whether you are the son of the soil or not. When Mr Ufot Ekaete after he served as the secretary to the government of the federation and was appointed as minister of the Niger Delta, they quickly ganged up against him and got him removed by Jonathan Goodluck. Now, I don’t know anybody who has served in the ministry or the NDDC who is a better manager than Ufot Ekaete, including myself.
So, you can see the problem because when people talk about good intentions and don’t do anything good about the deeds they do, this is what always happen. And there is nothing new about Godswill Akpabio whom I know personally or his former boss, Obong Victor Attah. I know both of them.
So, I have no problem with them as persons, but the fact of the matter is that the National Assembly is a cesspool of corruption. And there is no way Nigeria can develop with the character of the persons we have in the National Assembly. And if he says they are corrupt, they are corrupt.
Everybody knows that they are corrupt. Perhaps it takes a minister, part of the government to come and say it because it acquires greater credibility. But whether he says it or not, the average Nigerian knows that the National Assembly is very corrupt. They can take money in order to pass the budget. And there are members of the National Assembly who are ex-convict, who have served prison term somewhere, in America or Europe. And two former presidents of the senate are still in court for corruption.
And the case hasn’t gone anywhere because they don’t want the case to continue. Again, we have the issue of the speaker who is a qualified lawyer, who was practicing in America. He took somebody’s money and chop the money and disappeared. He came here and joined politics. In America or any serous country, he would have been debarred. He would never practice law again. A lot of you in the media have not been helping democracy.
You have not in any meaningful way contributed to the anti-corruption fight. And of course, a number of media people expect that when they come to interview you they would go with an envelope. And the low calibre of people who are practicing journalism, and the low calibre of people who are practicing politics, contribute to the mess we are in in this country. Literally, it makes it impossible to have meaningful development. The current attorney general is the worst we’ve had in Nigeria from before colonial times till toady.
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