ARISE O NIGERIANS (VII)

[Salimonu Kadiri]

In one of the previous series, I recalled the address to Nigerians by Buhari at a town hall meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Sunday, 31 January 2016 when he said among other things, "On the fight against corruption vis-à-vis the judiciary, Nigerians will be right to say that is my main headache for now." He said further that "the ongoing fight against corruption in Nigeria could be effectively tackled with the strong support of the judiciary". Buhari had been contesting Presidential elections since 2003 and the role the judiciary has been playing to sustain corruption in Nigeria should not have been new to him. About four years before Buhari's ascendant to the presidential seat, the then newly elected President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Joseph Daudu, admitted on September 27, 2012 thus, "At the moment the machinery for justice delivery is ponderously slow, corrupt and inefficient. The Nigerian masses are worse for it. Corruption can be dealt with when there is a resolve to do so by all stakeholders." If the delivery of justice is ponderously slow, it is the judiciary self which can accelerate it and not any bogus stakeholders. But following the outcry of President Buhari in faraway Ethiopia over the Nigerian judiciary serving as the backbone of corruption in Nigeria, the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr. Augustin Alegeh, on Wednesday, 10 February 2016 said, "The NBA condemns in its entirety the generalisation and/or categorisation of the Judiciary as being corrupt and an impediment to the zero-corruption policy of the present administration." He said further that, "such generalisations and categorisations of the Judiciary as being an obstacle to the anti-corruption crusade was aimed at intimidating the Judiciary." Thereafter, President Buhari's government was silent over the role of the Judiciary in sustaining corruption in Nigeria. Why should Buhari travel to faraway Ethiopia to tell a gathering of less than 1000 Nigerians that the Nigerian Judiciary constituted a major hindrance to the fight against corruption when he could have addressed around 200 million Nigerians at home through a national broadcast? Buhari could have enlisted the support of Nigerians at home for his government's fight against corruption by drawing the attention of Nigerians to how the Nigerian Judiciary has been sabotaging corruption fight. Already, on 17 December 2015, the online Nigerian Vanguard reported that the then Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Mr. Ekpo Nta, lamented that the ICPC was prosecuting over 400 corruption-related cases in various Courts across the country and blamed judiciary for the drawback it suffered in the course of prosecuting the cases. In the same report, the Acting Chairman of EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, suggested a legislation that would fix a time frame within which corruption cases should be heard and determined by the judiciary. Probably, Buhari understood that the Nigerian Judiciary could not be made to hear and decide corruption cases expeditiously, he tried to find other means to get corruption cases tried speedily.

In February 2016, it was reported that President Muhammadu Buhari forwarded an Executive Bill to the National Assembly for the establishment of a Special Criminal Court to try cases of corruption, narcotics and kidnapping ( with emphasis on corruption). The need for the Special Criminal Court to try corruption cases was highlighted when the Acting EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu, spoke in the online Nigeria Premium Times of 16 February 2016. He said among other things, "One of the big challenges we have in the effective prosecution of the war on corruption is that of very senior lawyers who Nigeria has been very kind to; they, who went to good schools here when Nigeria was good, many of them on scholarship; they, who Nigeria has given so much opportunity.

When we have corruption cases, cases of people who have stolen food from the mouths of our children; when we have cases of people who have stolen money meant to build hospitals and buy drugs; when we have cases of people who have stolen all the money meant to buy guns for our soldiers to Fight Boko Haram; when we have all these cases of wicked people who have stolen Nigeria's money; they run to these same lawyers, give them part of the stolen money and mobilise them to fight us, to delay us in Court and to deny Nigerians of Justice. These are the people who do not want justice for the common man." It must have been for tactical reason that Ibrahim Magu did not mention judges as being complicit in the judicial support for the corrupt. However, the National Assembly to which Buhari had sent the Bill for the creation of Special Criminal Court, February 2016, to try cases of corruption had instead on 23 March 2016 passed into law about 6 trillion-naira appropriation and presented it to President Buhari for his assent without attaching details of the Budget. It was discovered that National Assembly had criminally infused 100 billion-naira funds for constituency projects for its members. Buhari refused to sign what eventually became known as Budget Padding. The Attorney General and Federal Minister of Justice seemed not to know his duty or was a friend to the budget padders which was why none of them was ever prosecuted. In his 29 May 2016, democracy broadcast to the nation, President Buhari revealed among other things thus, "We then identified forty-three thousand ghost workers through the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS). That represents pay packets totalling N4.2 billion stolen every month." The president did not tell Nigerians how many years the forty-three thousand ghost workers, collectively, have been receiving N4.2 billion every month. He did not tell Nigerians if the ghost workers were identified in persons and if they would be prosecuted.  Further in the broad-cast, President Buhari lamented, "It is more painful for me that a major producer of crude oil with our refineries that once exported refined products is today having to import all its domestic needs(fuel). This is what corruption and mismanagement has done to us, and that is why we must fight these ills." If corruption and mismanagement were identified in 2016 as major causes of zero production in Nigeria's crude oil refineries, one would have expected that by year 2020 obstructions to functional crude oil refineries would have been removed. The following day after his 29 May 2016 broadcast to the nation, President Buhari invited members of the National Assembly to a dinner at the Presidential Villa, on Monday, 30 May 2016 and he seized the opportunity to appeal to the members of the National Assembly for speedy passage of Special Criminal Court Bill which he forwarded to them in February 2016. However, the new and old PDP members controlled National Assembly were aware that enacting law for the establishment of Special Criminal Courts to try corruption cases was like digging their own graves and, consequently, they knocked Buhari's Bill for the establishment of Special Criminal Courts into coma without any reaction from Nigerians and, most especially, the intellectuals. 

By 26 August 2016, one Abubakar Mahmood was elected President of Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). In his maiden address immediately after the election he said, "The NBA under my watch will fight corruption. We shall make the legal profession unattractive for corrupt lawyers." What many Nigerians know through experience is that good lawyers know the law but wealthy and successful lawyers know Judges that can grant bails to state's pilferers and grant perpetual injunctions against investigating agencies from arresting, detaining,  interrogating, and prosecuting suspected treasury looters. Politically, it appeared as if APC had been dissolved after the election in which it was given the control of the National Assembly and the presidency in 2015. Although the Constitution of Nigeria made it mandatory to belong to a political party which must sponsor one to contest for an elected office, the APC National Assembly members behaved as if they were independent of the party on which platform they were elected. Neither the President nor the National Chairman of the APC made any move to instil party discipline on its members and the Presidency itself appeared to have been peopled by oiks who see governance as a self-serving enterprise. This became known to Nigerians on 14 October 2016, when Naziru Mikailu interviewed the wife of the President, Aisha Buhari, on BBC Hausa program. BBC asked Aisha Buhari : Almost two years after President Muhammadu Buhari was elected into this government; it appears as if things are not going on well, the people are complaining - where do you think the problem is?

Aisha Buhari : ...... The only thing that almost everybody is not happy with, including myself, is on those that really suffered for this journey and now people who do not even have registration cards, are guiding us, which is so unfair and unfortunate for the journey that we started for more than 13 years ago.

The President does not know 45 out of 50 of the people he appointed and I don't know them either, despite being his wife of 27 years. Some people are sitting down in their homes folding their arms only for them to be called to come and head an agency or a ministerial position. THEY DON'T HAVE A MISSION OR VISION OF OUR APC; YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I MEAN? 

BBC : Whose fault is this?

Aisha Buhari : It's the fault of 15.429 million people because they are the one that brought in the government. IT'S THEIR FAULT. THEY SHOULD PROTEST, THE 15.429 THAT VOTED FOR BUHARI AND THE APC.

​BBC : As his wife, what will be your advice to him going forward?

Aisha Buhari : MY ADVICE IS TO THE WHOLE PEOPLE THAT VOTED FOR HIM. They should strengthen the party and who- ever is not part of the party should not have control over fifteen point something million people. We are in a democracy, not military era, so we have to play it well and leave a legacy.

What is remarkable in the interview with Aisha Buhari is that she blamed the 15 million, 424 thousand and 921 Nigerians that voted for Buhari to attain presidency for going home to sleep after electing him and allowed APC to be hijacked by political loafers. Also, remarkable was her response to the question of what her advice would be to her husband on the way forward. She saw no reason to advice the husband but, instead, the whole people that voted for him to become President. She wanted 15,424,921 that voted Buhari into power to regain the control of the APC from the hijackers and to strengthen it. Aisha Buhari is a genius because she understood that if one wants a coherent policy implementation the party should be supreme to individual, including the President. Moreover, party politics should reinforce participation, involvement and collectivism. Unfortunately, at that time the National Chairman of the APC, as mentioned earlier, was John Odigie-Oyegun whose ability to mobilise members and supporters of the party for the implementation of the party's election manifesto was zero. As he dozed off, political loafers in the presidency quickly isolated key figures in the APC from the President. The unpatriotic loafers around the President quickly learned how to parrot fight against corruption in his face while at his back they dinned and whined with old and new corrupt pals. (To be continued)