Between EFCC and AGF:
Need for sanity
By Femi Babafemi is a Lagos-based journalist
Saturday, September 22, 2007
|
•Aaondoakaa
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
|
For about four weeks now, the obvious battle for supremacy
between the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister
of Justice and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
(EFCC) has dominated other debates in the court of public
opinion. Invariably, most of the arguments have been slanted
in favour of which side the discussants fall.
As such, there is the need for more enlightened Nigerians
to join the debate with their dispassionate views and restore
sanity into public discourse.
In view of this, I have decided to make use of this medium
to express my understanding of the issue at the bottom of
this whole brouhaha. At the inception of the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s
administration, he told Nigerians that his government would
pursue a seven-point agenda including the Niger Delta crisis,
energy and of course the enthronement of rule law and due
process in all its dealings. From then, his ministers and
other political appointees who have been saddled with the
responsibility of ensuring this seven-point agenda is realized
have gone to town with the areas of the agenda relevant to
their office.
One predominant thing that all of them have however turned
to a must-sing-song is the point that their activities and
those of their subordinates as well as Nigerians as a whole
must be guided by the rule of law and due process. Yar’Adua
himself has said this severally both at local and international
fora.To demonstrate the administration’s commitment
to the pursuit of rule of law and due process, Yar’Adua
never twisted or frustrated the execution of the Supreme Court
judgement over who should occupy the Anambra State government
house as governor. Peter Obi was promptly restored to office
and Andy Uba sacked. A similar instance is the case of the
Central Bank Governor Prof. Chukwuma Soludo. Counting on a
CBN Act which gave him some level of autonomy, Soludo suddenly
announced to the public a new Naira policy without briefing
the Minister of Finance or the president.
It didn’t take time before he was called to order and
of course the entire policy technically knocked out. We recall
that Soludo never made trouble or feel humiliated. He succumbed
to the argument of the government that he never followed due
process and rule of law in the process of initiating and implementing
the policy.
Then came the latest controversy between the EFCC and the
AGF. Without sounding different from other members of the
Yar’Adua cabinet, Aondoakaa read the riot act to agencies
under his own supervisory role as enshrined in Section 174
of the 1999 Constitution. The nation’s constitution,
as I have been made to understand right from my elementary
study of government as a subject in secondary school and later
in elective law courses in my graduate and post graduate classes
in Ife and Lagos, is supreme and above other acts, edicts
and proclamations in a democracy.
Soon after the AGF told these agencies that it is no longer
business as usual and that the rule of law which is the anchorage
of the Yar’Adua’s administration, must be followed
in their prosecution of cases with a threat to step in if
his office discovers that any of them is breaching the order,
the EFCC chairman picked up the gauntlet against him.
The refusal of Ribadu to take instructions from an ordinary
minister when he never did under the man, Olusegun Obasanjo
who appointed him has led to the on-going debate on whether:
one, AGF has the powers to supervise EFCC and two, the EFCC
should operate within the ambit of law by obeying court orders
in the course of prosecuting its anti-graft cases.
Of course, the test case in this discourse is the trial of
former Abia State governor, Dr Orji Uzor Kalu by EFCC in spite
of an earlier court order restraining the commission from
arresting or tampering with Kalu’s freedom until the
determination of a suit he filed at an Abia State High Court.
My interest arose when even lawyers, senior ones for that
matter, and of course, ready for hire opinion writers and
‘chop-chop’ civil society groups started taking
up pages in newspapers to insult our sensitivity by distinguishing
between authentic court orders and “kangaroo”
ones.
Their view is that Ribadu decided to shun the Abia court order
because it was a 'purchased' or 'kangaroo' order.
One, at this point, is forced to ask this group of writers
including NGOs who have been non-existing and non-functional
before now but which suddenly have millions of Naira to place
adverts in the media, if there is a definition of what an
authentic order is or what qualifies some orders as kangaroo
in the Nigerian constitution? The constitution and of course
commonsense dictate that court order is court order and must
be obeyed by all concerned if there is going to be orderliness
and sanity in any society.
It is then left for the restrained party to work towards the
vacation of the order rather than disregard or disobey it
under the guise of categorizing it as kangaroo or whatever
name. I must tell Nigerians that this warped argument has
been brought into a pure constitutional matter and enlightened
discourse because the administration of Gen. Obasanjo has
bastardized our legal system so much so that in his eight
years as president, he and Ribadu decided on which court orders
to obey and which to label kangaroo. I think if the nation
has to grow well, things have to be done properly.
Kalu’s case is just a test case, there are hundreds
of Nigerians who have been and are still being denied their
rights or even being denied of fair hearing by not only EFCC
but other government agencies because of the culture of might
is right entrenched in our polity by Obasanjo. I believe it
is absurd and in fact the height of insanity for people who
claim to be defenders of human rights to be twisting simple
constitutional issues in arguments and demands laden with
blackmails and clothed with deceit for self-preservation and
pecuniary gains.
As much as there is the need for all Nigerians to support
the nation’s anti-graft war, EFCC and other agencies
in this regard, we must try to separate the individuals involved
in the process from the facts and constitutionality of our
actions otherwise we will consciously or unconsciously be
encouraging public office holders to continue trampling on
our rights.
It is Kalu’s turn today, it could be Gani Fawehinmi,
Femi Falana or any other person tomorrow. We all need to support
anti-graft war executed based on the rule of law.
|
