“Indeed, I have found that we came close to uncovering the deep divisions in the corridors of power which finally surfaced in the events of 21 December (1997) as the reported extracts from the so-called “coup video” clips have proved.
Al Mustapha (to Gen. (Oladipo) Diya): Yes, before I go to oga (Gen. Abacha), oga will ask me about the details of what you told me.
Diya: Mustapha, you know you don’t allow me to see oga, that is why I got myself into this.
Al Mustapha (to Gen. (Abdulkareem) Adisa) and you didn’t report?
Adisa: Mustapha, I tried to reach you (but) I never see you. I can’t reach oga…Mustapha, help us beg oga to forgive us…You know if oga forgives us I will campaign for oga for another five years…’”
– Lewis Obi, Sunday Concord, 8 February 1998
Nigerians woke up one morning in December 1997 to behold the spectacle of two Nigerian Army generals groveling, creeping and weeping in the presence of an unremarkable young army major who eyed the generals with contempt and grudgingly offered them toilet tissues to wipe their tears. Oladipo Diya was a three star general who was the Chief of the General Staff, the military junta’s name for the vice president of Nigeria. He was the No. 2 man in government. Abdulkareem Adisa was then the Federal Minister of Works and a two-star general. Next to the Petroleum Minister, Adisa was the most powerful minister in government. Both men were sweating for their lives being under suspicion for plotting to overthrow by force the military junta headed by Gen. Sani Abacha. They no longer cared about their dignity. The young major was Hamza al-Mustapha, the enfant terrible of the Nigerian Army, the Chief Security Officer to Gen. Abacha.
Divisions in government are often taken for granted by students of government because as Prof. George Obiozor once noted, government is a concentric circle of conspiracies. The failure of the Senate to confirm Mr. Ibrahim Magu as the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) seems to have brought such issues to the fore. To most people, it is a riddle. The gentleman has been tossed out like a bad coin, not once but twice, by the Senate. He is still on the job by the sheer trust the Nigerian public vests in the President, on the President’s say-so. The visible accomplishments of Mr. Magu himself are considerable, but they are not enough to sustain him as chairman of the commission. He must be supported by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
Is he supported by the President? The answer is, maybe. And the President has kept the answer to this poser ambiguous for months for reasons that many Nigerians have tried to understand without success. Is the President too ill to make up his mind on whether he wants Magu to serve as the arrow-head of his campaign against corruption and economic crimes? Maybe. Only the President knows how physically strong he is for a job that can wear out men half his age in a matter of months. There is a benefit of the doubt that if the President had serious doubts about Magu he probably would not have reappointed and recommended him to the Senate for confirmation a second time. And if that is the case, as so many have imagined, why was Magu not given the regular treatment befitting an appointee of the President?
Now, Nigeria did not invent democratic government, if indeed we may be as vain as to imagine that what the country practices qualifies to be called a democracy. The presidential system is a new animal to us, just about 38 years. In all presidential systems, including France, a position that is subject to confirmation of the Senate is always considered an important appointment and candidates must be carefully vetted internally by the officials of the executive branch. In the United States, it said that cabinet appointees are given a questionnaire containing about 600 questions about the candidate’s life, his or her spouse, parents, education, money, debts, relationships of all kinds, businesses.
Indeed, some nominees refuse to put themselves forward for the sheer tedium and such intrusive investigation and searchlight into their private lives, because those questionnaires do not leave anything to the imagination, they bare all.
This is the first hurdle. Then the questions are scrutinized and searched with a fine tooth comb to ensure they are no traps that might be sprung at the senate confirmation hearings. Now if the nominee scales this first hurdle, he is sent to law enforcement people. In the US, it is the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) which then checks if there is any report, arrest, indictment, trial, prison record, compromising information about crime that may present a problem at the confirmation. The FBI report is sent to the President’s office. Those who looked through the questionnaire would then compare it with the FBI report and see if they have a trouble-free candidate. The third stage is to constitute a small committee to chaperon the candidate through the confirmation hearings. They help arrange visits to senators in their offices prior to the hearings, to introduce the nominee and do a kind of “selling the nominee.”
Nigeria does not have the equivalent of the FBI. The FBI is an independent government outfit for the investigation of Federal or serious offences staffed by crack professional investigators. Its directors have a tenure of five years renewable. Totally apolitical, it is not a state protection outfit, or an organization of government thugs which does the government’s bidding. The FBI would not have written two separate and contradictory reports on Magu as the Department of State Services (DSS) appears to have done. But even more pertinent is that the DSS report must have been seen by the office of the President before it was sent down to the Senate.
And if the DSS report is negative on Magu why would the President send to the senate a candidate whose integrity is questionable? If the responsibility of getting Magu confirmed is so badly managed as can be seen in two senate rejections could it be that the President’s men at the DSS are working at cross purposes with the President? Or is this just a case of inter-departmental rivalry? I think it’s worse. It is evidence of a wider problem, indicating that the realm is dysfunctional.