By Eddie Nnamani
THERE is no doubt that the pretence to a trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) against the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki is aimed at sacking him from the Senate, removing him as the Senate President, and possibly jailing him. Only the politically naive will fail to see that the mischievous theatricals and diabolical drama being directed by the CCT are aimed at putting a sunset on Saraki’s political career in time for the 2019 presidential election.
I will not shed tears if truly Saraki is being tried at the CCT for corruptly using the public funds of Kwara State to acquire properties he allegedly failed to declare. My quarrel with what is going on at the CCT is that he is being harassed because he was constitutionally elected the president of the Senate.
I have read the entire pages of the constitution and I cannot find any provision which insists that political parties have a role to play in the determination of the personnel of the leadership of any legislative house.
Even then, assuming but without conceding that Saraki actually used the public funds of Kwara State to acquire properties in Nigeria and abroad, why use the EFCC to investigate the matter when the constitution says it is the exclusive preserve of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) to do so? Why use the EFCC to try him at the CCT when the constitution says it is the exclusive responsibility of the CCB to do so? Why should the EFCC be trying Saraki at the CCT when even the EFCC (Establishment) Act 2004 maintains that the anti-graft agency can only prosecute its cases at the Federal High Court or a State High Court or the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory? When did the CCT, for instance, transform into a Federal High Court or the High Court of a state?
In any case, there is even no evidence anywhere that the Report of the Auditor-General of Kwara State indicted Saraki for misusing public funds of the state while he was governor. There is also no evidence that Cheques or Money Orders from the Office of the Accountant-General of Kwara State were used to transfer monies to bank accounts belonging to Saraki when he was governor of the state.
There is equally no evidence whatsoever that the loans repaid by Saraki or the funds he allegedly used to acquire properties in Nigeria and abroad could be traced to the public funds of Kwara State. So, what is all the noise about putting Saraki on the dock at the CCT for corruption?
As the Daily Sun news-report of April 20, 2016, page 6 copiously attested to, the chief prosecuting witness of the EFCC has even disowned most of the documents tendered against Saraki at the CCT. For instance, the world has been told by the EFCC chief prosecuting witness at the CCT that “none of the petitions investigated by the EFCC had anything to do with the assets declaration by Saraki”.
Similarly, the chief prosecuting witness “admitted that investigating the assets declaration of Saraki did not form part of his schedule of duty”. He also added that there was nowhere in the petition his team “investigated where Saraki’s assets declaration was in contention”.
So, if an EFCC investigating team did not investigate any petition or matter relating to Saraki’s assets declaration, why is the anti-graft agency prosecuting him at a CCT which only constitutional duty is to try public officers for non-compliance with the code of conduct?
There is no doubt that Justice Danladi Umar will pronounce guilty verdict on Saraki at the end of the day, despite the evidence to the contrary.
The good thing, however, is that an appeal will justifiably be made at the Court of Appeal to overturn or vacate whatever judgment that will be delivered against the Senate President, Saraki, at the CCT.
Those who are, therefore, calling on Saraki to resign his Senate Presidency even when the law for now insists he is innocent of all the charges made against him, are doing so because they know that the superior courts will overturn whatever verdict Justice Umar will hand out at the CCT, and therefore are doing everything to obviate such scenario from being a reality.
Altogether, the point is that this is not the first time an attempt has been made to intimidate and stampede a senate president out of office in the name of trying to preserve the integrity of the legislature.
In 2001, for instance, the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency unleashed a venormous bile against the independence of the legislature, and the late Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, as Senate President, fell for the trick.
He set up the Kuta Panel which findings were used to hound him out of office. It did not matter that the same anticipatory approval for which Okadigbo was impeached had been applied by Obasanjo in so many projects, and in such a humongous degree, including the massively inflated Abuja National Stadium that Okadigbo’s “manufactured crime”, in comparison is insignificant.
Okadigbo’s fate should be a lesson to Saraki over his own alleged crime of false assets declaration.
Nnamani writes from Wuse, Abuja