Comrade Debo Adeniran, a human right activist is the Executive Chairman, Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, CACOL.
In this interview with The Nigerian Xpress in his Lagos office, the heavily bearded anti-corruption crusader asserted that, if some measures are put in place by this administration, Nigeria could attain a corruption free society. He also commended President Muhammadu Buhari for giving his organisation some rays of hope that the monster could be conquered.
Why the change of name from Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, CACOL, to Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, CACOL?
We rebranded in 2016 because we want to expand our focus to cover governance issues. The former name limited us to convicted corrupt leaders. You cannot say somebody is corrupt until he is convicted. But now, even before they are convicted, in our bid to make leadership open to everyone to guarantee the right to know of citizenry, we expanded our mandate to cover open leadership. That open leadership covers a lot of ground. When you say anti-corruption, it is not about corrupt leaders alone, but anything that can lead to corruption is what we fight.
So, we make it difficult for any leader to escape corruption trial. We make it difficult for government to condone corruption. We make it difficult for institutions to make themselves available to be used for corruption purposes. So, these are some of the areas we have expanded our mandate. Then, we enlighten the society, especially people at the grassroots on how to identify corruption, how to report corruption and how corruption cases are prosecuted, how to encourage prosecutors and witnesses to do diligent prosecution to lead to conviction. Basically, that is why we expanded our focus.
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How was CACOL’s operation before and under the Buhari administration?
Well, it has always been difficult to operate within a system that has allowed corruption to fester for so long. There was no time that it has not been difficult even during this Buhari era. But Buhari was able to a kind of espouse some of the agenda to fight corruption. But those he entrusted the instrumentality for fighting corruption in their hands are not making things as easy as it is supposed to be, not even the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, EFCC. With all the commitment that they have set to make it easier for us, yet the recognition we believe the EFCC should accord anti-corruption organisations like ours is not enough.
Yes, they do not antagonise us, yet they do not attend to petitions we send to them as promptly as we expect it. Even on few occasions when they asked us to adopt such petitions, we don’t have information about how they interrogated the subjects of such petitions. We don’t have feedback from them. They don’t give us the reports of their investigations. And when you ask them, they say it is a discreet document they will not release to us. So, basically, it is still like that.
Even the Freedom of Information Act has not been made as effective as we expected it to be. So, all of that has made it difficult for us to access accurate information, to access evidence of commission of such crime, to access personalities and officials that are involved in the investigations and prosecution.
And then, the logistics issues, most of the time, we don’t have adequate support in terms of finances to move from one end to another with a view to getting more information about some of the corruption cases that we are on. And the government is not supportive despite the fact that we support the activities of government within the limit that they are carrying it out and we espouse several strategies that could even help in pushing the fight against corruption further. But then, the government has not reciprocated such gesture up to the time we are talking.
Independent Corrupt Practices And Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, till when the leadership changed from the former to the present, Prof. Bolaji Owasanye regime (before, it was Ekpo Nta), showed some attitudes that raised our hope. Before, access to them has been difficult and they have not been giving us feedback too. But recently, ICPC has been communicating with us, especially on the case of the former Director General of the Security and Exchange Commission, SEC, Muniru Gwazo. We sent a petition to them and they sent to us, maybe, a fragment of information about investigation they were carrying out. And of course they lost out at the level of the court.
So, basically, it has always been the same thing. The attitude of President Muhammadu Buhari has changed. In the time of Obasanjo, he was very hostile. It was milder in the time of the late Umoru Yar’Adua. Unfortunately, his administration was short lived. When he died, President Goodluck Jonathan did not take adequate interest in what was going on in the anti-corruption agencies and that sector generally. Even if you were allowed to submit petitions, you would not get anything out of it. Nobody was fighting anything. You are always target of supporters of the administration thinking you are their enemies even when you are actually helping them to get things done, to get responsible government installed and in operation.
It was difficult because we could not achieve much during the Jonathan’s administration. It was during the short period of Yar’Adua that we were able to confront the former Governor of Delta State, Mr. James Ibori despite the fact that he was the President’s friend. However, we lost at the court level eventually. The rest is now history.
But this Buhari administration has given us some rays of hope because it is during this period that a few former governors- Joshua Dariye and Jolly Nyame were given maximum sentences. Former Director of NIMASA (Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency) was also given maximum sentences. It is during this administration that we discovered that anti-corruption instrument embedded in the BVN, TSA can be effective. The present administration puts it to effective use. That is why those who committed corruption crime, financial crime could no longer launder their money through the regular financial institutions. And that was why also many huge sums of money were overnight seen in several places like Osborn Towers, Falomo Shopping complex, Kaduna airport and others.
Some people buried money in their farm land because they cannot enjoy it because questioned are being raised because BVN harmonises whatever amount you have in all your accounts all over the world as long as you want to transact business through Nigeria’s banks and other financial institutions. Whatever you have there, you should be able to justify it. And the function of the NFIU (Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit) is to question the sources of income of those who have huge sum of money. Then you have the Special Control Unit Against Money Laundry, which also is with the EFCC. So professionals can no longer launder money. You cannot say you have got a job that you did not get because some accountants would say they have got briefs from criminals and so issue receipt that this job was done for this so, so amount. But the SCUMUL (Special Control Unit Against Money Laundering) will now probe further: When was he contracted? How was it executed? When was it concluded to deserve the huge amount that was paid?
So, money laundering has become difficult under Buhari. It is the best way to fight corruption and that is why we support the present administration more. Not necessarily because we have enough enabling environment to operate, but, because they show a level of seriousness that has not been done before because all of these instruments were put in place by Jonathan’s previous administrations. Even the EFCC and ICPC were not the making of the present administration. But the previous administrations misused the institution in the past to only haunt those they don’t like. Yes, some said the same thing that the administration was selective in its choice but we don’t believe that. It is only those that you have evidence that you are going to select. There is nobody who would prosecute just anybody at the same time, no. there must be enough evidence and enough witnesses and all of that. And we believe that this is what the agencies are gathering. And the few prosecutions that they were able to do have been result oriented.
And what else we do as people have been generally deterred. When you go to government agencies, people look over their shoulders before they ask for bribes if they would be able to ask at all. They are already wary of who is watching because of the whistle blowers policy that is equally being implemented only by the present administration. So, prevention is said to be better and cheaper than cure. And that I believe is working for the present administration.
Besides that, many of the officials also want to perpetrate corruption but the reason it has not been so massive is because of the atmosphere that has been made non-compliant with corruption crimes. Otherwise, many of the ministers and heads of parastartals would have committed corruption crime with reckless abandon and with impunity. But they are afraid because the next person to them might be their albatross and their nemesis. That is their problem. In fact, 99 percent of those who ran the administration till May 29 would have wanted to commit corruption crimes but the environment was made unsuitable for them.
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Do you have any agenda for this administration on how the war could be more effective in its second term?
Well, basically, the President needs to look before he leaps and do a thorough background checking before he appoints those who would work with him because corruption is the root of all the things that cause under development in Nigeria, be it security, economy or anything. It is traceable to corruption.
Actually, in the next session that we will be coming out, we want to reconstruct the ‘Problem Tree’ of Nigeria all over again. From our analysis, field work and questionnaire that we have administered, we see corruption everywhere just the way it was in 2007 when we started CACOL. So, we want to reconstruct it and see what is the cause of corruption in Nigeria.
What I just believe is that if the anti-corruption agencies are given more empowerment in terms of training, in terms of equipment, in terms of protection of their own lives and property, in terms of protection to their own job, job security and not exposing them to conditions that could make them recapitulate, from being integrity conscious officers to corruption compliant ones, basically, they would want to work selflessly. If agencies have enough money to send investigators to places where they could find evidence, places they could convince witnesses to come to court with them, definitely, they would be able to win their cases.
But if they don’t have adequate funds just as they complain now, many of them are short of personnel and some of their personnel are not well protected, all of these are taking away all their own apprehension, maybe they are going to fight more.
Then, the whistle blower’s protection Act should be reinforced. It is not yet passed. It should be reinforced to include compensation scheme so that people would no longer argue that I am entitled to this or that. If you say that you are entitled to five percent and somebody comes up with, may be $81 million, you may not likely want to pay such a person the five percent of that amount. If paid, he would become super rich and that would not augur well for the economy of Nigeria. It should be graduated. The fatter the amount recovered, the lower the reward is supposed to be. As a matter of fact, we have recommended that, being a whistle blower is service to the society and so there is no need for the percentage to be more than 0.01 percent once the amount is up to N10 million. The truth is that it should not be the incentives but the development of the society that should be the priority in the mind of whoever wants to whistle blow. If you have N1 million for example, that is 10 percent of N10 million. You did not put down any capital to do the job. It is just an extra. We suggest that N100,000 should be okay from N10 million. That is 0.01 percent of it. You should be comfortable with that.
It is the orientation you give to people that will make things work. Then, that cannot come on its own. You would have, maybe put a national ideology in place so that everybody would know the upper ceiling he could have. If you have a car and I have a car, why would I steal your car? If everybody has food to eat, who would go to the restaurant to steal food? Why would I want to have two houses when I know that anywhere I go, I would have a place to lay my head? Government would make that possible. Why would I want to have two cars when I know that the one I have I cannot exhaust it in one’s life time because the roads would be good and there would be technicians who would not steal because they would be making profits from their daily endeavour. So, you don’t need two cars because even the one you have, you may not use it because there is public transport system that is working.
So, if things are like that, nobody would be so greedy to want to accumulate so much. National ideology must have even pegged how much you should have as a single person. Even as a company, there should be upper limit as to how much you should have and how much you can expatriate and repatriate to your country. So, what is the problem? If you steal money, you would not be able to move it around the country talk less of depositing it in a financial institution. And any money you spend would have a mark. If it is not from official quarters, then, you are a fraudster. So, all of these would kind of normalise the situation and there would be more contentment and more patriotism. And all of us would be on the same level. The border would not be porous so that nobody would be able to bring in foreign currency with a view to polluting our economy.
Can Nigeria become a corruption free society with the situation on ground?
Well, it is possible. It depends on the commitment of the citizenry to see that they are properly governed in the way that would benefit all of them. But what we have for now is that those that are criticising the corrupt leaders are doing so because they are yet to have access to the positions of those corrupt leaders. It is not because they detest corruption. It is because they feel they are being denied access to corruption.
So, basically, until we come up with a new orientation that would de-emphasise power of money in our national life, we may not have a corruption free society. Government should make it unnecessary to keep money. What you keep money for, government has provided it. So, if that national ideology is in place, things would work out. It is just a matter of national ideology. If the ideology is that, you cannot have more than two cars, one for you and one for the family, anything besides those two cars, government must have provided it like railway, trams and buses.
The reason subsidy is legitimate is that; the Creator has provided us with sources of wealth that is supposed to be evenly distributed. And we cannot practise direct democracy where commonwealth would be distributed to individuals. If we cannot practise that, the only way you can distribute the commonwealth is through subsidy.
In fact, there are certain things that you cannot have in excess-education, food, healthcare, road network. So, basically, if avarice is removed from our psyche and those running government key into it, individuals key into it, that is revolution. Revolution happens without planning. It may take someone’s efforts to happen. There would be a lot of resistance. But if you have a determined leader, and say this is what I want, that is all.
