EFCC hasn’t nailed single politician among 470 convictions secured in 4 years

By Elijah Olusegun

The backlog of 43 high-profile corruption cases on-going all over the courts and the EFCC inability to convict 16 politically exposed people (PEPs) it’s been prosecuting in the last 10 years is creating a pattern. And the trend is making the commission’s success appear a mere fluke to critics despite some big smashes it made in recent times.

Between 2014 and 2016, the EFCC says it secured the conviction of 353 offenders. A closer look by the National Daily at the commission’s data  reveals the convicts are largely petty cash thieves, oil thieves, cyber punks, and forgers.

None of the 16 governors (many of them now in the ruling APC), 10 public servants, including ministers, top bureaucrats, pension fund handlers (most of them party men), and nine subsidy fraudsters, and eight CBN’s naira launderers are yet to be brought to book.

Many have blamed this apparent ineffectiveness on the Nigerian system.  “The day-to-day functioning of Nigeria’s political system constantly and directly undermines the EFCC’s work,” the Human Rights Watch said in 2014 during one of its observations of how the political class pauperise Nigerians.

Expectations were high in 2015—that President Muhammadu Buhari and the acting chairman of the commission, Ibrahim Magu, will buck the trend.

But friction between Buhari’s men, especially the Attorney-General of the Federation and Magu, has made the commission weaker, many agree.

Abubakar Malami has had reason to rein back the commission from investigating certain suspects. He has also made it amend charges against a number of high-profile perps the anti-graft agency has sniffed out.

For instance, the federal government prosecutor in the N500-million corruption case involving Supreme Court Justice Sylvester Ngwuta had to pull out for recently. The withdrawal was said to be a protest—by the prosecuting counsel Charles Adeogun Phillips—against the Malami dropping charges earlier filed against the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court Ahmed Saleh, and two other officials of the apex court.

This back-and-forth is not new. In fact, the AGF office has traditionally played the spoilsport role—from the tenures of Michael Aondoakaa, Mohammed Bello Adoke, and up till now.

Perhaps that might have been responsible for the way many of the commission’s big breaks—in terms of conviction and recovery—seem weighted in favour of the political class believed to be plundering the nation. It might also explain the pattern of conviction—in time and space.

Most of the convictions the commission got against suspects (non-PEPs) it prosecuted happened mostly at high courts in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Edo and Port Harcourt.

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Lagos alone recorded 44—that is 36 percent—of the 124 convictions the EFCC secured last year. The state had the highest, 42, in 2014—out of 126 convictions across the nation. The 2015 record by the commission states there were 103 convictions that year. And Lagos, as usual, had the highest—35.

That means corruption in other states and in government is either low or taken less seriously. Or, as many say, the EFCC prosecution know-how is not up to scratch. And the commission’s sympathisers usually excuse it for that.

But such excuse may no longer hold. The Buhari administration inaugurated the National Prosecution Committee last May. The idea behind the 19-man committee is to bring about kickass prosecution of high-wire corruption cases that have lots of public interest.

Nigerians have yet to see how the NPC has ringed the change in anti-graft war with whatever colour. Since it came afloat, the committee and the agencies it works with are either levelling charges or amending them against suspects that are big shots in the political class.

This flip-flop also shows in the EFCC records. Some of the suspected politicians already being prosecuted are yet to be logged in as high-profile in the commission’s book. These include ex-First Lady Patience Jonathan in court for allegedly laundering $31 million, ex-Minister Musliu Obanikoro, PDP’s ex-campaign media director Femi Fani-Kayode. Ex-Finance Minister Esther Nnenadi, and others in the $2.1 billion arms purchase scam.

Sure there is a lot of fanfare when EFCC busts corrupt public office holders. Investigating and prosecuting these very important suspects also comes with a lot of media blitz. Just like the $9.8 million and €74,000 the commission recovered last week from the Kaduna vault-home of NNPC’s ex GMD Andrew Yakubu did.

But many believe the case will end up cold—like many others—and the perpetrators will get just a pat on the wrists.
CONVICTION ACCORDING TO STATE IN 2016