ICPC and its anti-graft war

On Wednesday, February 5, 2025, the Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission or ICPC, Dr. Musa Aliyu Adamu (SAN), secured a hallful of senior editors drawn from different media houses mainly from the north of the Niger for a first leg of breakfast meeting. The venue was the BON Hotel, Wuse 2, Abuja. Yours truly was privileged to be among the invitees. It was a gathering during which the editors first jawed over the light breakfast served before jaw-jawing over the serious matters on the card. The meeting that lasted almost three hours was anchored by a brand new Professor of Mass Communication and public relations avatar, Yau Sule Yau of the Bayero University, Kano.

The issues of corruption have always caught my attention. I must have deployed tons of words into the fight against the evil in the past few years as a columnist. If words were bullets, I would have been pounding my chest like a gorilla, boasting of my accomplishments in mowing down the hydra-headed monster.

As recently as 2012, I wrote a two-legged piece in this column entitled, “A lost anti-corruption war is a lost future”. As part of my advocacy, I have raised dust and called for the setting up of special anti-graft courts to try corruption cases. To boot, I have canvassed for capital punishment for anyone duly convicted for corrupt practices.

Interestingly I had former President Goodluck Jonathan on the same page with me regarding the setting up of the special courts. While swearing in the first female Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Maryam Aloma Mukhtar, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, President Jonathan sang discordant tunes with the new CJN. In his own tune, President Jonathan called for the setting up of special courts as the only way to clean up the Augean Stables, which corruption cases had constituted in various courts across the length and breadth of the country since the reemergence of democratic dispensation in 1999. But Justice Aloma disagreed and put it to Mr. President that the normal courts were capable of handling the armada of corruption cases littering the Nigerian courts

However, President Jonathan and Justice Mukhtar were not the first duo to disagree on the way forward as far as the battle against the crime was concerned. Former chairperson of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri, and the ex-boss of Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Justice Emmanuel Ayoola (retd), also openly disagreed on the same issue. While Mrs. Waziri canvassed for the establishment of special courts to try corrupt elements, Justice Ayoola believed that the regular courts were capable of tackling them.

In 2019, I had a close encounter with a group of newly minted senators in the red chamber and I took them up on the matter. Their reaction did not surprise me one bit. In fact, one of them told me “this is Nigeria not China” where death penalty awaits priest of Hermes, the god of theft. This position was also canvassed for by Farida Waziri. She was emphatic about the Chinese option: death sentence. And that is probably why that country has become a prosperous nation today despite harbouring about 15 percent of the world’s population. The population of Nigeria is less than 25 percent of that of China and that country is not as blessed with abundant mineral resources, which are a sine qua non for technological development and industrial revolution as Nigeria. In my own view, the fear of corrupt elements losing their lives, leaving the loots behind is enough deterrent to corrupt practices.

Dyed-in-the wool democrats will argue from now till eternity that the worst democracy is better than the best military regime. It was perhaps the reason the former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a product of the military system who knew that profligacy is a hallmark of democracy put in place the EFCC and the ICPC, one after the other, to checkmate the thieving wolves among the political class who would turn out in human skin. The wanton looting of public treasury during the Shagari regime, which Obasanjo midwifed in 1979, must have encouraged him to put the two anti-graft agencies in place… a kind of ogres or scarecrows on the farmland. Before the Shagari regime, we had the First Republic that was overthrown. One of the reasons the coupists gave was that the regime was plagued by bribery and corruption. In the First Republic, corrupt elements demanded 10 per cent. Today, they corner as much as between 50 and 70 per cent and invariably deliver poor services in the end.

However, in spite of the intimidating presence of the two agencies, corruption is still stalking the land on all fours with loots running into billions and, in some cases, trillions. The escape route for them: steal enough to hire an arsenal of lawyers of SAN calibre and buy judgments in the court. I feel like weeping for Nigeria when I see SANs falling over themselves to represent corrupt elements like vultures on carcass.

One of the takeaways from the Wednesday’s meeting was the assurance by chairman that the commission would work assiduously to eliminate political interference and judicial delay in the prosecution of the anti-graft war. Like I have stated, the establishment of the special courts is the way forward. Besides the congestions at the regular courts that operate like a vehicle without an accelerator, moving at its own pace, corruption should be treated like a special crime that requires special attention and courts.

Another major barrier to the fight against the invidious crime is the use of judiciary to evade justice as evidenced by corrupt elements seeking court orders to escape arrest and/or delay prosecution.

A critical component in the anti-graft war arsenal is the whistleblowing. Thieves do not like noise or attention. Once they are aware that a faceless referee is watching with a whistle between his or her lips, they will think twice before they strike. It is gratifying to note that the ICPC boss is thinking along that line. It has mapped out a four-year strategic plan (2024-2028) to realise its constitutional mandate in the fight against corruption. This is imperative because you cannot be doing one thing over and over again and expect different results. The Commission also highlighted some challenges in the way of its progress to include political inference, financial constraints, technological vulnerability, legislative limitations, judicial delays, personnel security, socio-cultural factors and internal conflict of interests.

Worthy of note is the commission’s determination to scale up judicial advocacy, technology upgrade, legislative advocacy, effective case management and staff welfare to achieve its set objectives… most especially the welfare of the staff as an antidote to itchy palms. The belief of most watchers of the commission and its EFCC tag team partner is that some bad eggs exist there to re-loot. Once the staff welfare is given priority along with good conditions of service in place, coupled with enhanced retirement benefits as envisioned by the commission, a high level performance and less temptation would be experienced.

Be that as it may, the commission now headed by a lawyer of high repute is poised to take the anti-graft war to the doorsteps of its targets. Successive leaders of the agency had been appointed from the pool of retired judges. I wish the agency well.