By Erasmus Ikhide
 Published
December 23rd, 2008
It is mind numbing that it’s truer as speculated earlier by
a number of columnists; especially Okey Ndibe of the Sun
newspaper and Sahara Reporters, that Farida Waziri, the
chairperson of the Nigerian anti-graft agency, Economic and
Financial Crime Commission EFCC, prefers to remain thick in
the head than to ensure that economic criminals are brought
to justice. She is, from the outset more inclined to
protecting the kleptomania ex-governors from prosecution to
fulfill her part of the bargain – for they brought her to
head the commission – perhaps under oath; that should she
succeeds Nuhu Ribadu as boss of the EFCC she would ensure
that none of the ex-governors faces the wrath of the law of
the land.
It felt like a ballistic missile had hit me when I read a
day earlier on the cyber space, precisely on December 17,
2008 that the 191- count charge against the former Governor
Lucky Igbinedion were narrowed down to one after a plea
bargain the ex-governor entered into with the EFCC. I plough
back in time into what Mr. Femi Babafemi, the commission’s
spokesman told Nigerians at the behest of his boss, Mrs.
Farida Wazairi in the wake of Chief Cletus Ibeto’s arrest
that. Hear him: ‘‘Also yesterday, the chairman of the
commission, Mrs. Farida Waziri, expressed opposition to
plea-bargain strategy being used by the anti-corruption
agency, saying it was wrong, and unhelpful in the crusade
against corruption in Nigeria’’.
It is scandalous that after the judgment that was handed
down on Igbinedion on December 18, 2008 by Justice Abdul
Tafarati at the Enugu Federal High Court to hear the same
Mr. Babafemi in a press statement saying that the outcome
of the exercise at the court in Enugu fall short of the
EFCC’s expectation. He said: "It is believed that the
essence of a plea bargain is not only for suspects to
forfeit the proceeds of crime but that such should go with a
sentence which will serve as deterrence.” ‘‘In view of this
development, the Chairman of the EFCC, Mrs Farida Waziri has
instructed the commission’s counsel to file an appeal
against the verdict immediately.’’ “The commission will
rather go the long way of prosecution than to settle for a
plea bargain verdict that has no bite or will not serve any
deterrence purpose.’’
Mrs. Farida Wazari is a study in dishonesty; a hallmark that
taunted and tarnished her bellicose career with a tainted
background as a former head of Special Fraud Unit SFU, of
the Nigerian Police Force, while in Lagos. That she has
reversed herself against her initial stance on plea-bargain
and, shamelessly allowed the criminal ex-governor Lucky
Igbinedion to get away with a slap on the wrist must be
conceptualized on her appointment. She owns her appointment
to the commission on the compromise that she would do no
justice in the cases against ex-governors who have plundered
their various states, however brazen, to the detriment of
Nigerians.
This is a credibility problem for Yar’ Adua led
administration that had his mandate legitimated by a
supremely corrupt Supreme Court by 4-3 Justices, with the
incubus Justice Niki Tobi who is more PDP than a judge. No
serious minded government in the vanguard of curbing
corruption will ever retailed a detestable fellow as Mrs.
Farida Waziri who is blowing hot and cool, deeply enmeshed
and ensnared in the cankerworm she is set out to check.
Any surprise that the ruling given by a judge at the Federal
High Court in Enugu, on December 18, 2008 fined Lucky
Igbinedion a paltry of N3.5 million, with no option of jail
time for the egregious crime of plundering the Edo State
treasury for eight-year. The judgment is in compliant with
the ‘‘plea bargain’’ agreement entered into by the Economic
and Financial Crime Commission with the former governor to
return a fraction of all that he pilfered while the state
laid in ruin.
Edo State and its people are the ultimate losers in that
judgment. The N3.5 million and three properties were awarded
to Federal government in that bizarre judgment. It is up to
Edo State government to cede to Federal government what
rightly belong to her because it is having a son who
preferred to enrich his luxuriant moustache that an eagle
can perch each dawning day of the years than to minister to
the basic needs of the people. And with this judgment Luck
is permitted to keep his N4.4 billion loot, palatial houses
in Nigeria , the UK , USA , South Africa , and Canada and
multibillion oil tank farm he is trying to build at Apapa,
Lagos .
Between 1999 and 2007, the big wealthy states that collected
more money from the federation account than any other were
rivers, N621.8b; Delta, N561.4b; Akwa Ibom, N495.2b; and
Bayelsa, N452.3b. Edo State was number 20 on the list with
N196.6b, and Cross River was number 25 with N195.3b. But are
u surprise that aside the clean cities left behind in Cross
River by ex-governor Donald Duke in the ambient of peace,
and the heritage called Tinapa and Obudu Ranch as enduring
monuments whose local and foreign attraction has earned the
state, and still earning it a great deal of internally
generated revenue? What we had of Lucky Igbinedion’s eight
years of moustache tendering and its lavished enrichment was
visionlessness of the first order; dishonest leadership that
has deepened the state’s poverty index and unemployment and
insecurity, while the poorly governed people groaned
hopelessly at the mercy of his killers’ squad who dared any
dissenting oppositions to have their voices muffled or pay
the ultimate prize with their lives. The other day you were
at a private function in the nation’s capital city Abuja ,
where the criminal salutes the Nigerian totemic flag as you;
strutting freely as if nothing has happened!
No nation worth its sorts with baying intensity from the
wreckage of mindless yester year’s governance as Nigeria
with checkered history of reckless leadership quotient can
redeem itself from the pang of corruption with
plea-bargaining. A plea bargain is a process in which the
defendant arranges a ‘deal’ with the prosecution. A plea
bargain essentially means that a defendant charged with
multiple crimes will plead guilty to a certain charge in
order to escape going to trial for a more serious charge.
The drawbacks inherent with ‘‘pleas guilty’’ is that the
system as a whole doesn't do what the people count on it to
do, which is to sort out the guilty people from the innocent
people. It doesn't do that because the guilty people and the
innocent people are all faced with the same pressure to
plead guilty since they can not face the risk of continuous
legal-guessing their acquaintance or charge with
criminality. Plea-bargain in exchange for justice, in my
studied opinion, is criminal in itself. The former
Republican Illinois Governor, George Ryan, United States,
who is currently serving out a 6-year prison sentence after
being convicted on racketeering and fraud charges; as was
revealed by a decade-long investigation which began with
the sale of driver’s licences for bribes and led to the
conviction of dozens of people who worked for Ryan when he
was secretary of state and governor spokes volume of how to
treat criminal in positions authority. May we seek other
means to have ex-governor Lucky Nosakhare Igbinedion behind
bars as long as possible now that Justice Abdul Tafarati and
EFCC have forced a giant camel through the eye of a needle?
Erasmus Ikhide is the of Research, Constitutionalism
andCommunications African Democratization, CAAD.
Contact:
africandemocratization@yahoo.com
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