Imagining EFCC Chairman in prison

Every writer faces the challenge of interpreting issues or putting them in perspective. How a writer interpretes a particular situation often varies from how the next one does, even if the foundation of the story is fixed.

Such was the case last week, when the news broke that an Abuja high court judge, Justice Chizoba Oji ordered the immediate remand of the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, at the Kuje Correctional Center, Abuja for disobeying an earlier order of the court which tantamounts to contempt of court orders that were made earlier.

In a ruling delivered on October 28, 2022, the court ordered that the EFCC’s Boss “should be committed to prison”

What was his offense? Simply, he inherited and failed to execute a high court ruling that the EFCC should return a confisticated Range Rover (Super charge) and the sum of (Forty Million Naira) back to Mr Rufus Ojuawo, who had approached the court and reminded it that EFCC was yet to comply with the court judgement of 2018, that was ruled in his favor.

The court was offended by what it saw as a deliberate disrespect by the agency, so it ordered that the EFCC boss “should be committed to prison at Kuje Correctional Centre for his disobedience, and continued disobedience of the said order of court made on November 21st, 2018. The judge ruled that the EFCC Chairman should stay in prison, until he purges himself of the contempt”.

Such very strict judgement was bound to ignite reactions and different emotions. For example, those on the list of investigation and possible prosecution by EFCC, were likely to be happy to witness the execution of the court order. 

By it’s duties, the EFCC haunts down corrupt individuals. Since its establishment, numerous persons involved or alleged to have commited corrupt offences have been detected by the eagle eyes of the commission. This has saved the country from odium as well as losses amounting to billions of dollars. Many criminals caught by the Commission have ended up in the prison.

It would be a very strange and painful sight, therefore, seeing the Chairman of the EFCC being handed a judgement of guilty under any circumstances and sentenced to jail.

This development creates room for imagination of many scenarios. Imagine first, the Chairman surrounded by police men, not his own security men but policemen at duty in the court and thereafter ushered into the prison yard, where he will meet convicts from his investigation and prosecution.

Such a senario will further create a platform for revenge. Imagine he is handcuffed and expectedly, camera men are busy snapping away, while editors wait for the photographs and battle to cast various captions to sell their newspapers and magazines. Of course, television and social media will not be left out. Then the big man is then moved to the Correctional facility in Kuje, where Senior officers of the facility will be available to receive and officially document his hand over from the police to the prison officials, after which he is marched to his new room, where he is dressed in pyjamas which is the official prison uniform, no longer tie, suit and Italian shoe with expensive wrist watch, all removed from him.

He is then addressed by the prison warder, who educates him on the new life he is about to begin. They described his new life as that which will make him a type of ‘born again’ . The idea is that at the end of the experience, he would have been born again from disobedience. He would have been born again from not complying with court orders. He would have been born again from discountenancing a ruling by a high court judge. I therefore imagine the Chairman in his executive prison room reviewing how he got to Kuje prison.

Even as l imagine him ruminating over the sad situation he found himself, I can also see him thinking of what people would be saying. Naturally, he will also worry whether his office would still be there for him at the end of this saga. I imagine his colleagues at the agency besieging the correctional facility to commiserate with him over his ordeal. Even as the news continued to spread , l imagine the atmosphere in the prison facility changing as convicted corrupt persons gather to vent their anger on the latest inmate. As the Chairman settles in the correctional facility, prisoners queue up one after the other, to pass through the executive room,just to have a glimps of the new tenant in the house.

In fact, the first night in the facility, would definitely change his mentality. As he looks around the small room allocated to him, his memory of his bed room at home flashes across his mind. There are no servants or messengers as he is used to. I imagine, him rejecting the first prison food, preferring to be fed with food from his house. Such request was rejected. In all, l imagine him coming out a refined and more humble person, with the mind of a person ever ready to comply with every court order, even those he met on his desk before he started work.

INEC plus police,equals credible 2023 elections (2)

It is the general   clamor by both Nigerians and the international community to have a fair, free, transparent and credible general election that must have worried the conscience of the lnspector General of Police, Mr Usman Baba Alkali and President Muhammadu Buhari that must have inspired them to organize the three days security retreat. By summoning all the senior police officers  from every part of the country shows the seriousness and importance the police and the government attach to these elections.  Inspite of all the dot tings of the i and the closing of all the loopholes, every finger still points at both the  bag politicians , and unscrupulous security officials whom surprisingly the lGP as the Chief security officer and lead security agency, did not openly  address their sins. Sins of political violence cover up and other related political sins that are not tolerable in democratic settings.

Impressively, the President from all indication has clearly washed his government hand from any accusation of complicity  in the area of non provision of needed materials, equipments and other  security items. This was made very clear   and obvious ,when the President noted “Special intervention funds to address critical operational and capacity development initiatives of the Force were also approved. As part of the re-engineering project of the Force, the Federal Government is currently working with some Development Partners towards strengthening the police reform agenda.

According to him,“My desire is to restore the primacy of the Police towards rebuilding public trust and professionalism. My vision is also to bequeath to the nation a Police Force that is not only modernized, but well-funded, suitably equipped, and appropriately re-oriented to effectively police our democracy and guarantee a stable internal security order under a citizen-led, technology-driven, rule of law guided by intelligence-based policing models.”, Subsequently, the onus of  having a credible election in 2023 , now lies on the door step of both the police and politicians. (Concluded)

SECURITY FILE commissirates with the Ekpenyong family, over the loss  of their  wife  and mother Mama Ebonl. Inyang aged 87 years. She is the mother-inlaw to Ben Okezie.