The news that dominated the public sphere last week was the arrest, interrogation, detention, and suspension from office of former acting chairperson of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, on allegations of corruption. Magu’s downfall was swift and spectacular. It was a huge scandal. And the position that Magu held as the head of the government’s anti-corruption agency made the story even more salacious.
The charges against Magu were staggering. He was the public face of the government’s fight against corruption. As the head of the EFCC, he was perceived as an emblem of honesty, integrity, uprightness, and transparency. But did he live up to public expectations? 
Reports of Magu’s fall from office were unexpected, particularly because the news broke at a time when everyone was focused on the fast and dizzying headcount of people who had been infected with COVID-19, including the number of people who died from the virus, and those who recovered.
Magu’s sudden transformation from a powerful man to an ordinary man with virtually nothing to lean on conveys a lesson about the transient nature of life. On their appointment, every previous chairperson of the EFCC talked gloriously about their incomparable track record as anti-corruption tsars with astonishing capabilities to handle corrupt public officials. Not surprisingly, Magu adopted the same template of tough talking to proclaim his new role at the EFCC but also to warn of a new direction in the fight against corruption.
Unfortunately, Magu’s career at the EFCC has now been cut short by the same vices that terminated the tenure of those who came before him, including Nuhu Ribadu, the first chairperson of the EFCC, a man who frequently referred to himself as an exemplary public official with the moral force and physical strength to reduce endemic corruption in Nigeria.
Should we pity or mock Magu? It seems that he arrived at the EFCC before his time, or that he underestimated the magnitude of corruption in a country where sleaze is the approved way of doing business, or that he did not study carefully the problems that damaged his predecessors, or he was simply naïve, regardless of the fact that he had served in other capacities in the EFCC prior to his formal coronation as the chair.
He must now be remorseful of his fundamental errors of judgment. Magu stepped on some powerful toes. In his battle against corruption, he operated as though nothing could stop him. He forgot that corruption is a complex problem with a human face. It is multidimensional. Unfortunately, Magu took on the fight against corruption with the single-mindedness of a deluded man. In a country in which corruption has become a way of life, a country in which people breathe, eat, drink, brush their teeth, wash their clothes, sleep, rest, and play with corruption, it was always going to be difficult for one man to make an impact.
Magu is now lonely in detention. His friends have deserted him. That is human nature. When he was in a powerful position, everyone wanted to be his friend. Now that he has lost his power and influence, particularly the dishonourable way he was shoved out of office, no one wants to associate with Magu. You could say he is an outcast. In confinement, he is restricted to a small space and denied all the luxuries he enjoyed when he was chair of the EFCC. No more tough-looking security guards. No more drivers and cooks and gardeners and laundry personnel and others. Magu’s predicament is evidence that no condition is permanent in life.
Former chair of the EFCC, Mrs. Farida Mzamber Waziri, once said that when you fight corruption in Nigeria, you should expect the crooked men and women to come at you with the speed and recklessness of a vehicle that has suffered brake malfunction.
Five years ago, Magu bragged that he would succeed where his predecessors had failed. He said he would turn the EFCC around, by which he meant he would “ginger up the anti-corruption campaign.” He said the environment that existed during the time of his appointment offered the best opportunity for him to make the country corruption-free so that foreign investors would regard Nigeria as their number one country of choice for business investment.
There was nothing exclusive in Magu’s boastful words. Days after Mrs. Farida Waziri was appointed the chairperson of the EFCC in May 2008, she warned everyone to sit up because she was prepared to step on everybody’s toes. It was a speech that many corrupt politicians and public officials dreaded. That statement cast Mrs. Waziri as an uncompromising woman. Unfortunately, the tough, no-nonsense image she constructed for herself in the early days of her tenure was never upheld during the time she held the position.
It is always good for public officers to dream big and to be ambitious because dreams are free. Magu dreamt to take the EFCC to higher pedestals. In his earnestness to reform the agency, he said he would be fearless, ruthless, innovative, and methodical in the way he approached the fight against corruption.
Magu had no reason to fail. He had everything on his side. He was a pioneer staff of the EFCC and, therefore, had valuable knowledge of the agency. This knowledge, as well as the privileged positions he held in the organisation, ought to have assisted him to steer the EFCC to success. That did not happen. Before his appointment as chairperson of the organisation, Magu was popularly referred to as “General,” even though he never enlisted in the army. Overall, he was unable to harness to his advantage the experiences, the insights, and knowledge of diverse issues that weakened the efforts of the EFCC under previous chairpersons.
Regardless of public opinion for or against him, I am particularly disappointed that Magu did not transform into that wonder man of vision whom the public expected to move the EFCC into a transparent, unbiased, even-handed, and self-governing anti-corruption agency.
President Muhammadu Buhari must now reflect on the process of appointing a new substantive chair of the EFCC from the police force. Must the chairperson of the EFCC be appointed from the police force? Are there no other Nigerians of integrity who can oversee the anti-corruption activities of the EFCC? Are there no other agencies, institutions, or departments that are capable of nominating men and women of high character who can manage the EFCC? These are important questions.
All former chairs of the EFCC were at one time or the other accused of, or blemished by, corruption. They were either eased or pushed out of office. It is time the government turned to people from other professional backgrounds. The police, as an institution, has not given us the calibre of men and women with decent personal attributes to chair the EFCC. Of course, for the government to go outside the police force to recruit a new chair, the EFCC Act would have to be amended to legalise that departure from the original procedure.