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The fight against corruption in Nigeria is largely farcical. Actually, it is a game of deception, elaborately staged at the expense of the country. Like the classical dogfights, parties in the exercise do intermittently fall for each other, with their underbelly exposed here and there. In the final analysis, every entity gets up, shakes off the dust and goes home.
Thus it was that Muhammadu Buhari fought corruption for eight years of his presidency and left office wrapping the country in corruption like never before. Buhari made a full joke of punctuating his speeches with his fighting corruption.
Nigeria has always been an unserious country, it must be said. The people, from the legislators and the security agencies, to the media, the civil society and virtually all other elite blocs, have never really seriously cared about the fleecing of the common purse by those in prime political and public positions. Yet everybody talks of corruption as if it is a game by ghosts.
This is the background against which the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) operates. The agency bites here and there, even as its ways remain as mysterious as they come in Nigeria. The EFCC insists on being taken seriously, though. Many take it that way, even as stories of deals and inside corruption among its rank continue to dog its existence. It is true that the EFCC may not be a deterrence to acts of corruption in Nigeria. It has, however, made itself a source of discomfort for many caught in the complex web of corruption here and there. The EFCC should by its very nature, be adept at riding the storm. That mastery seems now, to be confronted by an existential threat, a seeming determination to totally defang the agency and whatever it represents as far as fighting corruption goes. The nuisance of the EFCC does not seem to be welcome in the new order.
To all practical purposes actually, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC] as it used to be known, is no more. At the moment, there is no renewed hope for the agency in the present political dispensation. The prey has been trumped by the quarry.
A statement about the demise of the EFCC could not be more definitive than that the head of the agency, its mascot, has been arrested and held incommunicado for two months, a treatment befitting a common criminal. The current fate of Abdulrasheed Bawa, hitherto executive chairman of the EFCC, is at once symbolic and decisive.
The idea in keeping Bawa in detention for months without charging him for any offence, may be someone’s idea of doing unto him what the agency he was heading used to do to others. Such a cruel joke. To be fair to the EFCC though, it did not keep any accused for such a long time without charging him.
The last and only statement concerning Bawa’s fate was a statement issued by the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation the day Bawa was suspended mid last June.
The terse statement signed by Willie Bassey,Director of Information at the SFG’s office, said Bawa’s suspension resulted from “weighty allegations of abuse of office levelled against him”. It was said that he needed to step aside “to allow for proper investigation into his conduct while in office”
Fair enough. Having stepped aside,Bawa reported himself to the Department of State Services (DSS) which invited himself to come for interrogation. Over sixty days after that visit to the DSS,nothing more has been said about the man who led an agency that stands on equal footing with the DSS as a security agency of the state. Can it said that investigation into those weighty allegations against Bawa is continuing. Of course,the period between 24 February 2021 when he was appointed and 14 June 2023 when he was suspended was a long time to do all manner of harm,but surely,enough evidence would have been gathered to charge Bawa of something. Even at the most of its excesses, the EFCC was not this disdainful of the right of an individual.
What exactly did Abdulrasheed Bawa do to warrant being treated like a common criminal? The issue is not Bawa as an individual, but Bawa for the office he held or is still officially holding. Or perhaps, he is a political prisoner. Whatever the status, the government of the day and its prime enforcer, the DSS, owe Nigerians some respect in form of informing them of the crimes of the man who was assigned a critical function by the same state.
The internet is replete with all manner of sarcastic comments about Bawa and the Nigerian state under its present handlers. One of such comments rightly pointed out that “EFCC Chairman [Bawa] is still in jail, but all the politicians he was investigating are now in government”. True.
Another pointedly noted that “Bawa who wanted to arrest (Bello) Matawalle,immediate past governor of Zamfara state on corruption charges, finds himself in detention, while Matawalle has become a ministerial nominee”. Matawalle has gone beyond being a ministerial nominee to being a minister confirmed by the Senate.
The pertinent questions are; what did Bawa do? And why has he not been charged for whatever his sins against the state may be? The cases of Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN] and Abdulrasheed Bawa of the EFCC speak of very tardy and worrisome nature of the present masters of the Nigerian state. Has respect for the right of citizens been abolished?
Until Emefiele was charged, Nigerians had thought that the case against him as Central Bank Governor will boarder on loaded financial and economic crimes against the State, considering his vantage position which could so easily have enabled him to do wrong in that realm. Alas, it did not turn out so. According to the charge sheet from DSS, Emefiele left all the currencies at his disposal as well as matters of monetary policies and concerned himself with keeping guns and ammunition in his house, contrary to the laws of the land. Such a monumental offence against a Central Bank governor.
Going by the Emefiele case, it may yet come to pass in due course that Abdulrasheed Bawa’s offence may relate to hoarding rice and beans. You just can never know with the DSS. Whatever it may be, let Bawa be charged.
Bawa’s saga has an undertone of those classical movie scripts of the fight between the cops and the bad guys. Although in those stories, the cops always prevail, the case of Bawa against his present traducers has the cop at the receiving end. The guys on the other side are having some hearty laugh. Whether theirs will be the last laugh or not, will be seen with time. There is everything wrong with Abdulrasheed Bawa,the EFCC chief executive being in detention and not charged while majority of the top hierarchy of the Bola Tinubu government,who the EFCC boss was investigating or already charging for corruption are celebrating and peeing on the 43 year old operative.
