The 56th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar
Association came to an end August 26, in Port Harcourt with the bar making
pronouncements on major issues of national importance. One of the new
commitments as articulated by the new President of the Association, Mr.
Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, is to reinvent the association by reclaiming its moral
high ground through a campaign for ethical rectitude by members of the bar.
“The NBA under my watch will fight judicial corruption. We shall make the legal
profession unattractive for corrupt lawyers,” he said.
This is reassuring considering the evidence that senior
members of the Bar have become complicit in cases of corruption and money
laundering, leading to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC,
arraigning two members of the inner bar for acts of corruption. A Bar populated
or directed by people perceived to be rogues and vultures cannot play the role
of priests in the temple of justice.
Nevertheless, the Commission views with concern, the call by
the NBA president that the EFCC be stripped of its prosecutorial powers. He
said, “We need to define its mandate more narrowly and more clearly... I
strongly recommend that the EFCC be limited to investigation… while prosecution
should be handled by an independent resource prosecution agency”. The current
campaign appears to be self serving, intended to create a cabal of untouchables
who can be investigated but may never be prosecuted.
The Commission’s discomfort over this seeming innocuous
proposition, stem from the fact Mahmoud was silent on the reason for his
position. More importantly, the Commission cannot comprehend how the
redefinition of EFCC’s mandate in narrow terms, ultimately whittling it down,
fits into the clamour by Nigerians and the vision of the President Muhammadu
Buhari administration for a vibrant and courageous anti-corruption agency.
Instead, Mahmoud’s suggestions appears perfectly in sync
with a cleverly disguised campaign by powerful forces that are uncomfortable
with the reinvigorated anti-graft campaign of the EFCC and are hell-bent on
emasculating the agency by stripping it of powers to prosecute with the tame
excuse that an agency that investigates cannot also prosecute.
The question Nigerians must ask the Mahmoud-led NBA is, what
is wrong with EFCC prosecution? Mahmoud is in a position to answer this
question. He was the Attorney General of the Federation’s counsel in the trial
of former Delta State governor, James Ibori at the Federal High Court, Asaba, a
case which EFCC lost in questionable circumstances. But the same
ingredients from that case were used to fetch Ibori a 13-year jail term in
London. Mahmoud is also the Commission's counsel in the appeal against
the infamous perpetual injunction from arrest and prosecution by former Rivers
State governor, Peter Odili, which is still pending before the Court of Appeal
in Port Harcourt, many years after it was filed.
It is too much of a strange coincidence that the suggestion
to strip the EFCC of itsprosecutorial powers is being floated few months after
the Commission, in unprecedented fashion arraigned some senior lawyers for
corruption.
For the avoidance of doubt, the Commission has recorded more
convictions in the last one year than all the states and federal ministries of
justices combined.
Against this background, the current campaign appears to be
self serving, intended to create a cabal of untouchables who can be
investigated but may never be prosecuted.
The EFCC however wishes to reassure Nigerians that there
will be no sacred cows in the renewed fight against corruption in Nigeria.
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