Charly Boy and his group
Charly
Boy and co should not inadvertently make themselves political
instruments in the hands of the real criminals and
mischief-makers...Kennedy Emetelu, here, attempts an analysis on the
recent call to bring back Diezani.
In my book, Charly Boy and all those who participated in the
‘Resume or Resign’ campaign, home and abroad, are heroes and patriots,
but now I’m at a loss over this ‘Bring Back Diezani Alison-Madueke’
campaign at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)
headquarters in Abuja. I just don’t get it. The more I think about it,
the more I suspect that Charly Boy and co are falling for the ‘public
objectivity’ scam where you’re criticised for doing something by one
interest group and you go out to do another thing to win the sympathy or
support of the group that criticised you in order to appear
‘objective’.
What am I talking about? Those who led the ‘Resume or Resign’
campaign have been criticised as anti-Buhari, anti-APC, pro-PDP, and all
whatnots. But rather than for them to publicly defend their position
with information supporting the legality and appropriateness of their
action and challenge opposers to public debates to show to Nigerians
those truly playing the patriotic role, some of them, led by Charly Boy,
are now asking for Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, the supposed PDP
darling, to be extradited from the United Kingdom in an obvious attempt
to appear as objective or even-handed in their protests.
They want to show that they are not agents of the PDP. I think
they’re trying too hard. In the end, what they are doing is playing
politics with activism. I mean, isn’t it convenient to see one EFCC
official, Emmanuel Aremo addressing the smattering of protesters and
promising they would be working to extradite Diezani?
More conveniently, there is no tear gassing of any protesters
today. It’s all Mickey-Mousey stuff, honestly. Of course, if the
campaign is generally couched as a protest against the government’s
less-than-impressive anti-corruption prosecution efforts, that would be
fine. But to single out Mrs. Alison-Madueke in the midst of scores of
high-profile corruption cases against former and serving public
officials, smacks of nothing but desperation.
Now, here is the problem with the ‘Bring Back Diezani
Alison-Madueke’ campaign and the difference between it and the ‘Resume
or Resign’ campaign. The ‘Resume or Resign’ campaign was appropriately
directed at the President who was the authority and person in a position
to do either of the two things demanded. I have written enough to show
that the demand was lawful and legitimate, so I need not get into all
that again here.
But the ‘Bring Back Diezani’ protest to EFCC is misdirected. They
are protesting to the EFCC when the EFCC has no authority on its own
whatsoever in the matter and has another appointee of the administration
indicating that they would prefer Diezani to be in London, where the
justice administration is likely to work better to convict her.
Yes, this is actually the view of Professor Itse Sagay, the
Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption when
he criticised the protest at EFCC.
According to Sagay: “Their demand is not only unrealistic but it is
not even being done in good faith. These people are hostile to the
anti-corruption struggle and are hoping that if Diezani is brought here,
there will be difficulty in getting her convicted.”
In Nigeria, the Diezani case is so far being fought with more heat
than light. We read her statement recently making some claims against
the EFCC and some of these claims fundamentally affect the justice of
the situation. Basically, she’s accused the EFCC of orchestrating a
media campaign against her based on lies while circumventing or
manipulating the judicial and court processes in Nigeria.
I haven’t seen or read the EFCC response to her, except this
continued media claims of the courts making her forfeit this or that
property or money where proof has not been made available publicly that
she actually owns what is being supposedly seized or forfeited.
For me, it’s not about whether Diezani is guilty or not of all
she’s being accused of, she might as well be guilty of all and more.
What this should be about is justice. Justice must be done and must be
seen to have been done. EFCC and all those keen on prosecuting Diezani
must come to equity with clean hands.
The way I see it, having followed the UK angle to the Diezani
affair, I think the UK authorities have realized now that the Nigerian
authorities are not very keen on the Diezani matter. They can see this
in the shoddy way the EFCC is going about it through its media trial and
half-hearted court processes. The initial interest of the UK National
Crime Agency (NCA) has since died down once they realized that it’s all
noise from the Nigerian end.
For instance, they arrested Diezani in October 2015, seized her
passport and confiscated the sum of £27,000 found at her home. At the
prompting of the NCA, a UK court in September last year ordered some £10
million assets supposedly belonging to her frozen under the UK Proceeds
of Crime Act.
Diezani has not said these assets, which include two properties in
the UK, do not belong to her. Of course, no criminal charges have been
brought against her yet because investigators are yet to make such a
case preliminarily through their investigation. Obviously, the UK
investigators have to link the proceeds investigated to a crime or
crimes committed in Nigeria and/or in the UK. The UK authorities who
barred Alison-Madueke from leaving the UK until April last year had
hoped to conclude investigations into the case (with the help of the
Nigerian authorities) and charge Alison-Madueke before then, but that
has not happened because they simply did not get helpful information.
Therefore, the question is if the EFCC is so sure of the crime or
crimes of Diezani and the government is keen for her to be charged and
convicted in the UK, how much help are they offering the UK
investigators in this regard? If indeed they are offering that help, by
now Diezani would have been charged, but we see nothing indicating that
she is going to be charged in the UK.
There are conspiracy theories around the fact that the
Alison-Maduekes are family friends of the Buharis. It was Muhammadu
Buhari that first brought Diezani’s husband, then Navy Captain
Alison-Madueke into government as the Military Governor of Anambra State
in January 1984. He remained in the military and rose to the position
of Chief of Naval Staff under General Sani Abacha and shortly after,
Buhari served in the same government as head of the Petroleum Trust Fund
(PTF).
In February last year, Mr. Alison Madueke was reportedly arrested
by the EFCC on a charge of laundering more than $600,000 and was
released on administrative bail. The case mysteriously died thereafter.
Meanwhile, the only substantive case filed last year by the EFCC against
Diezani and others, which was a nine-count charge against them at the
Federal High Court Abuja concerning the laundering of about $1.6
billion, did not only stall at the court, Diezani’s name has since been
dropped from the case.
So, there are those who strongly believe that this Diezani matter
has more to it than meets the eye. Between the EFCC's shoddy
prosecution, the reluctance of the administration to ask for her
extradition back to Nigeria based apparently on the reasoning of
Professor Sagay, and this whole noise about the fight against
corruption, the truth is fast being lost.
I would, therefore, advise Charly Boy and co to go do their
homework first before joining this type of campaign. Extradition is a
government to government action and if it’s going to happen, it is our
Ministry of Justice that will be pursuing it, not the EFCC. From all we
can see so far, Diezani is under investigation in the UK already and if
there is a reason to charge her, they will.
What the Charly Boy group should be doing is to first seek
information from the Nigerian authorities, if possible through a Freedom
of Information application, as to what role the Nigerian authorities
are playing over the British investigation of Alison-Madueke. They can
also make a Freedom of Information request in the UK through their
Information Access Team at the Home Office, which is located at the
Ground Floor, Seacole Building, 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF. Their
email address is FOIRequests@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.
They’d want to find out if there's a live case or investigation
still ongoing in the UK on the Diezani matter and if so, what is the
stage now and what is the possibility that Mrs. Alison-Madueke will be
charged before a UK court? If the answer is that there is no case
ongoing in the UK, then what are the Nigerian authorities doing with
regard to the actual charges against Alison-Madueke at home? I mean,
every day, we hear she’s forfeited this or that through some EFCC court
process, but we do not know whether in truth these things being ordered
forfeited by the courts are actually linked to her.
Yes, the EFCC says so but the EFCC has proved to be more a
political vehicle than a proper law enforcement and prosecutorial
agency. Where is their proof in the face of the documented denials by
Mrs. Alison-Madueke? Where is that singular comprehensive criminal case
against Mrs. Alison-Madueke in any court of law in Nigeria? They cannot
just be running rings round Nigerians and getting people like Charly Boy
to be out there with untrusted information.
Charly Boy and co should not inadvertently make themselves
political instruments in the hands of the real criminals and
mischief-makers. If they do their homework and find that it is
appropriate to extradite Mrs. Alison-Madueke, they can then take their
case to the proper authority, which is the Ministry of Justice, not the
EFCC.
***********************
By: Kennedy Emetelu
0 comments:
Post a Comment