From their strategic positions in the legislature and the higher bureaucracy, they waged wars of attrition to frustrate, distract and undermine the EFCC...
“We have been there before,” not a few Nigerians would have said with more than a touch of cynicism, having regard to the dismissal of Ibrahim Magu, most recently chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission .
Magu’s on-going predicament is at bottom a variation on an old theme. Even so, the differences between how his predecessors were sent packing and the bureaucratic cum pseudo-judicial torture to which he has been subjected, especially this past fortnight, are startling. It is notorious that Buhari had been under tremendous pressure from key figures in the National Assembly, business barons who operate on the principle that nothing succeeds like wheeling and dealing in public contracts, and by some so-called politically exposed persons who command vast wealth of dubious provenance.
There is something almost Kafkaesque about some aspects of the proceedings. Effectively in captivity, Magu has had no access to material witnesses and documents that would enable him respond to the charges he is facing. Even Magu’s attorney, Wahab Shittu, has complained that he has had no access to the panel’s terms of reference, without which he cannot represent his client robustly.
In the United States, it belongs in the province of a grand jury that makes this kind of determination. Our body of laws makes no provision for such an institution. But I have it on the authority of the Attorney-General that the special investigation panel is fully backed by our laws. That may well be the case.
One cannot assert categorically that the panel is rigged, despite Malami’s scarcely-veiled resolve to see the back of the former EFCC chief. But the whole thing raises questions of fairness, and of due protection under the law.
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