Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other
Related Offences Commission, Prof Bolaji Owasanoye, earned a degree
in Law from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University)
at 21, a master’s degree in Law at 24 and became a Professor of Law
at 38. He tells OLUFEMI ATOYEBI that the
agency’s fight against non-execution of constituency projects is
not designed to hunt legislators
There has always been
a mix-up between the roles of the ICPC and the EFCC. What is the
difference?
In term of concept, the ICPC was established first and it was
mainly to focus on public sector corruption. The EFCC was
established two years later in 2002 before it had a reenactment in
2004 to focus basically on economic crime with special reference to
money laundering and advance fee fraud.
But with the way we draft legislation in Nigeria, there are
usually overlaps. First, the whole concept of corruption is wider
than economic crimes, money laundering and bribery. You can commit
corruption through those predicate offences. But there are other
notions of corruption that do not fall into economic crimes. For
example, abuse of office, abusing power and bribery.
In term of policy and conceptualisation, ICPC was designed to
focus on public sector corruption while the EFCC was basically
established to focus on economic and financial crimes with special
reference to those two areas.
But in the format of legislative draft, there is always this
window left; that when you are investigating and you want to
prosecute, you can do so under your own law or any other law that
prohibits that conduct. That is why both commissions have the
window in their legislation. The reason is to give law enforcement
agency the flexibility to be able to conclude their work.
For example, if we start an investigation and at the end of the
day, we found out that what we can charge the suspect with is
something more specific to money laundering or advance fee fraud,
we don’t then abandon the case at that point. You can then charge
the person with the law which is not your own. So, law enforcement
agencies are generally allowed in terms of style and standard to
prosecute with legislation apart from their own. In ICPC, we are
trying to re-establish the standard as a board.
You said there are some cases that had to be dropped
because of clash with the EFCC. Have you dropped those
cases?
There are cases under us that we found out that they did not
fall under our jurisdiction. We have sent them to other agencies
where they should belong. Cases that fall within the EFCC’s
jurisdiction will be sent to them rather than start working on
them. EFCC does the same to us in some cases.
More than a decade after the ICPC and the EFCC have
been fighting corruption in Nigeria, people still talk about
corruption as if the agencies fighting it are not achieving success
against it. Why is this so?
It is a combination of different factors. First, over the years,
because of lack of political will to deal with issues around
corruption, it has escalated. Impunity has also come along with it.
When you have those two factors, there will be more reportage of
the issue. In the eye of the public, it is an increase; there is no
doubt that this has happened in our system.
Secondly, corruption undermines economic development, physical
stability and revenue of the state. That impact is also affecting
anti-corruption agencies. Corruption has so much damaged Nigeria
that it is not only affecting education but law enforcement so that
our capacity to respond is also affected.
It is logical that when corruption ravages a system, no part of
it is left unaffected. The corruption that affected the polity, our
economy and development has also affected anti-corruption agencies
in terms of building capacity, funding and capacity to work.
But with the political will under President Muhammadu Buhari,
that has changed a little bit. It has reinforced the capacity of
anti-corruption agencies to do their work. It also gives them some
leverage. The more they do that, the more it is reported in the
media and society. When people read about corruption everyday in
the media, they may think that it is increasing. It may not be an
increase but more attention and determination to deal with it.
On the other hand, there are new areas of corruption coming up.
We have now seen the link between corruption and terrorism. We have
seen the link with digital and cyber crimes. These are emerging
areas that we must also tackle. Corruption fighting is a cardinal
agenda of the current government. Buhari said he would deal with it
because it is undermining development.
People say anti-corruption agencies use media trial
a lot. What is your response to this?
It depends on what they mean. What is meant by media trial is
when the media reports investigations that are going on as if the
suspect is guilty. By the time the case is taken through
technicalities and court proceedings, the suspect may come out
clean or be discharged. But the media will not go back to undo what
it has done.
But it is a balance because the public has to know and the media
has the right to educate the people. It is the balance that has to
be struck between the media demands, the right of the public to
know and the right to preserve the integrity of the suspect and not
to convict them on the pages of the newspaper. That is the balance
we want to strike.
What are the challenges you have faced since you
resumed office two months ago?
There are quite a myriad of them. We inherited a number of cases
that did not fall within our purview. Motivation of staff is
another challenge. We are trying to do that now. Leadership and
direction is another issue. Funding is another problem. You cannot
fight corruption without good resources.
The reality of this is that anti-corruption agencies are not in
a position to pursue all the cases that arise. If someone, who has
been defrauded of N5,000, wants justice and the state has also been
defrauded of N1bn and also wants justice. To investigate these, you
have to put resources behind it. You need to ask yourself which one
has more value and impact on the people. When you have a lot of
cases, you have to prioritise how you pursue them because your
resources are limited.
ICPC legislation covers a whole range of measures which include
enforcement, prevention and public education. You need to focus a
lot on the preventive mechanism because it is expensive to enforce.
If you can stop corruption from happening, it is cheaper than to
correct or impose punishment after it has happened.
When corruption is systemic as we have it in Nigeria, you cannot
solve it by enforcement alone. Many of the institutions and
structures you need are probably compromised. You need
investigating capacity, prosecution, judiciary and other agencies.
When corruption is systemic, you can assume that some of these are
in one way or the other contaminated. You have to choose your
battle and design other methods to fight corruption which include
campaigns, public enlightenment and doing enforcement that sends
signal to the public. We met all these problems and we are trying
to deal with them.
Have you encountered interference in the cause of
doing your job?
If you mean interference from people trying to plead for someone
in a case, we always have this directly or indirectly. This is not
necessarily from government. I can tell you that the political will
to make anti-corruption agencies do their work is very strict. We
have not experienced any interference from there.
Is ICPC actually independent?
The answer to that is yes. There is a way you measure
independence. You measure it by legal and operational issues. If
you want an institution to be independent, it must be established
by law. There must be clear cut provision for appointment and
removal of people working there which must insulate them from risk.
ICPC has these.
I cannot be removed by the President without the input of the
National Assembly just like I could not have been appointed and
confirmed without the input of the Senate. There must be agreement
between the two bodies. These are what guarantee independence. The
law allows us to design our framework, select our own staff and
regulate our own conduct.
There is also operational and financial independence. In terms
of financing, we would wish that we had more than we are getting,
but we are not the only one with that desire. Virtually all
agencies of government are underfunded. If all these are not there,
they will undermine independence. It is not as if government has
decided to starve us but the reality is that all agencies are
taking money from the same pot and you have to share the money
somehow with other sectors. If I tell you we don’t have enough
money, it is not as if there is a grand plan to undermine our
independence.
People say anti-corruption agencies are used by the
government in power to fight opponent of the government. How would
you react to this?
That is perennial because when the present government leaves and
another government succeeds the All Progressives Congress and
begins to look at what the APC did while in government, the APC
will say the same thing.
As I always say, if someone charges you to court, your strongest
defence is to say you are innocent and present the proof of
innocence. Your defence cannot be that you are charged because you
are in another political party; that is not a defence.
If I have 10 suspects, it is my decision who I start with. If I
choose to start with you and you happen to be in the opposition,
your defence cannot be that it is because you are in the
opposition. If I do not charge others, there is no limitation of
time for offences, time does not run out against the state, there
will be a time when a Pharaoh, who does not know Joseph, will come
and they will be charged.
Experience has shown us that people who are so politically
astute and who have managed to dance away from being prosecuted for
their offences are now being prosecuted for their offences. In
order words, let everybody be assured that with your wealth and
connections, you can only delay justice, you cannot avoid it.
How is the ICPC coping with what has been described
as slow justice system in the country?
The architecture for justice system in Nigeria needs to be
reviewed. It is work in progress and we have to keep at it. Over
the years, we have allowed a number of factors to negatively impact
the criminal justice system. The number of court, judges and
welfare issue and the rule of court; many of these are
outdated.
We also have the challenge with the role players – the
prosecution, the defence and the judges. All of these have to be
reformed. To make matters complicated, we have subscribed to
constitutional democracy which guarantees and preserves certain
rights. We must keep within legal parameters. There is no way that
the public, no matter how much it is thirsty for justice and no
matter how thirsty the media is for things to move quickly, we have
to follow processes bearing in mind all the challenges I have
talked about.
The truth of the matter is that the presumption of innocence,
fair hearing, rights to dignity of the person, freedom of
association are not presented to be roadblocks but safeguards. If
they are removed, everybody is at risk. We just have to be tolerant
of the process and to continue to look at areas of improvement. If
you don’t go through these, you are not following due process and
if you are not following due process, the whole thing will be
challenged and they can fall flat.
You declared a fight against non-execution of
constituency project recently. Surely, you will be stepping on some
big political toes. Are you prepared to go all the
way?
I don’t know about stepping on toes. A lot of people have
misread the intention of this issue. What is our focus as a
commission? We want to look at the kind of corruption that affects
ordinary people. There has been a lot of focus on grand corruption
and politically exposed persons. I am not saying they are not
relevant. But what about corrupt practice that directly affects
poor people for which there has been budgetary allocation and
project intention?
People in a community may not care about you pursuing a minister
but what resonates with them is the fact that they need health
centres, water or schools in their communities. The project is
designed to help Nigeria meet sustainable development goals and
help people feel the impact of governance. Many people have
erroneously said the project is designed to target legislators. But
we have legislators who said they are happy that we want to do the
project because they were almost lynched in their constituencies
when the people said they have collected money for constituency
project but did not do it.
They (legislators) facilitate the placement of the projects in
the budget but it is the executive that decides the contractors
that handle them. Of course, there are situations where we have
rumours that some legislators influence who gets the contracts but
such situation may be few and far at the end of the day. We have
politicians who want to clear their names. I appreciate the
legislators who said they are ready to work with us. We know that
not all projects in the budget are eventually funded. This move
will help us remove rumours surrounding project funding and
execution.
The steering committee we put together for this project has the
civil society groups, media and the Nigeria Institute of Quantity
Surveyors who are professionals that can help us evaluate projects.
The ICPC is not selecting the projects that will be investigated
alone, that group will select projects. Because of cost, we are
limited in finance but we will do it gradually. We expect that when
we start our work, so many people will go back to site and complete
their work. Those who have diverted funds will also channel them
back. In some cases, which are egregious, we may have to enforce.
At the end of the day, it is the ordinary people that will
benefit.
We will also look at Universal Basic Education Commission
projects. UBEC has supported projects that have not been done and
money has been put behind it. Already, we have signal; some
legislators and other people have been coming to say that they have
done their projects or that they have gone back to site. We hope
that the recalcitrant ones will go back to site before we get to
them. This is going to be a challenging assignment but we look
forward to doing it. There are projects in 36 states of Nigeria and
we have limitation in terms of personnel and capacity but we will
do it gradually.
Are you looking at projects that date back to 1999
when the current democratic dispensation began?
We cannot do it. We are looking at Buhari’s tenure. If you want
to go back to 1999, you are looking at thousands of projects. Where
are we going to start from? But if this gains traction and we get
more resources and partners, we can move back. We are not locked in
any period.
This initiative will also help to introduce discipline into the
kind of projects approved as constituency projects. If they are
projects that cannot be monitored, are we getting value for money?
If you divert money meant for projects described as empowerment,
how do we track it?
You called on the National Assembly to be
transparent in its funding. Can you tell us more about
this?
There is a lot of misgiving in the public domain about the
budget of the National Assembly because it is opaque. I advise that
the National Assembly make its budget open because it has a moral
duty to do so. When other agencies appear before the National
Assembly, the legislators demand a breakdown. They invite them to
come and explain their budget. Why should they not do the same
thing? They should be able to tell us what their budget covers.
Maybe they are even under-paying themselves. Maybe they are not
getting enough to enable them to do their work effectively.
What is ICPC’s budget in a year?
Our budget for capital personnel and capital procurement is
about N5bn. I have always said we don’t have enough. Our budget is
not a secret. It is in the public domain.
In which area are you having funding
challenges?
Government funds personnel fully. The challenge is in
operational and capital expenses. As an anti-corruption agency, it
is difficult for you to have enough in an operational year. Things
can come up anytime that you will need to investigate and deploy
your operatives and security to go with them. You do not envisage
them. How do you know the number of crime that will be committed
this year and the number of cases you have to pursue? But in spite
of this, government has to give you a budget.
Our argument is that there is problem with operational fund. It
is not enough and it does not come on time. Part of what we are
requesting is that operational fund should be prioritised because
if you are dealing with systemic corruption, government needs the
anti-corruption agency to improve on the situation. We must be
ready at all time to diminish corruption so that government can
save money from revenue and on expenditure.
This office building in Abuja has not had a facelift in many
years. We have offices that are not up to standard. We need
operational vehicles and forensic infrastructure that we do not
have or that we do not have enough. We need to deal with all of
these. If we have only one operational vehicle, it means we can
only go in one direction at a time and this will slow our
operation. These are the argument about improving on our financial
situation so that we can do our work well.
There are states where the ICPC does not have
offices. Are you planning to establish offices to fight corruption
in those states?
The law says that we must have offices in every state but right
now, we are not able to meet up with that statutory standard
because of paucity of funds.
In how many states do you have
offices?
We have offices in 15 states. They are cited in such a way that
they cover all the geo-political zones so that one office can cover
a number of states.
Culled from Punch