Monday
December 21, 2009 |
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There were several opportunities last
week for the Nigerian judiciary to showcase its mettle. The result was a
mixed bag.
In Lagos, a panel of the Court of Appeal did itself credit by asking
Bode George to remain in jail while appealing his conviction for
mismanaging public funds when he served as chairman of the Nigerian
Ports Authority.
In Abuja, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s ruling barring
Charles Chukwuma Soludo, former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria,
from selling himself as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
in the Anambra governorship election scheduled for February 6, 2010. The
decision, coming a day after the Court of Appeal in Abuja had reaffirmed
an earlier order rusticating Soludo, struck some by the haste and
vehemence of its rebuke of the lower court.
But it was a money laundering case in a Federal High Court in Asaba that
carried the prize for sheer amazement. Justice Marcel Awokulehin ruled
that the government had failed to prove a single case of corruption or
money laundering against former Governor James Onanefe Ibori of Delta.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had charged Ibori on 170
counts of corruption and abuse of office. Justice Awokulehin said he was
not impressed.
It was hard to find many Nigerians who extol Justice Awokulehin as a
Daniel come to judgment. Anybody who followed Nigerians’ comments on
several websites, especially www.saharareporters.com and
www.nigeriavillagesquare.com, know that the case was widely seen as a
case of grave miscarriage of justice. Were Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the
afro-beat maestro, alive today, he might have summarized the verdict
thus: “De judge talk say money no loss.”
Here’s the kindest response to Justice Awokulehin, who’s reportedly
retiring from the judiciary: Whether you gave a sound judgment or not,
you will have to answer to your conscience. But this statement assumes,
of course, that the man is possessed of that moral equipment called
conscience.
I predict that history will take a harsh view of this judgment. Ibori’s
wholesale clearance has struck many Nigerians as a case of the Nigerian
state displaying its propensity for protecting highly connected suspects
from rigorous prosecution. Truth be told, this was a case where, it
appeared, the state summoned every available instrument to ensure the
exoneration of a man widely perceived as embodying scant regard for the
sacredness of the public trust.
When Ibori was first charged to court, Nuhu Ribadu was still at the helm
at the EFCC. He’d charged Ibori before a Kaduna Federal High Court
headed by Justice Shuiabu, a man reputed for judicial fearlessness and
incorruptibility. Mr. Ribadu reported that Ibori tried to bribe him with
$15 million to make the corruption case go away. Ribadu refused. Soon,
the stubborn EFCC boss was maneuvered out of the anti-corruption agency
and subsequently hounded until he fled Nigeria into exile in the UK.
Meanwhile, after suffering several losses on motions in Kaduna, Ibori’s
lawyers persuaded a Court of Appeal to wrest the trial from Justice
Shuiabu and transfer it to Delta. They invoked the principle that a
suspect ought to be tried in the state where his alleged crimes took
place. It didn’t occur to Ibori and his lawyers that this was a strange
case to make for a man who insisted on his innocence. Interestingly, the
federal government offered weak, unserious opposition to Ibori’s
argument to be sent home for trial.
Once Asaba was chosen as the address for Ibori’s trial, many observers
viewed his acquittal as a foregone outcome. Rotimi Jacobs, a consummate
professional who was handling Ibori’s prosecution, was peeled from the
case – replaced by Ibrahim Isiakyu. That was, to put it bluntly, a
bizarre choice, for Mr. Isiakyu had reportedly written a memo at the
behest of Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa to the effect that Ibori's
case ought to be discontinued for lack of merit. To ask a man who has
openly categorized a case as porous to prosecute the selfsame case is a
classic case of prosecutorial mischief, if not misconduct.
But so concerted, and farcical, was the orchestration to find Ibori, a
generous investor in Umaru Yar’Adua’s presidential run, blameless. In
court, Mr. Isiakyu sometimes came across as part of Ibori’s defense
team, rather than the prosecutor he, ostensibly, was. Under his
captaincy, the prosecution produced no serious witness against Ibori. It
was hardly a surprise since the EFCC had, in a punitive spree,
reassigned all of its officers involved in investigating Ibori and
producing the considerable rap sheet against him.
When Ibori’s lawyers asked the presiding judge to dismiss the case
against their client, the prosecutor, in effect, seconded the motion. He
told the press that the defense had made a strong, if not unassailable,
case.
Of course, Ibori’s trial in Asaba was always conducted in the shadow of
– and, it can be argued, in response to – a money laundering in a UK
court against several of his associates, including a younger sister, a
mistress, and his British lawyer. Mr. Aondoakaa, who’s made little
secret of the fact that he works in tandem with Ibori’s team, made
several moves to scuttle the case in London. He sent letters designed to
assist Ibori’s associates’ defense to establish that the case against
them was unfounded. He even wrote British authorities to testify that
Ibori was an upstanding citizen with no whiff of scandal attaching to
his person.
The British know better. In the early 1990s, Mr. Ibori was twice
convicted by English courts for thefts – in one case, for possessing a
stolen credit card. Only in Nigeria would such a character be
catapulted, subsequently, into Government House, and handed the treasury
of a state to manage as he wished.
The deal is that Judge Awokulehin’s verdict may well be the trump card
that Ibori’s besieged associates need when their trial resumes in
London. Here’s the simple equation: Since a Nigerian court has
established that Ibori stole no money, then a case of money laundering
against his associates is, perforce, illogical.
Two weeks ago, Mr. Princeton Lyman, a former American ambassador to
Nigeria, told an audience at the Achebe Colloquium in Providence, Rhode
Island, that Nigeria’s strategic assets and relevance had seriously
eroded. Nigeria makes a further mockery of itself when its official
organs organize a patently absurd and ill-disguised farce of a judicial
game whose objective is to protect those who have worked hardest to keep
Nigeria prostrate.
One of Mr. Aondoakaa’s favorite mantras is what he calls “rule of law.”
For Nigerians, that phrase has become a transparently deformed joke.
Somebody has tagged it, with pinpoint accuracy, as “ruse of law.”
Nigerians have had some bad attorneys-general, but none to equal the
notoriety of Mr. Aondoakaa. He leaves the impression of slipping into
distress any time a Nigerian “thieftain’s” serenity was disturbed by the
EFCC or the courts. He appears content to keep the company of, and be
embedded with, those who may have contributed the most to the abortion
of Nigeria’s promise.
Judge Awokulehin has rendered the kind of judgment that makes
Aondoakaa’s day. Yet, with the Nigerian state coming ever closer to the
edge of a precipice, the question begs to be asked: can the Aondoakaas
of Nigeria afford a verdict so widely seen as a brazen case of legal
manipulation?
In the long run, the “victory” for Ibori may backfire. Even the current
leadership of the EFCC, not known for stern language, was compelled to
call Awokulehin’s a “hazy judgment.” The agency argued, correctly in my
view, that the verdict was “capable of deepening the menace of
corruption in our country.” But is the EFCC in deadly earnest, or merely
playing its part in a vast game of cover-up and deception? And can the
Iboris of Nigeria get away, ultimately, with this game. My hunch tells
me: No!
