Monday
May 17, 2010 |
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Mention the name James Onanefe Ibori
and many different emotions and impressions flood the Nigerian mind. The
man is seen as a personification of arrogance and avarice. He’s
perceived as an embodiment of the worst in the Nigerian “misruling”
class. He conjures the image of a man who gets away with anything.
Well, not any more. Wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission to answer to charges of diverting billions of naira in state
funds, Ibori was finally arrested last week – thanks to the doggedness
of British law enforcement – in Dubai.
The last Nigerians heard about Ibori before he turned up in Dubai, he
was holed up in a fortress in his hometown of Oghara – reportedly
protected by heavily armed thugs whose firepower beat back a police
contingent sent to arrest him. He proved what Nigerians and foreign
watchers of Nigeria know full well: that some Nigerians – especially the
biggest criminals – are above the law.
The British are interested in Ibori because they accuse the ex-governor
of using UK financial institutions to launder his loot. As I write, a
jury at the Southwark Crown Court is weighing a verdict in a money
laundering trial involving several of Ibori’s associates, including his
sister and one of his mistresses. To Nigeria’s shame, the UK has
demonstrated by far more seriousness in prosecuting Nigerian looters
than the Nigerian state itself.
In Nigeria, Ibori was – until recently – treated like a luminary. While
corruption charges were pending against him, he and former Governor
Lucky Igbinedion – a convict – were put on Nigeria’s official delegation
to the Beijing Olympics. Shortly after, the ruling party elevated him –
a man in his mid-forties – to the status of “party elder.”
His eventual money laundering trial in Nigeria was choreographed to
fail. Ibori was a major (perhaps the major) financier of Umaru
Yar’Adua’s presidential campaigns. Mr. Yar’Adua – using the shameless
offices of Michael Aondoakaa, a man who thoroughly debased the post of
Nigeria’s attorney general – took every deliberate step to ensure that
Ibori was spared the inconvenience of a real trial.
First, all the professionally sound officers who worked assiduously to
assemble a dossier on Ibori’s graft were dumped from the EFCC. This
punitive redeployment effectively chilled the case against the former
governor. The rusticated officers possessed a depth of insight into the
methods, nature and scale of Ibori’s money laundering artistry. Then a
brand new court was created for Ibori in the Delta capital of Asaba, a
town where the prosecutors knew that witnesses, for fear of their
safety, dared not testify against the accused ex-governor. Add to the
mix the fact that the EFCC’s attorney often acted and spoke, in and out
of court, as if he were not a prosecutor but an advocate for the
accused.
Yar’Adua, whose attorney general parroted the mantra of “the rule of
law” while trafficking in the “ruse of law,” ensured that the system was
rigged just so it would declare Ibori blameless.
Yet, in the wake of Ibori’s arrest in Dubai, the EFCC’s Mrs. Farida
Waziri amazingly found her voice. Mrs. Waziri, who oversaw the bungling
of Ibori’s first prosecution, now says she wants another crack at
putting him to trial. She wants the embattled governor sent to her,
instead of being extradited to London.
In an ideal world, Ibori should be headed for Nigeria to answer for his
alleged crimes. But Nigeria is a haven – a heaven, even – for big time
criminals. It’s a place where those who steal billions of naira are
decorated with flamboyant chieftaincy titles, declared to be “stake
holders,” and garlanded with national honors. There are (doubtless)
courageous, principled judges in Nigeria. But too many judges are
hopelessly corrupt, all too willing to sell their judgment to the
highest bidder. And Nigerian police officers are routinely assigned to
guard notorious criminals who should be in custody – or jail.
That’s why – if one gauges from comments on websites – most Nigerians
don’t want Ibori in Mrs. Waziri’s incompetent hands. They believe that
the odds of putting the man to a credible trial lie in ferrying him to
London.
Ibori should never have become a governor in the first place. In the
early 1990s, he and his future wife were convicted twice in London for
possession of a stolen credit card and theft. This history should have
disqualified the man from seeking even to be a typist in a government
office. Instead, he became a two-term governor. Any surprise, then, that
he is today mired in the mud of corruption?
Nigerians don’t hold a patent on corruption – far from it. The trouble
is that the Nigerian state makes little or no serious effort to combat
corruption. Graft has been permitted, instead, to fester, to infect
every sector of society – the judiciary, media, law enforcement,
religious groups, commerce etc. In many other countries, corruption is
properly perceived as a kind of blight on the body polity, an
unwholesome stain. In Nigeria, by contrast, the corrupt are wont to
strut and swagger; they make a fetish of their loot and a spectacle of
their thieving selves. They wear their moral deformity as if it were a
mark of rare ethical refinement.
There’s never a shortage of groups or individuals to champion the
(grandly) corrupt. Thus, a group styled “The Delta State caucus in the
House of Representatives” last week made bold to disparage Ibori’s
nemeses. At a press conference in Abuja, the group categorized the
nabbing of the former governor as “a real breach of the basic
fundamental human rights of a Nigerian, a statesman and a leader.”
When a man of Ibori’s antecedents is held up as the face of
statesmanship and leadership, what else is there to say about Nigeria’s
malaise?
The task before Nigerians is to sustain the heat against the Iboris in
our midst. For make no mistake, the haulage of public funds will stop
only when more citizens become enlightened, and when these enlightened
citizens insist that those who hold public office render account. The
brazen privatization of public wealth will cease when – only when – we
institute a practice of sending our big name criminals and “‘steak’
holders” to jail.
Rather than asking for another opportunity to fumble the trial of Ibori,
Mrs. Waziri should get cracking on the prosecution of Nigeria’s numerous
grand looters. If she’s serious, she should begin by naming the
Nigerians, including former heads of state, who took bribes from
Halliburton executives. Then she should move to arrest them and put them
in the dock. She should investigate whether, as recently reported by
Saharareporters.com, Mr. Ahmed Modibbo Mohammed, the Executive Secretary
of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), has funneled plum
contracts to companies owned by his wife, Aishatu Mohammed. She should
vigorously appeal the scandalous judgment that shields former Governor
Peter Odili from investigation or prosecution.
A nation that jails or amputates the limbs of petty thieves, but
encourages its big thieves to run for the presidency – such a nation is
bound to sail from one disaster to another. There are many Iboris in the
space called Nigeria. It’s our individual and collective challenge to
ensure that there’s neither rest nor hiding place for these plunderers –
neither in Abuja nor in Dubai.
