The recent inauguration of a 12-member committee to amend the constitution by President Goodluck Jonathan has come under hard knocks from legal luminary, Chief Niyi Akintola, SAN. According to Akintola, Nigeria which he described as a country of anything goes is not serious about constitutional amendment warning that the country is presently sitting on a keg of gunpowder which may explode anytime if care is not taken. In this interview with AKINJIDE AKINTOLA, he also spoke on the war against corruption which he said was inadequate.While chiding the anti corruption agencies for unprofessional methods of media trial and arresting people without prior proper investigation, he also spoke on the issue of plea bargaining recently declared illegal by the Chief Justice of the Federation. The Chief Justice of Nigeria, (CJN), Justice Dahiru Musdapher recently declared as illegal, decision of some courts on plea bargaining, how do you see this and what is the consequences of this' The CJN was saying the obvious, there is nothing like plea bargain in our statutes. It was an arrangement borne out of frustration; an exercise embarked upon by some judges for one reason or the other which are not known to the public. But it had never been part of our statutes and the CJN was right and he hit the nail on the head. So what happens to those decisions already taken' Until it is appealed against, the decision stands. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission{EFCC} can appeal on it, anybody who is party to the suit can appeal. In fact the civil societies have been shouting over it but the powers that be which made the arrangee thing did nothing about it. Can't such judges be penalized for such illegality' You don't know what goes on behind the scene; they are political decisions. Most of these things are political cases; when it happens, it is the more you look, the less you see. All these things started during Olusegun Obasanjo era, using the instrumentalities of the security agencies to deal with political opponents. And as soon as he whips them back into line, you don't hear anything again. When politically exposed persons are being tried in Nigeria, you don't jump to conclusions. The cabal that rules the country; it's a cabal and once you are part and parcel of that system and you want to do anything against the system, they whip you back to line maybe through one form of coercion or the other. But if you don't belong to the cabal, they find it very difficult to deal with you, but once you are part and parcel, anytime you want to beat a retreat, there is a cane at the corner waiting for you. When you see our leaders fighting amongst themselves or doing one probe or the other, don't just jump into conclusion, don't take things at its face. There are more to it which you or I may not know. A few of us have been sufficiently exposed to know that the more you look, the less you see, when you talk about the nation's political elite; they know themselves, they know how they deal with themselves. The CJN also gave six months within which corruption cases must be disposed of; is this possible'It is possible if the anti-corruption agencies do their homework well before going to court. I said this earlier, 42 Nigerians were arraigned some few years ago in the US for economic crimes, credit scams etc; they were investigated for over three years; they never knew they were being investigated. By the time the evidence against them was collated and they were arrested, all of them pleaded guilty because it was so obvious; but in Nigeria, they try people on the pages of newspapers. Even before the charge is filed, you read it on the pages of newspapers which is wrong. There is a particular newspaper that give out information about the accused person to be tried, what is to be done to them even before EFCC or ICPC takes a step. Its not something that we should encourage and the anti-graft agencies should do their homework well before taking anybody before the court of law. But what you find most of the times is that these agencies are not well equipped; the government is not serious; the agencies are not well funded; the prosecution unit is not well funded; you don't expect a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) to take up a case for EFCC for five-10 years to last up to five-10 years and the defence is ready to pay any amount. So, if we are serious about fighting corruption, we must strengthen the prosecution unit, it must be well funded; also the investigating unit too must be well funded, logistics must be made available, equipment, vehicles, gadgets etc. For instance, how many forensic laboratories do we have in the country' These are the things that hamper investigation itself. Most of the times, the EFCC or ICPC don't have access to necessary information concerning the suspect; if you want to arrest a governor or a commissioner, it is natural that those at the helms of affair will not volunteer information; that was why the NBA (Nigeria Bar Association) recommended the creation of specialized courts for the trial of economic crimes etc; we did that over a year ago, we presented it in a draft form to the National Assembly but it didn't see the light of day. So, what the CJN was saying was not new, the NBA had made that suggestion but before then we must put in place necessary wherewithal with which the anti-graft agencies will perform their duties which they don't have now.But they are not saying this out' These are government agencies; they cannot be seen to be condemning the government. Most of the times, they even lie against themselves. They will say they are not being interfered with which is not correct. I make bold to say that the work of EFCC and ICPC is being made cumbersome by political and leadership interference. They can't deny that because if they do, I will supply particulars; definitely, most of the time, they interfere with their functions, they do and most of us on the field know when they interfere, how they interfere and where they interfere. However, it is the fact of the case before the judge that he would act upon and not the media hype or media trial that newspapers publish that will determine the case. I know that in most of the cases, people are arrested before they start looking for evidence to nail them which should not be. I have said it before, until we involve all stakeholders in the fight against corruption, we will be groping in the dark. Nigeria is perhaps the only country in the world that fights corruption to the exclusion of other stakeholders. Stakeholders like Inland Revenue for instance; how can you be fighting corruption without making use of Inland revenue; the board of inland revenue should be in a position to give out information. Like what most of our public officers are doing now; they do what I call anticipatory declaration of assets. They declare what they don't have and start stealing to make up the target. We've seen governors who declared billions of naira but who could not afford #5 million, #10 million before getting to office who depended solely on borrowing and taking money from people to survive. But those governors were able to do that because of the loopholes in the system. if the system is fullproof, all you need to do is call the inland revenue and say: this governor has declared #3 billion as assets, can you furnish us with his tax clearance certificate in the last three years' If what he paid is not commensurate with what he declared, he goes to jail on that. And if it was discovered that what he claims to possess, he does not have, he goes to jail for perjury. The process here is such that you can dribble and exploit the loophole. You can't be fighting corruption and exclude the Corporate Affairs Commission. These agencies should be members of the board. You cannot remove the issue of tax from the fight against corruption. The mind boggling amount of assets that our public officers, like governors have been declaring, nobody has asked them for their tax certificate, is it commensurate with what they declared' Until you put in place some of these mechanisms, and the political will to implement them, we cannot move forward. In 1990, Justice Kayode Eso, when Prince Bola Ajibola was Attorney General of the Federation, he chaired a panel on corruption which also included Justice Chwukwudifu Oputa as a member; I stumbled on the draft bill which was recommended which didn't see the light of day. It had 143 sections. The Act establishing ICPC and EFCC just plagiarized the Eso draft, picking two or three sections to beef up. Justice Eso had seen through all these and the loopholes since 1990. For instance, the issue of onus is on the prosecution. If you are a civil servant or a public officer, we know what you earn; on a grade level 15, then you suddenly become a proud owner of a house in Agodi GRA; the onus should not be on the prosecution, you need to justify how you came about the house in a highbrow area where houses range from #100 million. Or you are a judge that earns #500,000 monthly and you have that type of house, you should be made to account. The onus should be on you to prove your innocence not on the prosecution. Until we develop this political will we can't get anywhere. The 12-member constitution amendment committee headed by Justice Alfa Belgore was inaugurated by President Jonathan, is it proper' The truth of the matter is that we are in the country of anything goes. Justice Alfa Belgore is an eminently qualified person to head such a committee. You can't take that credit away from him, but we don't know what went on behind the scene. When you see a Nigerian leader doing a particular thing, look behind the curtain. You don't know whether the committee has a no go area that they must not touch; you don't know whether suggestions from Nigerians would receive good reception from the committee; you don't know whether the committee has an agenda or goal towards which they are working; then you can't get anything good out of that committee. If we are serious about constitutional amendment, then the leaders should see clearly that the country is sitting on a keg of gunpowder; and anybody who loves this country should now be talking about proper devolution of power. Anything short of that, we will end up like Soviet Union, I'm not a prophet of doom but take it or leave it, because what we are having now is a government of the minority by the minority for the majority. You have a government in place in a system that places people that constitute 63 percent of the population outside the government. Our political leaders don't read and most of them don't even understand the political arithmetic of Nigeria. The north west and the south west zones alone constitute 66 percent of the population of Nigeria, that is the truth. Unfortunately, they are out of the government, they are crying of marginalization everyday. And not only that, these same two zones like the north west for instance has its cousin in Bauchi, Adamawa, Gombe, Nasarawa states while south west has its cousins in Kwara, Kogi, Edo and Delta states; then in such a situation, how can you have peace. The truth of the matter is that our leaders don't understand Nigeria. Lets take Oyo State for instance, one would have thought that the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) would put up its thinking cap during the last election in the state. With the population of the state, when the voters register came out, it was 2.7 million with 1.8 million coming from Ibadan alone and yet somebody still went and presented a candidate from outside Ibadan. Nigeria politics is still very much of ethnicity and religion whether we like it or not. In Nigeria itself, all you need to win election is to win in north west and south west zones and you are home and dry. A system that keep people like that outside the government should not be encouraged. It pays us to remain as one, we are highly respected outside as one single entity. It does not pay any of us to have the country fragmented but the rate at which our leaders are driving the bus of Nigeria, it appears they are heading towards the Soviet Union experience.This is just what the Sheik Lemu committee report on electoral violence said' Yes, Sheikh Lemu said it, but the people he said it too; are they listening' They are not listening. They don't even understand that every community all over the world has the people it calls gatekeepers. If you want the Boko Haram people to stop today, all you need to do is to talk to the gatekeepers; each community has its own gatekeepers. It may not necessarily be the national assembly. Indeed, there are people outside government who are more powerful than all of them put together. You need to meet the gatekeepers but unfortunately, most of our leaders are political illiterates, they don't understand this basic principle.Can we escape the Soviet Union experience' We can escape it if we put in place proper constitution that recognizes peoples' diversity. Why must the government of Ogun State go to Abuja to go and negotiate on UBE (Universal Basic Education). What's the business of the centre with UBE' Somebody somewhere sat down there thinking all Nigerians are illiterates, he was recommending unified driving licence for Nigeria and plate number and everybody kept mute; no governor could say anything. There are a lot of things we do in Nigeria which are not even permissible in a unitary system like Britain not to talk of United States; we have centralized everything. These are things that cannot work. Thank God the House of Representatives woke up from their slumber.
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