Many people who expected that the Clerk of the House of Representatives' testimony at the ongoing trial would rip the former Speaker's underbelly apart, especially as he was appearing as a prosecution witness, must have been disappointed. Rather than dig-in Dimeji Bankole and Alhaji Usman Bayero Nafada, the Clerk of the House of Representatives' seemed to have absolved them and exposed the fact that there was a deliberate misleading of the public by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in the media trial, and conviction of Bankole even before the commencement of the trial.The Clerk of the House of Representatives, Mr Mohammed Sanni Omolori, told an Abuja High Court that, the decision to obtain loans by the leadership of the sixth session of the House, was not a unilateral one, but taken with the consent of all members. Omolori also told the court that no part of the loan facilities were converted into the personal accounts of the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole and his deputy, Alhaji Usman Bayero Nafada, Omolori went further to say that, contrary to the claim by the anti-graft agency, the two accused persons did not benefit from the loans taken, as the running costs of their offices were decreased to N100 million for the Speaker and N80 million for his deputy. He also said that the accounts maintained belonged to the House of Representatives and not the Speaker, and that the former Speaker had no control over any House' accounts.The Clerk of the House of Representatives' testimony seemed to have confirmed earlier belief in some quarters that Bankole's trial is political. The way in which the EFCC launched its manhunt on Bankole in the last days of his administration, raised eye brows on the real agenda of the anti-graft agency.Most people point at Bankole's role in the emergence of Hon. Aminu Tambuwal as the Speaker of the 7th House of Representatives as the main reason for his trial. Farouk Lawan said this much when he said that 'you cannot run away from the fact that some of these issues are political; we know why he (Bankole) is going through his present ordeal.Bankole is being hounded because members of House of Representatives chose to elect Tambuwal and Emeka Ihedioha as Speaker and Deputy Speaker respectively'.Another reason adduced by some on why they believe Bankole's trial is politically motivated is that the EFCC did not beam its searchlight on the 6th Senate too. The 6th Senate bought Toyota Camry for its members at N10 million each and nobody raised an eyebrow. How did the 6th Senate fund its jumbo pay' How much is a Nigerian Senator paid' Shouldn't the EFCC be curious about the 6th Senate Accounts as well'There is no instance where politics reared its head well over professionalism than in EFCC's handling of prosecutorial powers of Hon. Dimeji Bankole. First, as of the time of his arrest, investigations were still on-going which snowballed into what critics tagged 'weak and ridiculous charges' against the former Speaker. At the time the case was filed against him, there was no substantive AGF on seat to issue a fiat for his prosecution. The current AGF was Mohammed Bello Adoke, SAN, who officially vacated the office on the dissolution of the Federal Executive Council on May 28, 2011 before his re-appointment on the reconstitution of the new cabinet. The 16-count charge was entered against Bankole on June 7 was done while no AGF was in office. Some legal luminaries even opined that EFCC should be condemned for the abuse of court process, malicious and reckless use of prosecutorial power of the AGF as it had no power or authority to appropriate the constitutional powers of Attorney-General.Bankole's case was not the only isolated case where the EFCC anti-graft war was being labelled as political vendetta. The EFCC once made allegations against the Ministry of Finance in Bayelsa State about a certain sum of N2 billion, which was approved by the Bayelsa State Executive Council and earmarked by the House of Assembly to augment payment of salaries. It was gathered that due to the shortfall in receipts for the 2009 fiscal year, the Executive Council approved the sum of N10 billion for Temporary Cash Flow Support for salary payment, security and other exigencies subsumed within the application. The EFCC may not painstakingly have done its investigations, and in one fell swoop, three principal officers of the Bayelsa Ministry of Finance were arrested and a Commissioner was declared wanted in the media.The trend was witnessed in Rivers State too, when Governor Rotimi Amaechi's Chief of Staff was accused of diverting over two billion naira of state funds. After all the media war of words between the EFCC and state government, the commission failed to prove its allegations thus making the weighty issues raised seem like sham.The U.S. Secretary of State, Mrs Hilary Clinton during her visit to Nigeria demonstrated little respect for the EFCC on the anti-corruption war of the Commission. Even former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who established the EFCC while in office recently took a long look at the Switzerland and decried it as having failed in tackling corruption since he left office. He said: 'I haven't seen the persistence and consistency in Nigeria because the people involved in corruption are strongly entrenched.' Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, a key speaker at a ceremony where EFCC marked its eighth year of existence, and the third year under the former head, Farida Waziri, chided the commission for over dramatising arrests. He urged the Commission to celebrate its achievements based on the convictions it secures, rather than the arrests.EFCC investigations should be conducted with fairness and in such a manner that is not persecutory. It is only when investigations are conducted in such a transparent manner that the public will not read meaning to the actions of the anti-graft agency as being political.Jacobs wrote in from Abuja
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