Another most important impediment to good governance is the wide prevalence of corruption within the polity, which is aggravating poverty and depriving the nation of much needed resources for development. It is estimated that between $380bn and $400bn of Nigerian public funds was stolen by our various leaders between independence and 1999. Between 1999 and now, our leaders have further stolen, by the best estimates, at least ten times the earlier figure, given that, for the greater part of the earlier period, stealing was done by a very few, and since it was not condoned by the officialdom or the society, those who stole did it most cautiously. Since 1999, however, the lack of political will on the part of the various governments to bring corrupt people to justice has fostered a climate of impunity and encourages the vice to spread like a bush fire. The new attitude of officially tolerating corruption first became evident in 2002 in a N421m fraud case involving a former permanent secretary in the ministry of defence. The case was charged to court but the accused was set free following the filling of a Nolle Prosequi by the attorney general of the federation.Between 1999 and 2007, many governors were indicted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for corruption but could not be prosecuted because of their constitutional immunity. Thus, after 2007, when many of the indicted governors had left office, it was expected that a rash of prosecutions and convictions would follow, but this has not happened. Even where indicted governors have been charged to courts, the cases have either been stalled in the courts or the judgments delivered have been incongruous with the offences they were charged with.Not less than a dozen former governors who have been charged before various courts after 2007 still have their cases stalled in those courts. In almost all the cases, and other cases involving high profile public figures, or politically exposed persons for short, the public is invariably fooled by the high drama surrounding their sensational arrests and arraignment, that justice would be meted out to them, but as soon as they have been granted bail, the cases go to sleep. The trial of the late Chief S.M. Afolabi and four others since 2003 over the $214m ID card scam has lingered on in the court since then and it is almost certain that the case of immediate past Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Dimeji Bankole, will follow the same pattern.The few persons who have been convicted got ridiculous slap on the wrist sentences. A former Inspector-General of Police, got just six months for swindling the police of billions of naira. A former governor of Bayelsa State, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, got two years for laundering several billions of naira, but was virtually released to go home after sentencing, supposedly allowing for the time he had spent in detention. A former governor of Edo State was merely fined N3.5m, without any prison sentence after pleading guilty to stealing over $24m.The above were at least charged to court, unlike several other bribery and corruption scandals involving known prominent personalities, but which are yet to be charged before any court of law. These include the $180m Halliburton bribes, the $6m Willbros bribe scandal, the $17m Siemens bribe scandal, and the N648m scandals involving a former speaker of the House of Representatives, Mrs. Patricia Etteh. Others are the $16bn power contract scams, the privatisation scandals, the N38bn COJA scandals of the 8th All Africa Games and the swindles associated with the several Turn-Around Maintenance contracts of our refineries.The governments two anti-corruption agencies, the ICPC and the EFCC, have been seriously hamstrung in their operations by the lack of political will to make them effective. Successive presidents have always been long on rhetoric but short on demonstrated commitment to fight corruption. Obasanjo dangled the EFCC like the Sword of Damocles over his perceived political enemies, but sat on reports indicting his political friends. With such reports, he forced the withdrawal of some leading but indicted aspirants of his anointed candidate, Alh. Umaru YarAdua. After YarAdua came to office, these financiers naturally became untouchable, in spite of their mind-boggling level of corruption.A glaring example of the lack of political will to fight corruption is provided by the Halliburton bribe scandal. Two separate reports have been submitted on the scandal, the first to late President YarAdua in 2009 and the second to President Jonathan in 2010, each containing details of those involved, yet till date, no action has been taken. Not surprisingly, the list of those involved reads like a list of Whos Who in Nigerian politics.It is not only the executive arm of government that has hamstrung the EFCC in its anti-corruption duties The bar and the bench have made themselves unscrupulous allies of corrupt PEPs in the quest of the latter to escape justice. For example, a complicit judiciary, working in cohort with the former attorney general, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa, stretched the ethics of the legal profession to the point of national embarrassment to make sure James Ibori could not be convicted in Nigerian courts in spite of the weighty allegations against him. These days, we very often hear judges granting perpetual injunctions restraining the EFCC from arresting or even investigating an alleged treasury looter. Mrs. Farida Waziri had cried out several times that her agency was being frustrated at the courts by judges and lawyers. For example, on June 8, 2010, at her second anniversary in office, she loudly complained at a press conference in Abuja that about 40 PEPSs have been charged to court by the EFCC for looting various tiers of government of over N230b, yet none of the cases is making any progress in the courts. One cannot but agree with the judge of the Southwark Crown Court in London, Mr. Christopher Hardy, who, in delivering judgment in August last year in a money laundering case involving the sister and the mistress of Ibori, noted that the Nigerian judiciary has been usurped.Indeed, our judiciary has not only been usurped, it has also been infected with the corruption virus. The reports of the Justice Kayode Eshos panel of 1994 and the subsequent Justice Babalakins panel of 2002 revealed the face of corruption in the judiciary and led to the sack of about 28 judges. It would now appear as if the judiciary which was the subject of Justice Kayode Eshos probe in 1994 was a very saintly one compared to todays judiciary. A report of a 2007 survey on crime and corruption in Nigeria conducted by the EFCC and the National Bureau of Statistics, with the support of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime showed, among other findings, that the Nigerian courts of law receive the biggest bribes from citizens among all institutions in which corruption is rampant.The election tribunals have in particular created what Major Gen. Ishola Williams (retd.), chairman of Transparency International, has described as gold mines for tribunal judges, many of whom he alleged have become millionaires. This view was corroborated by Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), during his presidential address at the 2010 Presidents Dinner of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators of Nigeria, following which Justice Esho, also a speaker on the occasion, added that in fact, those of us who have passed through the yoke of being judges, what we hear outside shatters us because they are not just millionaires as we are told but billionaires.I have referred earlier to how our judges impose ridiculously short sentences on convicted super-looters, while passing very severe sentences on ordinary citizens involved in much lesser crimes. Justice, it seems, has now become purchasable in our courts, creating a strange rapport between mega thieves and judges. The recent conflict between the immediate past Chief Justice, Justice Katsina Alu and Justice Ayo Salami, erstwhile President of the Court of Appeal and the rather questionable actions of the National Judicial Council on the matter, are indicative of the extent of corruption in our judiciary.- Excerpts of a lecture delivered by Dr. Okurounmu to mark the annual reunion activities of the Government College, Ibadan Old Boys Association, at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, recently.
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