Independence Ogunewe, a member of a fiery anti-graft group in the 6th House of Representatives, spoke to ABOSEDE MUSARI in Abuja.WHAT'S your position on the current amendment of the EFCC Act by the House of Representatives'Last week, I read in the papers that the House Speaker said they were going to rely on public opinion in the removal of the chairman of the EFCC. If, indeed, the Speaker made that comment, then the bill is targeted at Waziri. Unless he was misquoted! That means the amendment is so cheap. Waziri will come and go but the institution remains.I remember what Barack Obama said when he visited Ghana. He said that what Africans need is not strong men but strong institutions. That means if you amend the bill because of somebody, you are not bothered about the strength of the institution but individuals who come and leave at the end of their tenure.If that is true, I want to say that they should have a rethink and begin to think of how to strengthen the institution rather than targeting a man or a woman.Is there any reason for the House wanting to remove Waziri'I'm not in the House currently; I left the House in June. All the facts may not be available to me but there are safeguards in that law. If there are things she has done, which are contrary to the spirit and letters establishing her office, they should come out openly and face her and not amend the law because you want to remove somebody.I think they should also realise that when you begin to amend the law for the purpose of removing somebody, it means you may have looked for other reasons to remove her and you couldn't find any. And since it's in your power to amend and enact, you now want to amend the law.That's a mark of mischief. I think they should be mindful of what they are doing.Can Nigerians can stand up and fight for the institution of the EFCC for the sake of the country'Nothing is impossible so long as the will, the commitment and the courage to face the hurt that will come your way is there and the awareness is there.(In our time) what Dino Melaye, other members of the Anti-Corruption League and I did was to, first of all, educate Nigerians, stare up their awareness and consciousness to what was going on. When that was done and we decided on any other line of action, you would be surprised at how things were going to be because people were completely frustrated out there.In any case, some people should understand that the world is changing. Nobody believed that somebody like Mubarak of Egypt could be removed from office. We are going to use all peaceful but legal means, recognised channels of expressing grievances to make sure we force the hand of the National Assembly to reverse. It certainly will not involve the carrying of arms.When it happened in Egypt and Tunisia, they didn't carry guns. When Gandhi worked for theindependence of India, he didn't carry arms. When Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo fought the British to gain independence for Nigeria, they didn't carry arms.We are going to carry the force of the conscience to get them to understand that we put them there. It is absolutely possible.I was in South Africa, to Hector Peterson Memorial Museum in Soweto, the 13year-old boy that was shot dead by the Police during the Soweto massacre. There, I saw what it means for righteousness to overcome wickedness. I saw in reality what the Scriptures say in the Book of Job: that the triumph of the wicked is for a moment. He shall ultimately be overthrown.I saw statements cast in marble. You could see from the statements the workings of the minds of the people and their resolve and that brought an end to apartheid.This system of corruption cannot continue forever. You cannot stamp out corruption but you can reduce it to a very minimal level. In South Africa now, the Police chief, who is an equivalent of the IG, has been sentenced to 15 years for receiving R150,000 in bribe. His appeal is on and I don't know whether he will survive it.In this fight against corruption, it's not only the Anti-Corruption League that's going to fight it; the Press will be involved if they are convinced about building a better society for ourselves. I the society is not well-organised, it affects everybody.WHICH areas should the amendment bill address' If they are really interested in amending the bill, the issue of asset forfeiture, and special courts to try corruption cases should be addressed.The issue of plea bargain should be looked into. It should be put in the proper framework so that it doesn't become whimsical. So many people have gone into that, retained over 80 per cent of their loot and said it was a plea bargain.Should plea bargain be removed'Even a retired Justice of the Supreme Court had said it was illegal. And we are not even doing it like in America from where we copied it. Plea bargain does not exonerate you from going to jail; it doesn't mean leaving the loot for you. These are aspects the House should be amending.Asset forfeiture, plea bargain, special corruption courts, how to protect the whistle blowers and what to do to strengthen the operations and dynamics of the institution are what should bother the House and not the headship of the EFCC.If you want to put a retired Justice there, it means you want the institution to go down because you rarely can find any retired Justice of the Supreme Court who is less than 70. At 70, half, if not three-quarters, has been cut down on your days of productive service. When you put such a person there, you dampen the fervency of the agency.Also, if you put a retired AIG as head of operations, he/she cannot have the same instinct and reflexes on the job, as crime is not static. It's dynamic and evolves. New crimes are springing up on a daily basis. So, you simply want to completely kill the institution.I will plead with my colleagues to be more circumspect in what they are doing. And to my brother and friend, Bassey Ewa, I will say he should watch it. So many have been used before like this and dumped. He should know that it would go down in history that the person who brought the bill to kill the EFCC was Bassey Ewa. That at any point history is evaluating and analysing the EFCC, how it was conceived and at what point it died, Bassey Ewa will be associated with the weakening and eventual death of the commission and that will transcend him and live with his generation unborn.I spent eight years in the Parliament and one of the issues for which I'm proud is that we fought and exposed corruption; we suffered tribulations and in the end, we triumphed.What about the appointment of retired Judges to head the EFCC'I was thinking that what the House will concern itself with is how to strengthen that institution. The question now is, how does the change in the configuration of the leadership of the EFCC strengthen that institution'If you ask me, I will say that if you bring a retired Justice, you have completely whittled down the strength of that institution. We have seen it in the ICPC; we had retired Justices but then, ICPC couldn't do much because there's disconnect between investigation and prosecution.A retired Justice of the Supreme Court is versed in the issue of the law and prosecution but the thing that will lead to prosecution ' that is investigation ' constitutes more than 80 per cent of the work of that institution called EFCC or any other anti-graft agency. If you have a head, which has no grasp of the processes, dynamics and intricacies of investigating an issue, the processes of investigation may not be there.If, indeed, that amendment was in good faith, there are aspects of that institution that should be addressed ' like the issue of whistle blowers' protection. I know there is a bill before the House on the issue of whistle blowing. It has not even gone through the first reading.You know that whistle blowing is essential to exposing corruption; it leads to investigation that brings about prosecution if there is substance in the issues that were raised. Instead, they are saying if you want to be a whistle blower, you must go and swear to an affidavit. Then, why do you call it whistle blowing
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