These unrepentant nay-sayers have been kicking rather shamelessly that PMB should desist, forthwith, from probing the GEJ’s administration UNLESS he is ready to also probe all the previous administrations, especially since 1999. What an indirect way to confess to a heinous crime?
Researches have shown quite sadly that Nigerians as a people have either chosen to develop a short and defective accusatorial memory or that there is a cultural disposition to casually expunge crime and criminality against the post-colonial social order (ostensibly being an alien and remote entity to them) from their memories, whereas they do not forget or even forgive petty pecuniary infractions against them individually or against their local communities. There, it is an eye for an eye.
It raises the philosophical question as to whether they have yet internalised their juristic and social connections with the State whose citizenship they carry. Maybe, our civics curriculum is miserably so deficient that we cannot yet see the organic connection between ourselves and the Nigerian state.
Whenever something negative is done to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, we ought to know that such would ultimately rebound on the individual citizens. The average Briton or American, on the contrary, would react rather sharply to any allegation of theft of a public resource or what they typically refer to as “taxpayers’ money”. In Nigeria it seems permissible to loot public resources, the State being a distant and alien entity to the people.
For example, when 150 billion US dollars was allegedly stolen from the national coffers, many Nigerians didn’t see the immediate and ultimate connection between that stupendous heist and their eventual impoverisation of today. They still think it is the “government’s problem” because the looted money belongs to the government. That is where we miss it. Every Nigerian has a share in the money that was stolen by just a few people. This fact, it seems, has been deliberately hidden from our people and that has also led to the general apathy being displayed by the masses who are hit hardest by the looting.
This brings us back to the question whether the present administration should probe all the previous administrations first before probing the immediate past one. This claim is both unfortunate and laughable. From a commonsensical point of view, it is like telling a traveller who ran into an obstacle caused by several trees fallen upon each other to start cutting from the one beneath because, in their perverted logic, “first things first”.
We all know by experience that such a recommendation will not help the man who wants to cut across the debris and move on as any rational thinker would proceed by first cutting from the accessible top trees before getting to the bottom. What is true about the cutting of trees across the way is also true about Buhari probing Jonathan, the immediate past obstacle.
From a forensic point of view, it is always better to proceed with cases with fresher evidence and readily traceable trails than pursuing ancient ones in which both the mental and material (exhibits) evidence would have faded and the culprits possibly dead and permanently inaccessible.
There is also the possibility that while defending itself, the GEJ team might squeal all that they knew about their predecessors’ crimes but that can only happen if and when there is a probe. In any case, it was the moral and political responsibilities of GEJ to have probed those that he took over from if he felt that there was anything wrong. Instead he tacitly endorsed their evil and, indeed, eventually outdone them.
Jonathan himself told a bemused world during his ill-fated campaigns that he did not believe in jailing people for corruption. He even boasted that he would not send anyone to jail for corruption. What are prisons for if not for criminals, you may ask? Was he intending to send them to five-star hotels or luxurious hospitals?
I recall reminding him on this same page that by such a reckless statement he should prepare for the Americans and her allies who routinely send their citizens to long-term jail sentences and, in some cases, to the gallows, for corruption. I even told him of Richard Madoff who the United States recently jailed for 250 years without the possibility of parole for “simple” corruption. What he was saying in effect was that he didn’t care, certainly didn’t “give a damn”, about how nations are impoverished by the corrupt practices of those entrusted with political powers.
In a world order where corruption has been scientifically proved as the bane of contemporary economies, it was a bad message from Nigeria. Nigeria suffered doubly for the unmitigated corruption of the last administration. Internally, we had a depleted treasury which has now translated into inability to pay workers’ salaries and widespread poverty. Externally, our traditional friends abandoned us because we became stinking with corruption so much so that even in our hour of need they refused to sell us arms for fear that the corrupt GEJ government, for quick personal gains, might corruptly put the weapons into the hands of the insurgents.
That was the genesis of the now famous Senator Patrick Leahy Rule under which we were denied weapons. Come to think of it, who would willingly put sophisticated weapons in the hands of a rogue regime that officially couldn’t see the criminal connection between “stealing” and “corruption”?
Just by putting forward his integrity credentials and an honest willingness to combat corruption, President Muhammadu Buhari has already secured the support of the US government and her allies to combat the insurgency in the country and also revive the sagging economy through loot retrieval.
Corruption in Nigeria, no doubt, has direct ways of negatively affecting other economies. If for example, a minister who has stolen crude oil from Nigeria sends the illicit proceeds to the US and with it goes ahead to be buying up all the houses within a particular district at prices that are ways above the normal, he would have succeeded in perverting the local economy through money laundering.
That is why other countries are interested in looting in this country and are now willing to help the Buhari government that has demonstrated the moral courage and political will to confront the monster. Therefore, who the administration starts the process with is just a matter of prosecutorial convenience and common sense over which there should be no bickering.
In any case, when has it become a defence in our legal system that until we prosecute past out-of-reach criminals we cannot try those that have just been caught in the act? It reminds me of a famous quote in my law school days from Viscount Haldane in Dunlop v Selfridge that “our law knows nothing about ius quaesitium tertio”, namely, a party to a suit is not ordinarily permitted to plead third party cases as a defence for his case. Never.
MIKE IKHARIALE
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