If President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has not already done so, then he must now consider telling the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States of America and France to please, henceforth, mind their own business. The greatest embarrassments Yar’Adua has suffered regarding his willingness to combat the gloating evil of official corruption have come from these countries. From the UK came the case of one James Ibori even before he would finish taking his oath of office; from France the conviction of former petroleum minister, Dan Etete; and now from the US the Halliburton scandal. That Yar’Adua has yet to openly declare a turf war must be due, I suspect, to the little matter of the appropriate diplomatese for doing so. In what decipherable language can a president confess to the world that it isn’t his country’s staggering corruption that gives him sleepless nights but, rather, how to keep the stealing secret?
But beyond conjecture, there is good indication of the determination to keep our dirty linen at home and unwashed under the guise of looking after our “internal affairs.” Attorney-General Michael Aondoakaa surely remembers his 2007 letter to the British authorities on behalf of Ibori. Asked why he chose to write to the court through Ibori’s counsel thereby absolving the ex-governor of wrongdoing, the conscientious A-G retorted, “Has Ibori been charged to court in Nigeria?” Mark the key words, “in Nigeria.” After all, shouldn’t bribes to Nigerian government officials, whether or not denominated in US dollars and stowed away in Swiss Banks, be an internal affair of Nigeria? It was just short of telling the busy-body British government to stop wailing more than the bereaved. In short, Yar’Adua and Aondoakaa must be silently fuming at the foreign betrayal — biting and shaming the fingers that stash moneys that do not belong to them in their banks. What, they might be heard fuming, is the matter with these oyinbo governments? And how Yar’Adua must be regretting the indiscretion, all said and done, of the noisy anti-corruption promise of that inaugural address of two long years ago! That promise, prompted by the high-watermark of corruption set by the Babangida-Abacha-Obasanjo epoch, convinced the world that Yar’Adua might just try to keep it. There would be “zero tolerance for corruption in all its forms,” Yar’Adua had declared. And, even worse, added: “We are determined to intensify the war against corruption, more so because corruption is itself central to the spread of poverty. Its corrosive effect is all too visible in all aspects of our national life.”
We saw the awesome strength of this determination during the Ibori imbroglio when Aondoakaa did everything humanly possible except change his name to the ex-governor’s and stand trial in his place. We also saw it in the single-mindedness with which Yar’Adua and his A-G disdained local and public outcry to muzzle what passed at the time for an anti-corruption bulldog, the EFCC, culminating in the sacking and public humiliation of its well-meaning but officially compromised chairman, Mr Nuhu Ribadu. The great public good for which these acts were done was not lost on the world. The intentionally lamed EFCC bulldog under Ribadu had dared to bark, and, now and then, snap at the heels of a few kleptomaniacs whose embezzlements were the fiscal equivalents of blood-crimes. Now with the Halliburton saga, we are witnessing more of the indefatigable resolve to give comfort and encouragement to treasury looters and nation-wreckers. All through the abracadabra of dry legalism, dissimulation, double-speak and outright deception. Thus, when asked if he intends prosecuting the named Halliburton bribe-takers, Aondoakaa claims to be hindered by the legal hurdle of hearsay. You see, he “does not prosecute out of the newspapers.”
And so off he went to the United States to personally see to it that he will not have to prosecute in or out of newspapers, but out of “information authenticated by the US government.” What if Aondoakaa gets a certified copy of the US District Court’s judgement which apparently lists the bribed worthies topped by General Olusegun Obasanjo; fellow ex-head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar; former petroleum minister, Dan Etete; ex-NNPC Group Managing Director, Gaius Obaseki; former I-G, M.D. Yusuf, etc., etc., will he then file charges? Not really, for there would remain the matter of ascertaining if any of the alleged bribe-takers actually took the bribes! A rather fine point of law, so he explains: “If somebody said I voted $40 million for you, which is his own wish, and if the money does not reach you, can I come and prosecute you because in his book he wrote $40 million?”
As a rule-of-law-loving citizen, you are supposed to say, No. Aondoakaa will thread the finest legal needle, even a phantom one, if that excuses him from doing his duty. Halliburton may have confessed to bribing three Nigerian governments in a row senseless from top to bottom, but that does not prove that they had any luck with the Mother Teresa-types they dealt with. In plain terms, Nigeria’s public officials, world-famous for their probity and incorruptibility, rejected the bribes but went ahead nevertheless to ensure that the oil giant retained a monopoly of LNG contracts. Consequently, if these citizens maligned by the US court judgement are to be tried, something close to divine help will be needed. Since it is doubtful that the court cites anyone who saw Obasanjo or Abubakar physically taking delivery of stuffed briefcases from Halliburton’s British bagman, Jeffrey Tesler, the case seems already cold even before it could get hot. But were that improbable witness to come forth, it would still leave the considerable obstacle of proving that Obasanjo or Etete has anything to do with the bribe moneys sitting in Swiss bank accounts belonging to ghosts of Tesler’s and the US court’s imagination. It is a wonder our industrious A-G has ascertained that accounts bulging with the exact amount of $150 million do in fact exist.
But it is also certain now that Mr Aondoakaa has invented a legal obstacle card game called Beggar-my-Country straight out of a Charles Dickens novel. He and his boss, Alhaji Yar’Adua, love to play this game to entertain themselves and defuse public uproar the deeper the country sinks into the bottomless pit of corruption. As part of this game they have proposed a new anti-corruption bill to enable forfeiture of assets of accused persons pending trial. As far as smokescreens go, this is a dark cloud of confusion raised by sheer legal gobbledegook in the name of policy making. And you can already see without looking Aondoakaa’s fig leaf in that bill. Who would expect an A-G to confiscate a citizen’s property before he is proven guilty by a court of law and the verdict affirmed by the Supreme Court? The latest hand played by Aondoakaa is the Committee-card, an ace! Inspector-General Okiro’s inter-agency committee has eight weeks to name already named bribe-takers. But that is in the first instance, for given the international complications of the Halliburton sleaze, Okiro is likely to need more time for a decent job. After which his report will be reviewed by the A-G’s ministerial committee. After which said A-G will advise the president, to whom he has already ceded his prerogative of prosecution. By this time, of course, Halliburton will have become a distant echo and the public transfixed by newer and even more scandalous outrages.
If only the British, the Americans and the French would stop making all so glaring Nigeria’s anti-corruption farce. And if only state robbers armed with the cloaks of political office will not only buy immunity by buying the government for their minions but also — damn it — keep their thefts as secret (and we must now add, ghostly) as Swiss Bank accounts!
Ifowodo has most recently published The Oil Lamp, a volume of poems on the Niger Delta, and may be reached at [email protected].
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