Adoke knocks EFCC, ICPC at Senate screening

By Oluwole Josiah and Toyosi Ogunseye
Friday, 1 Jul 2011

Former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Adoke, on Thursday delivered a damning verdict on the country’s anti-corruption agencies, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, as lacking the capacity to investigate and prosecute economic crimes.

Adoke told the Senate that many high profile corruption cases, including the $180m Halliburton bribe scandal, the alleged N50bn Police Equipment Fund fraud and the N3bn Vaswani Brothers rice importation scandal, failed because of the incompetence of the two anti-graft commissions.

He said, “Most of our anti-corruption agencies lack the capacity to do thorough investigations. They lack capacity to collate evidences to sustain a charge and secure conviction in court and until we properly reform these agencies, we will continue to experience the problems we are experiencing today.

“More often than not, people are arrested before they are investigated, they are arrested even before there is evidence, they traumatised them and the people are dramatically tried on the pages of newspapers and at the end of the day, when they are unable to prove their case, they end up blaming the courts.”

He lamented that the agencies had been rather involved in a show, arresting and prosecuting suspects without sufficient evidence to secure conviction in court.

“When we as the Ministry of Justice try to guide these agencies, they complain of interference. It will be appropriate to merge these agencies together so that they can effectively fight corruption,” he said.

Chairman of the EFCC, Mrs. Farida Waziri, just on Wednesday threatened that the agency would soon go after ex-governors suspected to have perpetrated economic crimes during their tenures. She told the leadership of the Nigeria Union of Journalists in her office in Abuja that the commission was bidding its time in order to do proper investigations and file water-tight charges against the ex-governors.

Adoke, under whose portfolio the anti-corruption agencies fell, spoke during his screening for another ministerial term. He was confirmed alongside Dr. Usman Shamsudeen, Kano; Musa Sada, Katsina; Mr. Labaran Maku, Nasarawa; Hajia Zainab Maina, Adamawa; and Mrs. Stella Oduah-Ogiemwonyi, Anambra State.

Confirmation of Adoke and the other six brought to 14 the number of ministerial nominees so far confirmed. The Senate had on Wednesday confirmed the nomination of Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, Godsday Orubebe, Prof. Ruqqayatu Rufai, Mr. Emeka Wogu, Sen. Bala Mohammed, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, and Navy Captain Caleb Olubolade (retd.).

Adoke also canvassed the merger of the EFCC and ICPC to be able to prosecute the anti-corruption war.

The EFCC on Thursday refused to react to the ex-minister’s verdict. “We are not reacting to what he said,” spokesman for the EFCC, Mr. Femi Babafemi, told one of our correspondents on the phone.

ICPC spokesman, Folu Olamiti, said the commission was on top of its duties and “do not amend charges.”

“At ICPC, we do our jobs well. We make sure that we do thorough investigations before going to court,” he said.

The Halliburton scandal, in which a subsidiary of the American firm was said to have bribed some high profile citizens a total of $180m in exchange for lucrative contracts had been a running case with many twists, including a dramatic 16-count charge against former US Vice President D. Cheney on December 8, 2010 by the EFCC. But while some of the foreign individuals and firms that were involved in the unholy deal had been convicted in their home countries, no Nigerian has been found wanton at home.

In reviewing the Halliburton scandal on Thursday, Adoke told the Senate: “The Halliburton case, sir, has been on for a number of years in this country. A lot of our high profile personalities have been diminished by allegations and counter allegations as to whether they were involved in the Halliburton case or not.

“I decided to confront the issue once and for all. I called for the reports and went through the reports. I found out that there were no sufficient evidences linking any of our past leaders in respect of the said Halliburton scandal.

“Those of them that we could identify, including Halliburton itself, Julius Berger and others, we decided to evaluate the position of our laws and the weaknesses inherent in our laws. At the end of the day, in line with global best practices, we opted to settle with them, because if we had decided to prosecute them, the likelihood of securing a conviction was very minimal.”

He buttressed his stand with the case of the Vaswani Brothers, where the government prosecuted the Indians but lost the cases, adding that, at a point, the court awarded damages in favour of the Vaswanis on the grounds of malicious prosecution.

The Vaswani Brothers Mahesh, Haresh and Sunil-were in 2009 arraigned by the EFCC for allegedly committing a N3bn import duty fraud against the Federal Government but they were found innocent by the court.

Adoke explained that while ICPC had the responsibility of fighting official corruption, the EFCC was responsible for the tackling of economic crimes and money laundering, adding that whenever the attention of the agencies were drawn to anomalies in their operations, they considered it as an interference.

The EFCC was established in 2003 by the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo to confront economic crimes and money laundering. Waziri, last December, told the US ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Terrence Mcculley, that the agency in its seven years had recovered $11 billion (about N1.6 trillion) from corrupt elements in the country. She also said the commission had also recorded 400 convictions, most of them of Politically- Exposed Persons, during the same period.

The ICPC was inaugurated by the same Obasanjo administration in September 2000 to receive complaints, investigate and prosecute economic offenders in the public sector. In its more than 10 years of existence, it has secured fewer than 20 convictions while it has hundreds of cases pending in courts.


http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art20110701321878

Fixing Nigeria has a lot to do with fixing EFCC. It requires passionate and fearless leadership that will defile its use as a tool for publicity, politics and vendetta for which it seemed to have been invented.

Obasanjo also gave a sermon about EFCC.

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-704000.0.html#msg8632373

I always like listening to him. He makes me "laugh". LOL

I wish Adoke would be understood, and let EFCC and ICPC reconsider their activities make a change to transform this country from a corruption-ridden state to corruption-free. We a visible change now or never!

Anti corruption war should be crusade-like where everyone is held accountable for every kobo stolen. Not just by hand picking people like bankole, el rufai etc which are seemingly polical battle feud.