By Lanre Adewole
Is there a bombshell report indicting the current leadership of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of commission of humongous corrupt practices?
Embattled past supervisor of the Commission and former Attorney General of the Federation/ Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, answered in the affirmative. The main accused person, also the Chairman of the Commission, Ola Olukoyede, said the former supervising minister, now being prosecuted for alleged massive corruption while in office, is delusional.
There is this saying about every contestation always having three sides to it; the disputants’ sides and the truth. Surely, between Malami and Olukoyede, somebody is holding truth hostage and if the contested issue is just for political brickbats, the nation can waka pass (move on), considering that the political season is in full swing, even if the Umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) hasn’t blown the game into play. Both the ruling party and the opposition have been serially guilty of the false start, but there is no sanctioning the culprits as required by the law, because some men are simply the law around here. You can’t use law to punish law!
Malami may have become a full-time politician who can throw words carelessly around and the onus should actually be on him to provide evidence of the dirtiness in high places in the Commission since who alleges, carries the proof burden, but it would be in the interest of the Commission to force a defence out of the former minister, for institutional and personal integrity. If Malami won’t provide proof of EFCC leadership being dirty willy nilly, Olukoyede would be doing his name and the agency the good of a lifetime, instituting a civil case of defamation against the ex-minister, outside of the ongoing criminal case, demanding truly exemplary damages in billions of naira.
I believe his name is worth more than any amount of money he could force Malami to cough out, if the allegation turned out a farce.
Since Malami threw the banger in the heat of his own criminal trial, I have noticed coordinated media efforts by Olukoyede and his team to defend his name and the allegation of persecution raised against the Commission leadership by the leading opposition group in which Malami is a front-row member. Yeah, it is good to shalaye (street lingo for pleading innocence to the public), but why should we believe any of the parties’ claims without the empirical evidence that should be and even confirmed to be, in their respective custody?
It was Malami, alluding to the alleged incriminating report, that first hinted the report was in his custody. His media aide, during the bail fight, even paraphrased the portions of the report that allegedly exposed the rot in Olukoyede’s inner recesses and the sewer bursting at the hems in his backyard. If Malami was keeping the report as a smoking gun against the Commission leadership, he miscalculated because experience must have taught him a raid would follow the expose from his media aide. The follow-up raid by EFCC’s operatives, of course on the chairman’s instruction, likely cleaned Malami’s closet of the report alongside other documents that could incriminate and embarrass other big wigs, especially those calling the shots now, but feelers from the minister’s orbit point to a much more secure storage of documents in Malami’s possession, likely including the disputed report. Did I hear someone say cloud storage? When Yoruba elders aren’t certain of a situation but want it to play out as being projected, you hear something like “o digba naa na” (we wait/until then).
The report in contention was a product of a probe conducted into the activities of the Commission under the chairmanship of the eccentric Ibrahim Magu by a panel led by ex-President of the Court of Appeal, Isa Ayo Salami. Remember him? Will leave readers to their opinions of him and his judicial service to fatherland. The inquest was at the request of Malami, then-supervisor of Magu. Nothing connected to Magu’s headship of the Commission can be considered “normal”. By calendar count, he remains the longest serving chairman of the Commission, serving between 2015 and 2020. But unprecedentedly, he never became a substantive head. He “acted” for five years, setting a record in the mockery of constitutional provisions on acting appointment.
All the times he was presented for substantive confirmation, diverse dramas in Senate and Yellow House of the DSS, denied him. Yet, then-President Buhari would not, though the inside story was that he could not because of foreign interest, fire him. Then came the Salami panel that sat in Buhari’s Villa under the watchful eyes of Malami. Magu, who was literally crated to appear before the panel in protestation, was indicted, as many had predicted, and offloaded from the office he had used as a counterpoise to alleged shenanigans of Malami’s ministry of justice in the war against corruption.
In his battle of wits with Olukoyede, Malami alluded to Chapter 9 of the Salami Report which allegedly indicted the EFCC boss as then-secretary of the Commission under Magu. If the report was among the documents seized in the raids at Malami’s office and home, then Olukoyede would be bringing himself under a cloud of suspicion. If you have nothing to hide, why “stealing” the evidence, as prosecutors will characterize alleged evidence-tampering. Yoruba will say if an adherent is confident of his god of iron, he uses it to strike his forehead. Proverbs 28:1 says “The wicked flee though no one pursues but the righteous are as bold as a lion”.
Aside denying the alleged indictment in his recent wide-ranging interview with Channels TV, the EFCC chair also made a curious revelation about Malami’s alleged corruption probe predating his chairmanship. Let’s do a bit of tie-back. Olukoyede’s immediate chairmanship predecessor is the exuberantly youthful Abdulrasheed Bawa, the first non-police officer and a product of EFCC cadetship, to mount the saddle. It is a notorious fact he was helped into shoes that seemed too large for his mental frame and emotions, considering the numerous faux pas and the unhinged hubris that defined his relational with the Nigerian public, the media and even the rest of the national security community. I remember a particular incident when he threatened a very senior judicial officer, boasting there would be no comeuppance despite trying to force the hands of justice. Bawa’s backbone was Malami, who reportedly masterminded his ascension to the “hot” seat, mainly because of some filiality. They had no public fallout for the two years Bawa ran the agency under Malami’s supervision unlike the tense relational between Malami and Magu. There was even no rumour of internal strife. As long as the history of their working relational is concerned, there was no daylight between them. So, how could Bawa possibly initiate Malami’s probe, except the gangling young man was secretly prepping his “uncle”’s takedown? The question then would be, why would Bawa want to shred his own cover? And to think both are still connected by their Kebbi heritage. Add to the fact that there was just four months between when Bawa was eased out in June 2023 and October same year when the incumbent took over.
If Olukoyede’s claim of Malami’s probe being over two years old and predating his chairmanship, would stand, then it was possibly by another security or law enforcement agency but almost certainly not by EFCC. Could the two-year-old probe possibly be from the office of the NSA?
I will understand the incumbent running a retributive administration, targeting his adversaries, particularly Malami, an undeniable leader of the Buhari gang who weaponised the justice system against uncompromising subordinates like Olukoyede, who was frozen out for three years before a “friendly” Tinubu administration restored him to the Commission and took him straight to the helm, albeit controversially. It becomes sweeter if the men of yesterday being put on trial today, are indeed dirty and there are too many unflattering stories of rabid materialism around Malami (mostly published by Sahara reporters) to not endorse hauling him before the courts to prove his innocence regardless of whether he is being targeted or not. Buhari’s justice sector, led by Malami also got plenty of similar allegations, especially from political opponents, with the former minister incidentally being one today! What a turn-around!
Even without a formal poll, majority of Nigeria are in lockstep with Olukoyede’s Commission on bringing alleged looters of our common wealth to justice but as a senior lawyer himself, the EFCC chairman is undoubtedly familiar with the maxim “Qui in equitatem venit, cum manibus mundis veniat” (won’t be interpreting in English). The Salami panel was a presidential assemblage. The report must officially be in the Villa and there is no way former President Buhari not leaving copies behind. Malami’s successor, Lateef Fagbemi, incidentally a professional son to the respected Kwara retired jurist, should help strengthen Olukoyede’s hands by causing the publication of the report for all to see. Necessary redaction can be done but definitely not on Chapter 9. The world needs to see what the panel claimed about the incumbent EFCC chairman and the conversation about the justiciablity of his suspension by Buhari and Malami can take off from there. There are times rhetoric is needless. Actions, they say, speak louder. When you do not spread clothes out in the open, you don’t worry about the skies pouring.
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