By Dele Sobowale
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has been busy since 2023, exposing alleged monumental fraud by top government officials. The latest was the alleged interim forfeiture of 57 properties linked to Abubakar Malami, SAN, the former Minister and Attorney General of the Federation, AGF. Prior to that, the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Godwin Emefiele, was allegedly linked to 753 duplexes in Abuja – a city where owning 10 duplexes could set one up for life. It will be difficult to imagine, in any country, two public officials whose conduct should be above suspicion and reproach. Malami was the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer.
While efforts by the EFCC to bring former outlaws to justice are commendable, they will only scratch the surface of the grand conspiracy to perpetrate great crimes from 2015 to 2023. The greatest mistake the EFCC is making is to assume that the individuals apprehended were acting alone. That amounts to missing the forest by looking at the trees separately. In fact, the EFCC and CBN were epicenters of embezzlement of public funds, which were shared by the cabal. More properties and more funds were involved because nobody alone can acquire 57 properties or 753 duplexes without collaboration from other officials and bankers – who must be given their own shares.
THE WARNING IGNORED BY “HONEST BUHARI”.
“Show me your friends, and I will tell you who you are.”
As early as 2016, Buhari’s first full year in office, there were early signs that Abacha’s loot which was released to Nigeria were being re-looted by officials of Buhari’s administration. Instead of paying the loot into the Federation Account, the funds were deployed by the Federal Government without accountability. That was the pattern for disposal of Abacha’s loot from the start to the end of Buhari’s government.
Consequently, Fellow Nigerians were like people watching a magician going through his bag of tricks, while muttering “The more you look, the less you see”. The media reported that loots were returned – only for them to vanish without trace.
Almost right from the start on May 29, 2015, the EFCC under the government of Nigeria’s “Mr Clean” had gone to several courts seeking interim and permanent forfeiture orders empowering the FG to confiscate buildings, landed properties, ships loaded with stolen crude, companies and tons of money. A honest government should have been maintaining a comprehensive register of all the items eventually forfeited and how they were eventually disposed off.
BUHARI’S ABSOLUTE DISREGARD FOR ACCOUNTABILITY POISONOUS
“When those in office regard the power vested in them as personal prerogative, they inevitably enrich themselves, promote their families, favour their friends. The fundamental structures of the modern state are eroded like the supporting beams of a house after termites have attacked them. Then the people have to pay dearly and long for the sins of their leaders.” Lee Kuan Yew, 1923-2015.
The man, who as Prime Minister, piloted Singapore FROM THE THIRD TO THE FIRST WORLD IN ONE GENERATION, performed the miracle based on one policy – total accountability and zero tolerance for corruption. Thirty years constitute one generation in demography. But, Yew had already planted the good seeds that would yield the results in less than eight years; he merely spent the next twenty-two years building on the good foundation he laid earlier.
Buhari, by contrast spent eight years promoting his family members, favouring his friends and destroying the fundamental structures of the Nigerian state. The book recently launched by his widow inadvertently accomplished two unintended goals. First, it laid to rest any doubt that the government was captured by a cabal. Second, that the cabal ended by leaving behind a nation attacked and demolished by termites appointed by Buhari. Obviously, given thirty years, Buhari would have ruined Nigeria beyond redemption. Nobody should be surprised by his former officials writing books to whitewash grievous crimes against the country. Two issues will be discussed now to point to the reason the EFCC, ICPC and National Assembly, NASS, must go beyond the 57 properties allegedly linked to Malami. First, is there a comprehensive record of all the sums of money, including all Abacha loot, landed properties, buildings, ships, cars, jewelry etc forfeited to the FG? How have they been disposed off by the EFCC, before, during Malami’s tenure and after that? Second, how was it possible for Buhari to collect N30 trillion from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, for Ways and Mans, W&M, without the approval of the NASS? Where are the records of how the funds were utilized in the national interest?
CABAL IS A SYNONYM FOR PUBLIC SAFE-CRACKERS
“What’s in a name..? Nigerians are their own gravediggers. We sanitise anti-social conduct by giving it a name which masks the real intentions. A cabal, like a pack of hyenas, operates by capturing a victim (Nigeria or State), killing it or rendering it impotent – resulting in no progress – and sharing the spoil. Invariably, there is an Alpha leader, who ensures that everybody gets at least something from the carcass. No victim ever survives the assault.
Nigerian cabals, by May 29, 2023, left “an economy on the brink of collapse” (President Tinubu) and the last cabal was the Buhari cabal. Obviously, Malami, even if found culpable, could not have benefited alone from the atrocities of a regime neck-deep in corruption. There have been rumors that every top official received allocation of mansions or plots of land at give-away prices – which most of them promptly sold at market prices and smiled to their banks with hundreds of millions of public funds in their pockets. “Wealth without work” was a policy practiced by the Buhari government on a scale unprecedented at the federal level. That explained why, all efforts, including court orders, to force the government to release the list of forfeited assets were resisted by the cabal. They knew the truth; and they were determined to hold to the secrets.
The results are already with us. Nigeria ranked 32 in global Gross Domestic Product, GDP, when VISION 2020 was announced in 1992 by Babangida’s regime. Now my country and yours ranks 48. Nations without cabals or termites have overtaken us.
Follow me on Facebook @ J Israel Biola.
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