It was always obvious that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) would sooner than later become the nemesis of those who take delight in reaping where they have not sowed. As an anti-corruption agency, the commission is widely, even if erroneously, perceived by the political class in particular, as the attack dog of the President who appointed its chairman. No wonder that most utterances of the EFCC chairman come with so many subtexts in the minds of Nigerians, depending often on their political leaning.
The EFCC chairman knows how controversial his commission is. For Nuhu Ribadu, the mandate of the commission is unambiguous: to rid the nation of corruption by ensuring that all those who are proved to be corrupt are kept out of circulation. He has brought a lot of enthusiasm and courage to the job. But he has also sometimes spoken as though he is out to wage a psychological warfare against the political class
When recently, the EFCC chairman announced that the commission would screen all intending political aspirants with a view to stopping the corrupt among them, the political class made quite a heavy weather of it. For critics of the EFCC chairman, he was clearly overstepping his bounds. Neither the law setting up the commission nor the Nigerian constitution confers such a role on it. For them, if Ribadu is eager to carry out that function, then he must have an ulterior motive. And that motive, in the reckoning of his critics, is to eliminate certain people from the political contest.
Some have also accused the EFCC of being selective in the way it has gone about the task of prosecuting corruption suspects. For such people, the government is only paying lip service to the anti-corruption campaign or at best using the EFCC to harass those opposed to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration.
Critics may be over-reacting to the activities of an agency saddled with the unenviable task of catching corrupt persons in a country where graft is so rife. It may be true that Ribadu sometimes speaks in a blustering manner. Still, there can be no denying the fact that he has shown a strong commitment to the cause of exorcising the evil of corruption from the nation’s body politic. It is perhaps this zeal to rid the country of the vice that has sometimes made Ribadu to speak in a bold, even if over-reaching manner.
Only recently, for instance, Ribadu was in far away Dubai in the United Arab Emirate, where he announced that the commission would, from next month, commence a mass arrest of political aspirants suspected to be corrupt. The purpose of that, he said, would be to “stop the thieves from holding elective political offices again in Nigeria.”
Ordinarily this is a noble sentiment in a country that has suffered so much at the hands of corrupt public officials and their private sector collaborators. But hardly had the report been published than it sparked off a gale of criticisms against the EFCC chairman. As in the past, his critics have accused him of an agenda to thwart the political ambition of PDP opponents during party conventions that may begin to take off anytime from next month.
Despite such misgivings about the intentions of the EFCC, we believe the commission deserves public support in the onerous effort to rid the nation of corruption. We are witnesses to the negative effects of this malaise. Any measure aimed at arresting the situation, in so far as it is consistent with the law, need not be undermined by Nigerians themselves.
We would only urge the EFCC to go about the task in a fair and even-handed manner. Nothing in its conduct must suggest that it is out on a witch-hunt or being politically manipulated from any quarters. What we expect the commission to do is not to disrupt the political process but to, instead, conduct thorough investigations with a view to prosecuting those with cases of corruption.