By Odimegwu Onwumere
It has been doing this by arraigning ex-governors, bank
chiefs, inter alia in different courts for allegedly embezzling public funds
while they were in office. Nigerians are told that those fingered embezzled
money to the tone of billions. The agency arraigns those arrested before
pressmen, giving their arrests wide coverage, before arraigning them before any
court. As a result, Nigerians have been mangled with pity. And calls for the
immediate incarceration of such leaders have been made, even before any
competent court could hear their cases.
The entranced Nigerians showed their mettle on Friday April 27, 2012,
when the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division, granted that a suit against former
governor of Abia state, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu brought to it by the EFCC would be
retried. All the online discussion forums since then had sent Kalu to the gulag
because the EFCC had long clogged on their psych with its media trajectory
hostilities against Kalu. And the persona dramatis had replied that he remained
stoical.
The EFCC made Kalu a culprit whereas no court has said so, which is
against the Nigerian judiciary notion which says that a suspect remains
innocent till convicted by any court of competent jurisdiction. This is even
when the Abia State High Court had on May 31, 2007 issued a motion on the
matter: the Federal High Court lacked jurisdiction to entertain the case.
Hence, Kalu’s fundamental human rights were trampled with his arrest,
detention, and arraignment over four years ago.
Kalu, without doubt, was a politician who had established very well,
businesswise, before he was elected to be governor in 1999. Slok Nigeria Ltd
and his conglomerates of business were established before 1996. It’s on record
that the Peoples Democratic Party is his brainchild, a party that was formed in
his room, and he gave the party about Five Hundred Million naira (N500, 000,
000) cash during one of the party’s events leading to the buildup of 1999
elections. Kalu was not governor then, but he coughed out this huge sum of
money. Is this not evidence that he was already rich before he was governor?
But
Nigerians wouldn’t see that because a Justice had ‘unanimously ruled and read’
in the Kalu’s case that he should be retried, forgetting that it was a
reprobated one to humiliate Kalu on behalf of the EFCC. All and sundry forgot
that the EFCC disobeyed a court order on July 27, 2007 and arraigned Kalu
before an Abuja High court and celebrated a 107 count charge on him. To draw
the people’s sympathy, the EFCC told Nigerians in a well circulated media
coverage that he was arraigned of “money laundering, official corruption and
criminal diversion of public funds totaling over five billion.” Continue to
name them. Is this not a case of giving a dog a bad name in order to kill her?
The EFCC criminalized Kalu when the agency cannot boast of any genuine document
to substantiate its claim.
The disrespectful EFCC even relegated the ordinance
of the then President Musa Yar'Adua, in a reply to Kalu’s letter of August 5,
2007, urging him (Yar’Adua) to order the EFCC to discontinue the trial,
complaining that the Commission failed to obey a May 31, 2007 Abia State High
Court order for stay of proceedings pending the determination of a motion
before it. Through the then Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mike
Aondoaaka, Yar’Adua said that the Abia High Court ruling would be respected.
But, did EFCC respect that court ruling? It did not!
Does it not take clean hands to go before equity? Does it not take
absolute morality to expose absolute immorality? So, where is the EFCC’s
morality to fight corruption when it can’t respect court orders? That it was
said that the EFCC Establishment Act and the Money laundering and Prohibition
Act, (MPLA, 2003, 2004) had given the Commission power to prosecute offenders
and that the EFCC derives its aptitude to prosecute from section 6 and 7 of its
Establishing Act, the definition of economic crime was supposed to be succinct,
instead of “quite wide” as was expressed by those who wanted Kalu maligned by
all means necessary and unnecessary.
In the same manner the EFCC had been disobeying court orders with a
Justice’s declaration that “economic crime was quite wide” the agency as well,
didn’t respect the September 3, 2007 motion filed by Kalu at the Abuja High
Court asking for an order to strike out all EFCC charges against him and to
resign from the terms and conditions of the bail earlier granted by the court.
This was evidence in the September 5, 2007 hearing of the Kalu's motion, an
attorney from the then AGF’s office appearing for Aondoakaa, urged the court to
comply with the Abia High Court ruling, a saying that irked the EFCC lawyer and
the EFCC clashed with the Justice Minister's representative.
Any person saying that the Abia High Court order was intended to protect
Kalu from prosecution and that the Appeal
Court ruling had exposed the position of the
former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Michael
Andoakaa, was just being biased and teleguided. This is the view of detractors
who want to see Kalu pulled down by all means because he is Igbo? During his
period of stewardship as governor, a president from the Yoruba ethnic group
used the same EFCC and confiscated virtually all his businesses. His airline, a
bank he had a greater share in was impounded, among others. Conversely, Kalu
said that notwithstanding the verdict of the Court of Appeal that he is just
being witch-hunted for being vocal and always contribute his own opinion to any
Nigerian discourse without seeking any premeditated advise from those who feel
that they are powers that be.
Is the
EFCC aware that Kalu remains unshaken in his position, because said that he did
not pilfer the public coffer? So, is the EFCC tampering with the common Human
Rights of Kalu for his decisions to stand against some people whom he said were
bent on tarnishing the country while they were in power? It is imperative that
this EFCC works on facts instead of on fiction. Did investigations not reveal
that Kalu received N2.8 billion? Was this amount not the eight year Security
Vote he received as then Governor of Abia State, whereas their EFCC is bloating
the world with the tale that Kalu stole N5 billion? Can the EFCC tell what this
amount N5 billion is for? Can the agency prove itself right with facts and
figures instead of compounding its claim that Kalu was charged for “money
laundering, official corruption and criminal diversion of public funds totaling
over five billion”?
Using
preposterous media war to draw public sympathy is not good for EFCC or using
the powers that say they are to fight perceived opposition politicians is
nonsensical in this titular and one-sided fight against corruption in Nigeria.
People of Abia State
have not hidden their voice that Kalu’s records and his achievements speak for
themselves while he was governor of Abia
State to demonstrate that
he did not take the people’s money. The problem now is that as Kalu has said
that he was prepared to prove his innocence, whether the EFCC was also ready,
without engaging its media machinery against Kalu for Nigerians to still hope
that it is working, which media machinery has been fingered is sponsored by a
governor in the South-East and some Igbo sons and daughters at the seat of
power in Abuja. They are afraid, saying that Kalu poses a threat to them
because of the 2015 elections; hence they want him down with libelous
tendencies.
Such acts
pose great dangers in a democracy. The EFCC should stop bringing itself to the
gallery always with its “media trial” of Kalu. The president in whose time the
agency was formed is still working the street of the world a free man, yet the
EFCC continued to do eyesright on him of any corrupt practice while in
office, but Kalu. One comment that every Nigerian should hold Kalu seriously
against the EFCC is: “Let the EFCC prove that I am guilty based on facts and
figures and not just mentioning ridiculous figures it claimed I stole to draw
public sympathy…” Nigerians should also watch this EFCC closely if it is not
indeed longing for public commendation that it is working assiduously by
debasing the name of Kalu, because from Kalu’s “over-publicised arrest” in the
past, even when he was always available, the EFCC created lies and fabricated a
feeling that he was on the run from the Commission to forestall arrest.
For this reason, the unwarranted negative publicity the EFCC always
gives Kalu should be a pointer to Nigerians who have always shouted when it
hears the EFCC’s verbalization of the amount of money it says that Kalu stole
that the agency has no fact to sustain its ‘insults’ against Kalu; it is just
massaging the wishes of those perceived were behind it against Kalu always,
like a hunter-dog. Has Kalu not said that he is waiting for the EFCC to
prove its case? Like Abraham Lincoln would say, Truth is generally the best
vindication against slander.
Odimegwu Onwumere writes from Rivers State.
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