Weep for Nigeria, Not ‘Mr Integrity’ Farouk Lawan

By Aliyu Musa

Until the current twist in the melodrama starring Farouk Lawan and the fuel subsidy cabal many Nigerians had hoped that the time had come to name and shame, or even bring some of the looters of their commonwealth to justice. They had thought with the damning indictment of the cabal and given Farouk Lawan’s seeming uprightness President Goodluck Jonathan would have no choice but to act accordingly and ditch his allies by prosecuting those behind the subsidy fraud. None had, apparently, reckoned with a last minute snag in the magnitude of the scandal now seeking to devour the report and further deal a shattering blow on the morale of those genuinely wanting to fight corruption. But the reality has now dawned on all. ‘Mr Integrity’ is not as previously thought one of the last few men still standing up against corruption in the country’s legislative arm – a tier that has been riddled by a glut of scandals since its inauguration in June 1999.

A stroll down memory lane takes us to the case of House of Representatives Speaker Ibrahim Salisu Buhari who had lied about his age and academic qualifications and was forced to resign his position and vacate the house. Then came the scandal of Senate President Evans Enwerem who was kicked out of his position and was replaced by Dr Chugba Okodigbo. Okadigbo was to ingloriously make a tumble from Olympus in August 2000 after his colleagues impeached him on the strength of the corruption charges against him. His counterpart in the lower chamber, Ghali Na’abba survived the same plot to unseat him, as it later emerged there were invisible hands working (allegedly with the active support of the presidency) to throw both houses into chaos, by removing their ‘uncompromising leaders’ and replacing them with rubberstamps. Yet Anyim Pius Anyim, the man that replaced Okadigbo, and Na’aba remained for the rest of the first four years of the Third Republic an effective check on the regime of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and to a large extent trimmed his arrogance to size.

Roll back to the second four years of the Republic, where although there were few cases of scandals the most memorable was the one involving the then Senate President Adolphus Wabara. His election had, itself, been trailed by controversy after an Appeal court decision annulled the election of his opponent D. C. Imo to hand him victory. While in the house the real scandal to rock his leadership leading to his resignation was the $400,000 bribe he allegedly took from education minister Fabian Osuji. And despite the dust it raised the matter was finally laid to rest by a court which claimed the charges were false. Ken Nnamani remained the Senate President up until the end of its second tenure in 2007. In the whole of that time too the House of Representatives remained relatively stable under Speaker Aminu Masari. But the next four years was particularly turbulent as the Speaker, Patricia Eteh was soon removed after her election. She was accused of appropriating more money than was needed for the refurbishment of her official residence. Yet, some analysts including the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s spin doctor, Segun Adeniyi, claim she was toppled by those who wanted to use her as a stooge but realised she was not going to make herself as easily available for manipulation as they had hoped. Demijo Bankole rose from the ruins of Eteh to survive till the end of that span of the regime but he was unable to return to the house and was handed corruption charges. Despite his disgraceful arrest and prosecution life has since returned to normal as the charges have been dropped. Not long ago was the corruption allegation levelled against Herman Hembe, Chairman of the Committee on Capital Market and Other Financial Institutions who had reportedly asked for bribe from Ms Arunma Oteh, the now suspended Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). When the news of the scandal first broke out and both Hembe and Oteh were trading accusations and counter accusations, I told a friend that I would hesitate to trust Hembe’s version of the story. My reason was simple. I knew the young man from his days of so-called student activism. It was a time anyone could just lay a claim to NANS (the National Association of Nigerian Students) leadership simply because of the anticipated financial gains. He was one of such claimants. And as it turned out, I was right he, rather than Oteh, had lied.

While there has been more emphasis on some cases like those mentioned above, it suffices to cite a few major yet hardly discussed ones. In 2003 Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai came with allegations of extortion against some serving Senators who were charged with the responsibility of vetting nominees to ministerial jobs. El-Rufai’s name had been sent to the upper chamber for clearance and he appeared before them for same. In a private discussion with a journalist friend afterwards, I understand, he mentioned that he had been asked to pay some money (in millions of naira) to be cleared for the job. That journalist friend later blew the lid, perhaps with El-Rufai’s approval. The principal bribe askers named in the scandal were Senators Ibrahim Mantu and Jonathan Zwingina. The controversy raged for a while and, although the Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges probed the allegation, the matter was finally killed by 68 of the 109 members of the upper house who generally agreed to give the allegation no further seal of credence. On the day the decision was reached I accompanied a colleague to the Apo residence of one of the Senators who had voted to throw out El-Rufai’s bribery allegation. While I waited in the car my colleague went into the home of the Senator and later emerged lamenting that Nigeria was doomed. He told me that all those that had voted to discredit El-Rufai’s allegation against Mantu and Zwingwina knew deep down that the Senators had demanded and got money to clear El-Rufai. That they knew El-Rufai did not offer the bribe demanded but someone paid on his behalf. Yet they would not do anything about the matter because El-Rufai had refused to disclose the name of his ‘rescuer’. So the corrupt Senators had it in their favour either way. My colleague told me his source was the Senator we had visited. I believed him.

On the eve of his suspension over his failure to properly handle the ethno-religious crisis in his state, especially his lukewarm to the Yelwan Shendam ethnic cleansing, Joshua Dariye had reportedly been advised by a Senator that he could get the president to rescind his position if he (Dariye) paid him (the Senator) a certain fee. On the night before the speech in which President Obasanjo announced Dariye’s suspension from office, I was told, the embattled governor ferried unspecified amount of money to Abuja, which was delivered to the Senator. But to Dariye’s utter disbelief the president disgracefully suspended from office despite paying the fee the Senator demanded. Although the former governor has since taken back his pound of flesh the matter was never given the sort of publicity it deserved. Several of such brazen extortions go unreported not because they are not important or the victims don’t matter but because such happenings are regarded as business as usual. This explains why, even though one finds it difficult to believe Femi Otedola’s story of ‘string operation’ to rope in those pressuring him to pay up and be screened out of the black list, one is also very hesitant to trust Farouk Lawan’s side of the story.

Farouk Lawan, one of the longest serving members of the house, should have known better than taking the bull by its tail. Corruption in Nigeria is, indeed, a ferocious bull. Whoever stands in its way is violently bullied and consigned to the trash bin of history. But Lawan, the once well respected ‘Mr Integrity’, has himself and his greed to blame for all this. In present-day Nigeria politicians have the easiest access to free money. Compared to the electorate, the ordinary people that defied all odds to vote them in they (politicians) live in a different world and, therefore, don’t care a hoot whether the people are hungry and dying or they survive. They don’t care whether hospitals are certified mortuaries and roads are death traps. They care not one bit whether there is electricity or people generate their own power by means of generators oozing out excessive pollutants that put generations at risk of lung cancer. They only think of themselves and themselves alone and are very willing to steal as much as they can even when they are certain they have amassed much more than they and their successive generations can ever need. This mindless greed was certainly at play when Farouk Lawan opted to play the game with people who are, as events now clearly show, clearly his superiors in evil plots.

I am not one of those who would argue Farouk Lawan is innocent or suggest he was trapped by Femi Otedola or any cabal. There’s no doubting the fact that the cabal desperately wanted the subsidy report to never see the light of the day. But the biggest desperado was Lawan. He agreed the deal to fool Nigerians, once again, for a fee. Otedola paid him the fee when he visited him on the occasions claimed in his indictment. And the money lubricated his ‘locomotive’ to expunge the names of Otedola’s two indicted companies, Zenon oil and Forte oil, from the list of those accused of using the subsidy scheme to defraud the country. Unknown to Lawan, however, Otedola wanted to have his cake and eat it too. So he colluded with security agencies to record his exchanges with ‘Mr Integrity’ and the rest is what we all know now. But something tells me there is more to it. It is possible that many others were involved in the deal or Farouk and accomplice, Boniface Emanelo, might have disclosed the deal to some colleagues in the house in the hope that they would be given a soft landing if it boomeranged and if it didn’t they would quietly make the best of their heist. But they are now left alone in the cold, sacrificed for the good of the PDP family.

The biggest victims are Nigerians, who have for the repeated time missed the opportunity to tackle those milking them dry. This is because, while everyone is busy arguing over ‘Faroukgate’, the looters are working hard to kill the report. In the end, as Attorney General and Minister of Justice Mohammed Adoke warned earlier, no one will be prosecuted for the bigger crime, while Lawan and Emanelo would face a make-believe trial and be finally let off the hook like Bankole. Of course, ‘Mr Integrity’ would be temporarily relegated to some degree of political irrelevance. But before long how would bounce back and with most of us suffering from acute amnesia, the ‘comeback kid’ would be as clean as a newborn. That is the biggest tragedy.

Our Sunday, Sunday blood harvest

A few weeks ago someone observed on facebook that there had been a lull in the series of bombings in some parts of Northern Nigeria. Perhaps it was because the political climate had been relatively calm. Soon came some scandals and the bombings resumed fully. It is now a Sunday, Sunday routine we have been told we must learn to live with. While innocent Christian worshippers are attacked in Churches each week, misguided characters take it upon themselves to vent their anger on innocent Muslims. The big issue is when will the government act responsibly to protect the lives and property of Nigerians? If the bombers target Churches each Sunday why is the government not able to deploy troops (including policemen) to protect innocent worshippers? And even after such bombs have gone off and we all know there will be reprisal attacks, why is the government not proactive enough to prevent or minimise violent reactions? Those behind this mindless blood spill surely have a reason for it. If they are hoping to dismember the country by provoking civil war then they are almost succeeding because at the minute the government is nonchalantly watching as total breakdown of law and order spreads across the country. While the bombings and reprisal killings continued yesterday in Kaduna, in far away Edo State suspected cultists and militants flexed muscles leading to the beheading of two. What a country!