EFCC and Cyber crimes:  The True Lessons! 

By Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh

The Guardian editorial of 24^th August which handled the topic above was timely and well articulated. But it could use some additional insight, which reveals the precarious nature of the Nigerian situation, where everything seems to be actively pursued in the breach. The Guardian’s editorial was really bound to inspire some reaction in the mind of every right thinking Nigeria. And to that we register our gratitude as this Newspaper lent its editorial weight, to an issue of fundamental concern to the well-being and image of Nigerians in this globally connected world availed us by the internet age.

EFCC was established on certain presuppositions, which are ontologically false. My reaction aims at laying bare the clusters of untruth surrounding certain notions entertained in the decision making circles of the Nigerian state. Some of these false notions are: that we could effectively fight crime, when the entire political and social structure makes crime a lucrative option for thousands of Nigerians, who had no other option but to survive. The only way to fight crime is to make crime very unprofitable. But crime can never be effectively fought by churning out laws upon laws; and arming security agencies to redouble their brutality, and propensity to violate the rights of the citizens.

The problem with crime in Nigeria is more deep seated and goes into the very heart of the Nigerian leadership and governance system. The Nigerian state has been absent-minded about the welfare of the citizens over the past four decades. And successive Nigerian governments repeatedly missed opportunities to grasp the heritage of lessons which the sociological discipline has availed humanity.  Many a Nigerian government failed to learn that the provision, and guarantee of the basic necessities like life, assured source of bread, and basic Maslownian needs, coupled with an efficient justice delivery system have always been the secure guarantee against the proliferation of crime in any society.  The failure of the Nigerian state in guaranteeing the welfare of its citizens is the greatest propellant of crime in Nigeria.

In fact crime in Nigeria more than in other places is a symptom of decades of misrule which has effectively killed off the middle class and kept the people socially backward for sometime. It is equally a cry of the hopeless helpless; which the government misinterprets as pathology. It is only a symptom. And the real pathology is a series of governance which has pushed the people into the quadrangles of consolidated poverty and ignorance, where their only cares is survival.

The brazen failure of governance to positively affect almost sectors of life of the Nigerian, engineered a rapid erosion of moral and social values, which gave corruption a walkover. Those who governed most times excelled in their banditry than in the fine art of governance. Others hijacked mandates that was never theirs. And some of those who got the mandate, malformed public service to private ends. And the Nigerian political terrain sired a cabal of faceless interests coagulated to rape and pillage Nigeria in obedience to their greed. The political thieves bred their kind. But the military brigands called into being some consortium of civilian thieves, cutting across tribal lines and ethnic nationalities, whose sworn duty was to serve their greed, even if the whole of Nigeria implodes. To achieve their dreams of subserviently genuflecting at the altars of their greed, they were ready to compromise the structures of governance and the justice delivery system.

That has been the history of political leadership in Nigeria at almost all levels. This diffused into the whole social structure. And with mediocrity installed as an instrument of governance, hard work and excellence were relegated to the status of some pious irrelevance, opening up the way for Nigeria to become a swindler’s paradise, and the easiest place in world where it pays to be criminal.

The common folks have on many occasions borne witness as the law closed its eyes in timorous silence when the big fishes in our land steal, kill and pillage. The rich and the powerful can commit crimes at will, in collaboration with the agencies of the state, as was the case in Anambra state, when Chris Ubah kidnapped a sitting governor. And instead of facing the music that his crimes called for, he is celebrated by the ruling government as a trustee and godfather. Had Chris Ubah being a pauper, he would have died in jail by now.

In a society where this kind of high-level hypocrisy reigns, why wouldn’t crime be an option for the poor and powerless? In any society where the end is allowed to justify the means, a social jungle is empanelled. And in the market economics of the jungle, getting rich is the goal. The means could be anything.  This is the rotten social humus necessarily for the germination of the internet scammers popularly called “yahoo boys”, whose goal is to make money, by exploiting the greed of their victims.

In Nigeria, the rise of the Yahoo boys is closely related to progressive rise of an untrustworthy state; the Nigerian state. In Nigeria, many young graduates have no jobs to go to. They graduate from Universities without any prospect of finding a career to preoccupy their talents and energies. The government has failed to engineer a competitive economy that could accommodate and cater for the needs of her young citizens. Coupled with that, is the absence of any rational program of integrating these minds into some productive enterprise. The University education many of them got was not an education unto independence. Many Nigerian universities are still running programs with a medieval mindset, which stifles innovation, and creative independence. To this end, paper certificates are still emphasized, without premium placed on the all round empowerment of these minds with the ability to rationally confront a world that is increasingly complexified.

At graduation, frustrations set in. They lack jobs. They lack money. Their future seems to fall off the horizon. What then are these people expected to do with their time and the abundance of energy throbbing through their minds? Two reactions have been noticed in recent times. Many young Nigerians fight took and nail, even if means hitching a ride on the tyre compartments of foreign airlines, or risking drowning off the coast of North Africa enroute Europe, to escape Nigeria and live; even if means some lives of comfortable slavery anywhere outside Nigeria. Others who consider this option too risky hire themselves out as thugs to do the bidding of corrupt politicians. Their daily bread is at the good pleasure of these rapists of our commonweal. Others go into petty crimes. And the technically endowed ones or the computer literate ones plumb the great opportunities of the internet, where crimes could be committed with ease; and money made therefrom.

On another platform, if we are honest to ourselves, the establishment of EFCC in the first instance is a vote of no confidence on the Nigerian Police and other security agencies that gorge themselves fat at the taxpayers’ expense. No matter the extent, or the pervasiveness of a particular shade of crime, the Police was statutorily established in anticipation of the fact that crimes and criminals metamorphose and mutate with time. Criminals to remain in business must adapt to the changing circumstances and exigencies of the times. And that the Nigerian Police was unable to anticipate and proffer resistance to such arisings, as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is now forced to deal with is really an affront on the integrity of the Police. In this regard, one may not be wrong in arguing that the Nigerian Police has lost its raison d’etre.

An organization which fails in its statutory responsibilities has no more reasons to exist. It should either be reformed or scuttled. It would be stating the obvious for one to emphasize the fact that the Nigerian police have lost the confidence of the Nigerian citizens on all fronts, save as the most brazen summary of the social corruption bedevilling the entire Nigerian society.

EFCC, to this end is a creature born on the rotten humus of a dysfunctional State Police, at a time when financial crimes seem to have assumed the status of a synonym for Nigeria. Anticipating, tracing, investigating, and prosecuting financial crimes falls within the orbit of its statutory responsibilities. And Ribadu one must confess is doing a good job of it, despite some legal hamstrings and political considerations, which seemed obvious. Ribadu may be doing his best to fight financial crimes. But the resistance of a whole infrastructure of corruption, sired by over four decades of collective national subservience to undue process stands in vehement opposition to his honest efforts.

The rise of the “yahoo boys” is predicated on the failure of the entire Nigerian socio-political system, and the collaboration of the lawmakers and executors in this social conspiracy. The series of terrible leadership, which bestrode Nigeria since after her independence, were the brewers of this social poison. Their embezzlement of the posterity of young Nigerians, and their hypocritical worship of ill-gotten wealth shot the future out of the sky for this army of unemployed brains, who must either survive or drown. And they chose survival. What can one make of the atrocious poverty crippling the masses, while politicians bask in unearned baronial privileges?

Poverty may not be the only explanation to crime, as there exist so many poor people who are not crooks; and who would never consider a career in crime. But extreme poverty exposes a man to a temptation that may be too great for his ability to resist. Many poor guys who go into crime have been driven to a desperation level, by the pseudo-social ostracism and insignificance, which their station attracts; to the extent where they feel that they have nothing but their chains of poverty to lose. Any government who could not protect and guarantee the basic or fundamental interests of its citizens reserves no moral right to prosecute or punish them, when they try to do so themselves, in ways that is not in consonance with the law. This holds true, because the government has not respected the ontological laws that gave it birth; which implies catering to the interests of its citizens.  So the citizens are not morally bound to owe any allegiance to the laws of such a state