25 Oct 2008 |
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Farida
Could Resign… But Not Yet. Actually I have neither need nor business defending Farida Waziri because she is able and capable to defend herself and her job if the need arises. But she wont even do that because Farida’s husband told us in an interview sometime that his wife could resign if she discovered she couldn’t work with her conscience upright. So she wouldn’t stick her head in there trying to defend herself from surreptitious attacks if there is a genuine case against her integrity. Until that happens, i.e until her traducers bring out facts beyond mere speculations against her, I am not in doubt that she will continue to do her best on that hot seat no matter whose ox is gored. Again even if I wished to defend her, my hands would be tied because few Nigerians would be eager or even capable to divorce tribalism from issues and thus are disposed to charge me of bias and tribal sentiment. Aside from these, there is no authentic ground to censor my right to freedom of speech that permits me to comment on national issues, especially crucial ones like the anti-corruption war. That my kinswoman is the head of the anti-graft body does not in any way deny me the right of a stakeholder in this project called Nigeria and, sorry to say that, after all I am not less Nigerian than these self-professed anti-corruption zealots who fancy arrogating to themselves the exclusive right to know what is right for this country. These people believe they have the patent to the art of being unreasonable and vulgar albeit hiding under the cover of intellectualism. They create a fake impression of knowing what others don’t know. The lay claim to some form of higher intelligence or scholarly podium where something in the realm of the gods makes them privy to classified wisdom not common to ordinary men. In fact they themselves have become some ‘gods’ of sorts to the extent that when they take certain positions on any national issue, whoever dare take the opposite stand must necessarily be second-rate or unschooled. But to be a writer of my type, one must learn to stand up to any categorisation, not by defending oneself though, but by just being whoever you are categorised to be. This strategy has two advantages; one, it keeps you on track without distraction and two it takes off ones shoulder the burden of trying to prove what he is not rather than what he is-which is vanity. When I confront these gurus with the opposing view, my aim is not to prove parity with them but to let the credulous masses that are easily carried away by their spurious doctrines, to see the other side of the coin. When it comes to issues I strongly believe in, I take the lonely path despite the strong temptation to join the crowd and hope to be ‘accepted’. So when you talk about corruption, for example, these intellectual gurus have decided what the standard should be. They have stereotyped who is supposed to be the head of the anti-corruption body-the EFCC (for strange reasons they are not interested in who heads the ICPC). They have a prescription on how the person should go about the fight and hold tenaciously to this prescription (even though their prescription hardly has any comportment with the law). They have also outlined whom the EFCC should be prosecuting (i.e past governors). In essence they have already established the guilt of these category of ‘criminals’, even without evidence or trial. So woe betide you if you dare suggest that these people are innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. Even more woe betide you if you insist that you need evidence to prosecute them like Farida knowingly or unknowingly did and incurred their wrath when last week she stepped on their banana peel. Interestingly the ICPC this week made the same ‘sacrilegious?’ comment that Farida made over Obasanjo, but this time, no one has called for the head of the head of that Commission. I believe they exhausted their energy on Farida. So Ayoola escaped. But seriously I believe there is some deep resentment against Farida from this clique, which is born out of a munificent blend of hate, presumption and distrust. A gang that has refused to believe that their hero (Ribadu) has a substitute and a better one at that. What else than blatant hatred would make one to insinuate that Farida with all her ‘paper’ qualification and relevant experience spanning over three decades is not qualified to head the EFCC simply because she said she needed evidence to prosecute certain persons? That a woman who faced but passed the most hostile screening in the history of the Nigerian Senate would be deemed unqualified for the job by the same persons who believe her student (Ribadu) is more qualified for that same job is the height of absurdity and disingenuousness. What else than pure mischief would make a supposedly balanced analyst to contemptuously downplay or overlook Farida’s giant strides within her short period of stay at the EFCC while exaggerating the achievements of her predecessor? In my ‘Memo to Waziri’, shortly after her appointment I had the foresight to warn her thus: ‘You cannot afford to fail. The whole world is on the watch out. You must realize that you are coming in with less than half the goodwill that your predecessor enjoyed. Those who never believed there was a substitute for Ribadu are waiting eagerly to lunch their attack, should you perform below expectations. But looking at your CV I came away with the conclusion that your feet are slightly bigger than the shoe Ribadu left behind so you must go get your pair rather than struggle to wear an undersized shoe’ Yes indeed Farida cannot be expected to wear Ribadu’s shoes. In other words, no one should expect her to work under Ribadu’s shadow or espouse his style and antics. She cannot for instance convict people on the pages of newspapers. That is the job of the courts. She cannot drag people to court without first gathering enough evidence to make a good case before the law. As much as I wish OBJ could be behind bars I would not subscribe to jungle justice being meted to him. And it’s a good thing that she has brought the needed change into the system. By steering the EFCC in the direction of law, she has demonstrated that she can transform the commission into a strong and enduring legal institution that can stand the test of time. And I am glad that, as Vanguard’s report below indicates, the EFCC boss is heading in the direction I prescribed in that article. I wrote thus: ‘You must therefore widen the scope of this war. The EFCC must beam its searchlight on both past and serving ministers as well as Local Government Chairmen. Luckily Ministers are not under immunity and they can be prosecuted while still in office. The Banks and other financial institutions need to be under your close scrutiny as it is hard to divorce the thief and the receiver of stolen goods’ Waziri was quoted (Vanguard Thursday, 23 October 2008) as saying ‘We know and I know what goes on in the banks. I even made a pronouncement that my next focus will be the banks because a lot is going on in the banks and they are now reaching out, opening branches’… I am aware about money laundering through that system because our monies are not dropping from the sky. They drop through an institution called bank. Federal Government funds move from the Central Bank to the commercial banks and somebody writes the cheques; somebody countersigns the cheques; somebody draws money from there and there is collusion…’ …The local government chairman that came into office and had nothing and then two months later bought a jeep, he bought a Landcruiser, demolished his shanty and in fact, acquired the poor villagers' homes to add to his parcels of land, the villagers do not know that it is their money, tax payers money. They hero-worship him, they clap for him, they do not know, they feel that that office comes with that package. “That is why they are at the gate of his house. When their daughters are getting married they bring invitations to his house, ‘grace the occasion for me.’ The man is a thief, stealing all your money and you say that he should grace your occasion and out of the stolen money which is yours, he gives you ten thousand and they go on their kneels praying that God should replenish where it came from”. These are perceptibly right steps in the right direction, designed to achieve better results than mere propaganda against suspected corrupt persons. Therefore in essence, those calling for Farida to Resign on one hand and Yar’Adua to sack her on the other, truly have their priorities misplaced and would need to wait for a little while.
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