By Monsuru Arilesere
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) recently said it secured 3,785 in all its commands in 2022. The commission also said the figure amounted to 98.93 per cent success rate in prosecution with only 41 cases (1.07 per cent) lost last year.
“The figure, which emerged from a review of the Commission’s performance in the outgone year, shows a 70.5% improvement over its record for 2021(2020),” a statement by the commission read.
On the surface, one is tempted to roll the drums and celebrate the EFCC for a near-perfect prosecution success rate. However, the data reeled out by the commission should be a subject of fact-checking, because there are two major bones of contention.
First, what are the profiles of the convictions the commission secured? Are they those cases of petty theft, internet fraud by Yahoo Boys and other low-profile cases? In other words, what is the commission’s success rate in prosecuting high-profile cases?
The other question around EFCC’s claim centres around the cases it has lost after glamourising arrests and splashing arraignment photos in the news and on the internet.
The EFCC’s most recent example of how not to prosecute a case happened when Professor Ibrahim Garba and Ibrahim Shehu Usman, former Vice Chancellor and Bursar of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, respectively were arraigned by the commission over money laundering.
Records have shown that time and time again the EFCC has lost many cases it had preemptively glamourised and the case of the former ABU V-C is a reminder that the commission’s celebrated conviction rate in 2022 might have failed the two tests referred to above.
Recall that in the year under review, a federal high court sitting in Kano refused to grant an application by the EFCC seeking final forfeiture of landed properties belonging to Tanimu Inusa, a Kano-based businessman. Delivering judgment on the application for final forfeiture, Abdullahi Liman, the presiding judge, said the commission had not proven its allegations against the defendants. Liman, therefore, discharged the earlier order of interim forfeiture, adding that none of the properties was linked to any public officer or proceeds of unlawful activity.
There are many such cases where the EFCC violated the rights of suspects by arraigning them and splashing their photos all over social media, only for the courts to discharge and acquit the suspects. The question is, who atones for the emotional damage caused such suspects by EFCC’s sheer disregard for the concept of innocence until proven guilty? Does the EFCC even read the rights of suspects to them during arrests? Does it respect those rights?
In addition, does the commission care about its public confidence level which, to say the least, has plummeted in recent times? The key word in the term “public confidence” is trust. When the public trusts an institution to deliver on its mandates and uphold the social contract between it and its government, we say public confidence in such institutions is high.
On the other hand, public trust could plummet, be dented or drained when a large part of society treats a public institution with suspicion and thereby withdraws goodwill and support for such institution based on mistrust. Public trust in an institution has a direct correlation with its approval ratings, which could be an important parameter for gauging performance or results.
When the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) named Nigeria as one of 23 countries non-cooperative in the international community’s efforts to fight money laundering, the government of former President Olusegun Obasanjo responded by establishing the EFCC and under its pioneer chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, the commission secured the prosecution and conviction of a number of high-profile corrupt individuals. As a new public institution, those accomplishments earned the EFCC reasonable public approval and perhaps a foundation upon which it built its reputation.
However, with the shambolic way the commission handles corruption cases these days, public confidence has plunged. No doubt, the situation the EFCC has found itself in is a clear indication that leadership plays a crucial role in managing any organisation’s public confidence.
Unfortunately, violating the rights of suspects under investigation by glamourising their arraignment and prosecution, only for the court to free them, is not an efficient way of improving EFCC’s public confidence – it is counterproductive.
It also has not helped the fight against corruption, as reflected in the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) recently released by Transparency International. Although Nigeria ranked 150 out of 180 countries compared to 154 on the 2021 CPI results, the report suggested a slowdown in the steady decline observed in the previous three CPIs.
Going forward, it has become instructive for citizens whose rights have been violated by the commission to seek redress. That way, the EFCC would be compelled to learn a lesson about how not to fight corruption.
Arilesere wrote from Ibadan, Oyo State