Magu and PMB’s anti-graft war

TRACKING____Follow the trail of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) chairs, past and present: Nuhu Ribadu, Farida Waziri, Ibrahim Lamorde and now, Ibrahim Magu.All appear fated to willy-nilly nailing to the cross, like the Christ Jesus in place of Barabas. Yet, their office was conceived to help drain Nigeria of sleaze.

Even then, with the holy venality of the Olusegun Obasanjo era that easily consumed Ribadu at the earliest juncture of the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Presidency; and President Goodluck Jonathan’s sheer travesty at fighting corruption, creating a regime of notoriously voracious “yam eaters”, that in turn threw up indifferent EFCC chairs, Magu’s path would appear the goriest so far.

Though a poster boy of an administration that makes anti-corruption its most fundamental plank, flaunting the near-ascetic President Buhari at its head, and a near-saintly Pastor-Lawyer, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo as No. 2, the institutional support for Magu would appear very suspect.

If that cannot be completely confirmed by his “eternal” acting chairman status, with the refusal of the Senate to confirm his chairmanship, his rather shabby treatment, since his latest odyssey started on July 6, reinforces just that.

A rather dramatic DSS (or is it conventional Police?) “arrest”, later denied and dubbed “invitation” (even if apparently forced — a sure contradiction in terms), nevertheless climaxed in an after-probe detention for nights on end.

The embattled Magu is facing an administrative probe, but bail appears no option. Yet, even indicted persons, in conventional courts, push legal and democratic rights to bail. Lexis and concepts never come more confused!

When the elephant falls, say the Yoruba, all sort of knives teem to validate their sharpness. At the trip of Magu, mud-spattering and wild allegations assume a doomsday proportion, that you just wonder what’s the motive by it all.

A top columnist, with glam and dash, claimed Magu invaded, commando-style, the Minna residence of Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, former military head of state. Abubakar has since denied such, though he admitted an EFCC near-search, due to a mix-up in addresses, at a guest house outside Minna, belonging to the general.

The same columnist also claimed Magu stopped Gen. Theophilus Danjuma from paying for a private jet, allegedly forcing his cheque to bounce, thus making an irate Danjuma to storm Aso Villa, to protest to the president.

But on that claim, mum is it from the Danjuma camp, even if the general did visit the president lately but came out sounding more conciliatory, less combative, as Danjuma and his Christian Elders lobby are lately wont to.

Another blogger has gone rather ga-ga with wild allegations, entrapping Magu, Vice President Osinbajo, and Kiki, the VP’s daughter.

While the VP has notified the IGP on criminal prosecution after thorough investigation, over alleged slush money from Magu, Miss Osinbajo’s landlord has pooh-poohed the blogger’s claim that she owned the building housing her Abuja business address. Dr. Ayuba Musa, the landlord, has affirmed Miss Osibajo was his tenant, as she earlier claimed.

Even the official “charges” would appear, at a closer look, as just card-stacking.

Okay, the allegation of a N5billion discrepancy, in recovered stolen funds, is grave enough. Magu’s EFCC is alleged to have declared N539 billion, instead of N504 billion, which Magu’s traducers, with their media confederates, have triumphantly dubbed “re-looting the loot”. That deserves probing, fair and square.

But the other allegations would appear manic mud-splashing, in a ruthless intra-administration turf war, for vicious supremacy: Magu’s alleged insubordination to the Attorney-General of the Federation and Justice minister, hoarding information on the extradition of Diezani Alison-Madueke, the Jonathan era’s alleged queen of sleaze and alleged late investigation of Process and Industrial Development (P&ID), which led to a Butcher arbitration in London almost butchering Nigeria in punitive costs.

Other allegations include the existence of “Magu boys”, delay in acting on two seized vessels, leading to a wanton loss of crude, reporting some judges to their presiding officers without going through the AGF, sales of seized assets to alleged cronies, and alleged leaking of some investigated cases to the media, thus allegedly prejudicing the cases, in form of media trials.

Incidentally, Magu and Abubakar Malami, SAN, the Justice minister, who appears Magu’s traducer-in-chief on this one, approximate the two contrasting forces, tearing the Buhari Presidency apart, in what appears a destructive tension.

The ascendancy of the Malami side would probably sink Magu — and if he is guilty as charged, why not?

But that will also pronounce a harsh indictment, if not severe verdict, on Buhari’s anti-graft war, of which Magu is an unfazed poster boy. So, all the present excitement might well be a harsh self-plebiscite, which could easily end as unforced error. But we wait with bated breath!

Still, the moderating, nay redeeming, force would appear Justice Ayo Salami, former President of the Court of Appeal, a victim of Jonathan-era executive-judicial politics, because the court he presided over did retrieve stolen mandates.

In a fit of self-mockery, Bode George, the Lagos politician, has decreed Justice Salami’s integrity suspect. But with all their havoc as ruling party, how would George and his PDP know integrity, even if they saw one — PDP that has joined the nail-Magu orchestra with a frenzy?

Still, while Justice Salami lost his office but regained his honour, the judiciary he left behind sunk into untrammeled rot, hitherto believed impossible; climaxing in the Code of Conduct (CCT) conviction of a sitting CJN, Justice Walter Onnoghnen.

With his lost battle against CJN Aloysius Katsina-Alu’s judicial order, and fulsome demonization from charlatan politicians out for the jurist’s blood at all cost, he would at least appreciate Magu’s present goring, by wolves baying for his blood.

Indeed, Magu’s appears a one-man bravura against graft, with sans institutional support: an eternally acting EFCC chair (denied confirmation by the Senate), had his well-earned conviction, in a celebrated corruption case, smashed by a cynical apex court flashing triumphant technicality, and now being thrown under the bus by his direct executive bosses! What suicide mission!

Yet, in all of the administration, Magu appears such a riveting alter ego of the president himself: heckled, abused, mocked and traduced, for the courage to do good, and save a doomed society from itself, with its suicidal elite!

Still, however the Magu muddle is resolved, the thieving Nigerian elite will get their comeuppance: if not in this PMB anti-graft war, then in an iconoclastic orgy, where every plunderer of the public till will pay, the hard way, for his crime.

When that dawns, no Supreme Court would flex its technical powers to spring convicts; no legislature would filibuster over confirmations of goodly public servants; no turf battles would throw conscientious public servants under the bus.

Before that doomsday, however, may the good Lord open President Muhammadu Buhari’s eyes to see through a turf war, which won by the wrong camp, may well bury his anti-corruption war; and Justice Salami the wisdom of Solomon, to ensure a rare decent public officer gets justice, no matter the flying doomsday allegations.