President Umaru Yar’Adua

LEADING anti-corruption crusader and Secretary General of Transparency in Nigeria, Maj. Gen. Ishola Williams (rtd.) on Saturday gave reasons why President Umaru Yar’Adua might not be able to combat corruption in the country.

One of the critical issues, according to him, is the campaign funds used in prosecuting the April presidential election.
Williams, who spoke exclusively to Sunday Punch, said the President could not feign ignorance of the contributions of some of his colleagues in the Governors’ Forum towards his success in the poll.

A few of them are currently facing wide ranging charges, including money laundering and reckless looting of public treasury.
He asserted that the beginning of any serious war against corruption should be the decisive trial of corrupt former governors and other former public office holders.

“I have told people that the President himself is in a very difficult position because he cannot tell me that he does not know where the money for his presidential campaign came from. If he is a religious person, he cannot claim ignorance; so, he too will feel some sort of moral guilt if the corrupt ex-governors who have given him money are sent to jail. He (Yar‘Adua) is trying to find a way out before such cases are made to just die. But now, people are saying, ‘No, they must face the music.’

”If he (Yar‘Adua) wants to behave as the true President of Nigeria, he should use that position to clean Nigeria and the very first step is to deal with the issue of corrupt ex-governors and then move to other public officers at the federal and state levels.

“That is how to sanitise Nigeria or else no matter the strategy, if these former governors get away by returning just some amount, the problem will continue on a worse note. Except Yar‘Adua deals with the issue of these ex-governors frontally, we are in a big difficulty in Nigeria,” he said.

He said the current war against corruption was still cosmetic, contrary to the general belief in the country.

He said, “We are not fighting any war against corruption. We waste a lot of energy in dealing with just the tip of the iceberg; we have the challenge of corruption at every level of leadership, including the family level, where majority of the people in this country cannot tell their children how they made their money.

“Almost all the wealthy people made their money either directly from government or from being associated with government.”

Commenting on anti-corruption bodies in Nigeria, he singled out the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for making decisive efforts, adding that ICPC and the Code of Conduct Tribunal as well as various non-governmental organisations are functioning far below expectations.

“The Code of Conduct Bureau is like a toothless bulldog and the Code of Conduct Tribunal is completely useless. ICPC people know what their problems are and Justice Ayoola himself has spoken about this so many times. The EFCC is very active, but without donor funds, the EFCC too would have been totally incapable of what it is doing. We are fighting corruption at the government and NGO levels, with foreign funds; it is a shame on the government and it is a shame on all of us,” Williams said.

Expressing doubts over the commitment of the Yar‘Adua administration towards ensuring a diligent prosecution of the war against corruption, he wondered why the Attorney-General of the Federation, Chief Michael Aondoakaa decided to take some curious steps.

“As for the Yar'Adua administration, we are yet to see its true colour, but from the signs we are seeing through what the Attorney-General of the Federation is trying to do, they are not good signs. Why should the Attorney-General want to take over prosecution of ex-governors' cases from the EFCC? He has not been able to give any good explanation,” he said.

“When you have a pandemic and you find a non-bureaucratic solution to it, won‘t you deal with the pandemic? What has the rule of law got to do with the disappointing case of a corrupt ex-governor who broke the law? If the Attorney-General continues the way he is going, the President should remove him, if the president is not pretending.”

Expressing disappointment with recent actions of the AGF, Williams stated that it was disappointing when members of the public had cause to doubt someone in such a high office, especially when he is perceived as being keen about protecting those who looted public resources.

”That is not good enough and the President should either caution him or remove him. We are complaining about corruption because it is hurting us; the money that should go into development is being taken by individuals. The office of the Attorney-General should be separated from the office of the Minister of Justice so that the AGF can be a public defender at federal and state levels,” he said.

Williams expressed confidence in the EFCC‘s powers to prosecute and warned the AGF from actions that may cause him ridicule in the history books.

He said, “If you look at things in the past few months, the EFCC has not gone to use force to arrest anybody so, what nonsense is the AGF talking about? He must avoid a situation where, at the beginning of his career as AGF, he is not being taken too seriously even by his own colleagues. He must be very careful about that; if not, people will be raising questions about how he became a senior advocate.

”He has no excuse at all and his reasons are not tenable and they are not good enough and they are not acceptable to the Nigerian public.

Williams expressed disgust that the Speaker of the House of Representatives and her deputy are being accused of spending N628m on the renovation of houses.

”These people have no respect for the citizens of this country and they will say they are fighting poverty.

“Those who have not been indicted by the EFCC are running around, pretending to be clean but in their own conscience, they know they are not and people know that they are not clean. But let them carry the guilt on their conscience for the rest of their lives,” he said.

”One thing that most people do not understand is that this century is the century of integrity and no matter where you run, you may be caught one day. Six years ago, if you told some of them that today, they would be running around the world to hide the money they accumulated wrongly, they would not have believed it.”

According to the retired general, God will ensure that nemesis catches up with looters. He said, “They won’t be able to sleep well.

“Who told you that they can sleep? They cannot! And if they don't make amends, retributive justice will be visited on their children. If they don‘t get punished, it will be visited on their children. It is not a curse, because they are hurting this country very badly; we should be a great nation but they are not making this nation great.”

He said part of the solution to the prevailing level of corruption in Nigeria was a return to old moral values as well as a review of government resource allocations so that each state could keep up to 50 per cent of the revenue being generated from its respective areas.

"The situation we have now is very bad. It has encouraged structural corruption over the past 40 years, when a state governor or local government council chairman can always expect a cheque from the Federal Government every month. As a result of that, we have local governments and states that cannot generate any significant revenue,” he stated.