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Nigeria:War on Corruption in the Balance
Urgent Need to Fix Anti-Corruption Agency
(Human Rights Watch)
August 25, 2011
President Goodluck Jonathan
(Lagos) – The new administration of President Goodluck Jonathan
should fix Nigeria’s key anti-corruption agency and refrain from
political interference in its work, Human Rights Watch said in a
report released today. Endemic government corruption has
undermined the basic rights of millions of Nigerians, Human
Rights Watch said.
The 64-page report, “Corruption
on Trial? The Record of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission,” analyzes the record of the commission,
Nigeria’s most important anti-corruption agency. Since the
commission was established in December 2002, it has publicly
challenged the longtime ironclad impunity of Nigeria’s political
elite – an accomplishment without precedent in Nigeria. The
agency has arraigned 30 nationally prominent political figures
on corruption charges, including 15 former state governors. But
many of those cases have made little progress in the courts,
Human Rights Watch found, and not a single politician is serving
prison time for any of these alleged crimes. The commission has
secured four convictions of senior political figures, but they
have faced relatively little or no prison time. Other
politicians widely implicated in corruption have not been
indicted.
“There were high hopes for the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission as Nigeria’s most promising effort to tackle
corruption since the end of military rule,” said Daniel Bekele,
Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “But its efforts have
fallen short because of political interference, institutional
weakness, and inefficiency in the judiciary that cannot be
ignored.”
The country’s governing elite continues to squander and siphon
off the nation’s tremendous oil wealth,
neglecting basic health and education
services for the vast majority of ordinary citizens.
Widespread graft has fueled
political violence,
police abuses, and other
human rights violations.
Human Rights Watch examined court records in key corruption
cases and interviewed current and former commission and other
anti-corruption agency officials, members of the
NationalAssembly and judiciary, Central Bank officials,
prosecutors and defense lawyers, foreign diplomats and donor
agency officials, and civil society leaders. In the report,
Human Rights Watch lays out concrete recommendations for
bolstering the institution and removing impediments to its work.
Nuhu Ribadu, the first chairman of the commission, captured the
imagination of many Nigerians with his fiery, rhetorical attacks
on corruption and his unprecedented efforts to pursue high-level
political figures. But his tenure was also mired in controversy
that included accusations of political bias and allegations that
he ran roughshod over the due process rights of some suspects.
The current chairperson, Farida Waziri, on the other hand, has
been widely accused by many Nigeria observers of lacking the
leadership needed to push forward the agency’s anti-corruption
work.
But a comparison of the commission’s track record in fighting
high-level corruption yields a more consistent and complicated
picture than most analysts might expect, with neither Ribadu nor
Waziri able to claim many tangible results, Human Rights Watch
found.
The Human Rights Watch analysis reveals that executive
interference with the commission, and a political establishment
that continues effectively to reward corruption, has undermined
the country’s anti-corruption efforts and derailed key
prosecutions. The commission’s chairperson remains deeply
vulnerable to the whims of the president and lacks security of
tenure.
President Jonathan should break from the bad practices of past
administrations, publicly signal he will not perpetrate or
tolerate interference in corruption cases, and grant the
chairperson security of tenure by amending the legislation that
created the commission, Human Rights Watch said.
Nigeria’s weak and overburdened judiciary has also been an
obstacle to effective prosecutions. Most of the corruption cases
against high-level political figures have been stalled in the
courts for years, with their trials not even begun. The new
administration should initiate the long-term process of
repairing the battered federal court system, reforming federal
criminal procedure and evidence rules, and examining ways to
establish special courts or designating specific judges to hear
only corruption cases.
Some of the commission’s shortcomings have stemmed from its own
actions, Human Rights Watch found. The agency has failed to
appeal legally tenuous court rulings in crucially important
cases and to prosecute some senior politicians credibly
implicated in corruption. Where sufficient evidence of graft
exists, Human Rights Watch said, the commission should
investigate and initiate prosecutions without delay.
“The commission needs good leadership, but even a perfect
chairperson would accomplish little unless Nigeria addresses
these systemic issues as well,” Bekele said. “By committing
itself to reforms, the Jonathan administration could signal very
clearly that it intends to work hard to root out endemic
corruption.”
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