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Nigeria:Firing of anti-corruption Czar won’t fix agency-HRW
Thurs Nov24,2011
Mrs Farida
(Lagos) – The sudden
dismissal of Nigeria’s controversial anti-corruption chairman
will not fix the troubled agency she led, Human Rights Watch
said today. The government should carry out broad institutional
reforms if Nigeria is to make real progress against corruption.
On November 23, 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan dismissed
Farida Waziri, chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC). The commission’s record in fighting
high-level corruption has been consistently disappointing under
both Waziri and her well-regarded predecessor, Nuhu Ribadu,
Human Rights Watch said. Partly due to the commission’s own
failures, it has been largely unable to secure convictions
against senior government officials charged with corruption. As
Human Rights Watch showed in a
recent report on the
institution’s problems, broader institutional failures – such as
executive interference and judiciary inefficiency – will need to
be addressed if the commission is to improve its anti-corruption
record, Human Rights Watch said.
“The EFCC’s mandate is to fight corruption that the political
system actually rewards, and to accomplish that by working
through institutions that are either broken or compromised,”
said
Daniel Bekele, Africa
director at Human Rights Watch. “That’s an almost impossible job
no matter who is in charge.”
The commission, established in 2003, is the only government
institution that has publicly challenged the longtime impunity
of Nigeria’s ruling elite. It has arraigned 35 nationally
prominent political figures on corruption charges, including 19
former state governors. But many of those cases have made little
progress in the courts, and not a single politician is currently
serving prison time for any of these alleged crimes. The
commission has secured four convictions of senior political
officials since 2003, but they have faced relatively little or
no prison time.
The Jonathan administration should present legislative
amendments granting tenure security to the commission chairman,
Human Rights Watch said. The institution can never be truly
independent if the president can dismiss its chairman at will.
The government should also bolster Nigeria’s other key
anti-corruption institutions, the Independent Corrupt Practices
and Other Related Offences Commission and the Code of Conduct
Bureau.
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. In early
November, Nigeria’s new Supreme Court chief justice, Dahiru
Musdapher, took a long overdue initiative by instructing judges
to expedite corruption cases, giving them a six-month deadline
to complete these cases.
The government should build on this promising initiative by
beginning the long-term process of repairing the battered
federal court system, reforming federal criminal procedure, and
examining ways consistent with due process rights to establish
special courts or designating specific judges to hear only
corruption cases, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch has also called on Jonathan to pledge
publicly not to interfere in the EFCC’s work and to support
aggressive efforts to fight corruption no matter who is
implicated. Past governments have openly interfered in key
anti-corruption cases, discouraging the commission from acting
as aggressively as it otherwise might.
“One of the EFCC’s greatest weaknesses has been its lack of
independence and susceptibility to political pressure,” Bekele
said. “President Jonathan’s sudden firing of Farida Waziri will
only make that problem worse unless the government pushes
through reforms to bolster both the EFCC and the other
institutions it depends on.”
Waziri was appointed in 2008 in controversial circumstances
after Nuhu Ribadu was forced from office in apparent reprisal
for his attempted prosecution of a powerful former governor,
James Ibori. Waziri has been widely criticized as ineffective
and politically beholden, but in the months leading up to her
sudden ouster she initiated a flurry of prosecutions against
senior political figures. In October the commission arraigned
four former state governors and a serving senator on corruption
charges, and in June the agency filed corruption charges against
the former speaker and deputy speaker of the House of
Representatives – all of them members of the ruling People’s
Democratic Party.
During Waziri’s three-and-a-half years in office, the agency
arraigned 21 senior political figures on corruption charges but
only secured two convictions in these cases. Her four-year term
in office was due to expire in May 2012.
Endemic corruption at all levels has kept Nigerians mired in
poverty despite the country’s considerable oil wealth. Human
Rights Watch
research has documented how
political corruption in Nigeria fuels violence, police abuse and
denial of basic health and education services.
Th
This is the document referred to in the Witness
Statement on Oath of Clifford O. Kokogho as
“Exhibit
COK.2”
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