Lawyers, by their profession, are said to be major instruments needed to enhance smooth administration of justice, but as President Muhammadu Buhari appeals to them for support, MUDIAGA AFFE and GBENRO ADEOYE examines how they pose a threat to the anti-corruption war

Corruption in Nigeria has often been described as being widespread as no sector of the country’s economy can be said to be free of the scourge. It is a blot on Nigeria’s image and said to have hampered development of the country.

As a result, President Muhammadu Buhari, who made the fight against the menace one of the cardinal programmes of his administration, has initiated various measures to tackle the graft, going by a recent report that the President was planning to set up special courts in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory to aid the anti-corruption war.As regards anti-graft agencies, they are not in short supply in the country. Agencies like the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and the Code of Conduct Bureau have been charged with the responsibility of fighting corruption. But justice in cases involving corrupt practices has largely evaded people in the high echelons of politics and business in Nigeria. And lawyers are seen as the best allies to some of corrupt individuals, helping them to evade justice.

For instance, it is believed that lawyers deliberately stall the trials of some moneybags, including politicians, facing charges of corruption and abuse of office by using series of frivolous motions including stay of proceedings, adjournments, interim, interlocutory and perpetual injunctions.

This is because laws are complex and could sometimes be open to several interpretations, which some lawyers skillfully capitalise on to thwart or delay justice. Experts say lawyers often help their clients obtain court immunity and injunctions retraining the police and other security agencies from investigating or prosecuting them, thereby frustrating the wheel of justice.

An example is the trial of former Plateau State Governor, Joshua Dariye, for corruption charges, a case that has stalled in court since 2007.

In September 2004, British authorities in London arrested Dariye for alleged money laundering and seized about £90,000 in cash from him. Dariye allegedly skipped bail, fled to Nigeria and resumed his office as governor, which granted him immunity from prosecution.

When the governor’s term ended in 2007, the EFCC charged him with 14 counts of money laundering. But after eight years, Dariye’s trial has yet to start following different kinds of motions filed by his counsel.

First, Dariye’s lawyers filed a motion in November 2007, asking that all the charges against him be dismissed. Justice Adebukola Banjoko denied the motion, but his lawyers appealed the ruling. So, Banjoko halted the proceedings pending when Dariye’s appeal would be heard.

The appellant had contended that the Federal Capital Territory High Court lacked jurisdiction to entertain the suit since the alleged offences involved funds belonging the Plateau State Government.

He thus argued that he ought to have been tried in Jos and urged the court to quash the entire 23 counts preferred against the former governor.

Dariye’s appeal failed on every issue but by the time the ruling was handed down in June 2010, it had been three years since he first appeared in court.

In December 2010 when Banjoko announced that Dariye’s trial would commence in January 2011, his counsel stood up to announce that another appeal had been filed with the Supreme Court. The court halted the proceedings again until the appeal would be heard. But the Supreme Court in February 2015 dismissed Dariye’s interlocutory appeal which had stalled his trial since 2007.

Justice Sylvester Ngwuta who delivered the lead judgement described the scenario played out in the entire case as a “sad commentary” on Nigeria’s fight against corruption.

In a unanimous judgement by the five-man panel, the court ordered the accused to return to the Federal Capital Territory High Court in Gudu, Abuja, to face his trial.

The Supreme Court described as unmeritorious, Dariye’s appeal against the earlier decision of the Court of Appeal, Abuja, on his preliminary objection challenging the competence of the charges instituted against him and the jurisdiction of the FCT High Court to entertain the suit.

Justice Chima Nweze, while concurring with the judgement, also frowned on the attitude of politically exposed persons to deploy tactics to delay corruption cases instituted against them, as exemplified in Dariye’s case.

He held, “I have noticed a most worrying trend in most recent time, particularly among the politically exposed citizens of this great country, imagining that they are above the laws of the land, have perfected some awkward and baseless tactics of delaying their trial when they run into conflict with the law.

“The appellant in this appeal falls into this category. In 2007, about eight years ago, leave was granted to the respondent to prefer charges against him. He was duly arraigned before the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory.

“On November 13, the date set aside for the prosecution to marshal its witnesses, he implored the trial court to quash the charges against him on the grounds that the trial court lacked the jurisdiction to hear and determine the charges.

“When the application was dismissed, he proceeded to the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division, which held and dismissed his appeal. Instead of returning to the trial court to face his trial, he appealed against the lower court’s judgment. I agree that this appeal is unmeritorious.”

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had, on July 13, 2007, arraigned the former governor on 23 counts of money laundering and other corruption charges allegedly involving “billions of naira” belonging to the Plateau State Government.

The agency had also accused the former governor of among others, diversion of about N1.2bn of the state’s ecological funds into a private account.

When a suspected oil subsidy thief, Mr. Seun Ogunbambo, was arrested by the EFCC in 2012, it was discovered that he had earlier jumped bail after being arraigned for suspected identity fraud, bank fraud and other related offences. Ogunbambo had allegedly collected a loan facility worth over N430m from a bank between February and September 2009.

After being denied bail in the matter by a Lagos High Court, Ogunbambo had approached another court to secure the bail.

Once after failing to appear in court, his lawyer, Raphael Oluyede, had told the court that he was absent because he had been attacked by some gunmen, who had wanted to abduct him.

But some months later, in a separate case involving Ogunbambo, Oluyede said he did not know the whereabouts of his client, telling the court that the last time he saw Ogunbambo, he had sustained an injury which affected his spinal cord.

Oluyede said since then, he had been unable to reach him because of his injury and the nature of his treatment. He however asked the court to grant him leave to discontinue his representation of Ogunbambo.

At the time, the EFCC claimed it had information that Ogunbambo, who was also charged with N979.6m subsidy fraud, had jumped bail and fled the country to Canada.

EFCC counsel, Emmanuel Oluyede, had described Ogunbambo’s actions as “an abuse of court process” capable of making “criminal law look like a toothless bulldog.”

According to reports, Oginbambo has not been sighted in the country since then.

Meanwhile, according to the Human Rights Watch in a 2011 paper titled ‘Corruption on Trial? The Record of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’, lawyers’ tactics at delaying trials pose a major threat to the country’s fight against corruption.

The report also noted that cases of corruption against many former governors have been pending for years, as far back as 2007.

Buhari seems to agree with the assertion of HRW, considering his address at the 55th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association in Abuja recently.

There, the President urged lawyers not to sacrifice the integrity of Nigeria’s legal system for money.

At the gathering, Buhari said, “First, we need to make our courts functional and effective again. This means that we must have lawyers who take the ethics of the profession very seriously; lawyers who will not frustrate the course of justice, even though they defend their clients with all legitimate means and resources.

“Nigeria needs ethical lawyers who always keep the end of justice in mind and will never sacrifice the integrity of the legal system to cover the misdeeds of their clients, no matter how lucrative the brief may be.”

However, in his reaction, the Executive Chairman of the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, Debo Adeniran, urged Buhari to do more than appeal to the lawyers’ moral conscience.

Adeniran described criminal justice in Nigeria as being lax, noting that courts are not being properly supervised by the National Judicial Council.

He said, “Beyond that, Buhari should empower the NJC to observe all court proceedings and ensure that anybody who deliberately delays adjudication or wastes the time of the court should face the music.

“Sources of income of lawyers should be investigated because they are the conduits through which some of the looters and corrupt elements launder money. They write receipts for the consultancy they didn’t do at exorbitant rates. That is why you see some of them hands in gloves with corrupt elements.”

Also, Adeniran urged the government to put a cap on the amount of money a lawyer can receive as legal fee per case, saying “it should not be limitless.”

He said, “If a few of them lose their practicing licences, they will sit tight. If the lawyer knows that there is a third eye looking at proceedings, they will also want to take heed and ensure they don’t engage in any fraudulent practice to circumvent the course of justice. All these frivolous applications and the challenging of jurisdiction should stop.”

Also, a lawyer and social commentator, Mr. Jiti Ogunye, said that corrupt lawyers and judges only function in an environment permissive of corruption.

“Now that we have a President that says that he wants to fight corruption, once that tone is set, it is likely that lawyers and any other person will take a cue and will be ashamed of what they were doing before to frustrate the prosecution of criminal cases.”

He called for the reformation of Nigeria’s criminal procedure law, however, adding that the recent promulgation of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act would go a long way to curb the problem.

Ogunye said the Act should be domesticated in all states of the country to encourage an effective justice system.

He said, “More than that, all the interlocutory applications that were allowed by the extant criminal procedure laws have now been abolished by the new act. Now, we have a situation where lawyers object everything.

“But with the Act, you will be allowed to raise your objection, argue it, but you cannot appeal it.”

The lawyer also noted that Buhari’s appeal to the legal professionals should not be misunderstood to mean that lawyers should not defend persons charged with criminal cases.

He said, “The president was saying that there is a distinction between defending a criminal suspect and fabricating defence for him and doing unethical things in order to outsmart the justice system, confuse the issue and subvert the course of justice.”

He however called for the punishment of lawyers found to be delaying the course of justice, saying Buhari’s appeal alone would not deter them.

“It’s embarrassing that a former military man is the one telling lawyers to fight corruption because we should be the ones championing the cause as lawyers,” he said.

Meanwhile, with less than 50 days to the end of its mandatory 180 days to give judgment on cases before it, the National and state Houses of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal in Cross River State has warned lawyers that it will no longer tolerate delays.

The tribunal, presided over by Justice Christopher Awubra, had during the commencement of sitting on May 12 warned lawyers to desist from making frivolous applications and requests for unnecessary adjournments.

Source: The PUNCH.

CACOL, which recently called on President Muhammadu Buhari not to give Tinubu’s successor, Babatunde Fashola, any ministerial appointment having spent N78.3m to upgrade his personal website while in office, said it was not being used by Tinubu against Fashola.

Adeniran, who addressed journalists in Lagos on Tuesday alongside leaders of other Civil Society Organisations, said CACOL had investigated Tinubu but could not pin any evidence of corruption on him.

He, however, said the group’s battle with Fashola was yet a long-drawn one, saying that the battle had got to the point of no return.

He said, “Bola Ahmed Tinubu was arraigned at the level of the Code of Conduct Tribunal and a number of allegations have been levelled against him. We even helped to amplify some of these allegations.

“When Bola went to court and obtained an injunction, we said that was not satisfactory to us; we said that Bola should come to the open to defend the allegations that the PDP levelled against him. We said that was the only way he could be seen not to be guilty as alleged, but nobody has been able to prove the allegations.

“We actually went out and tried to verify some of the companies that they said belonged to Bola. We couldn’t find his name on the list of the directors of some of these companies. We didn’t find his name at the Lands Registry; we didn’t find his name at the Ministry of Housing and all that. A lot of people think that we have a godfather in him, it is not true. We looked at him eyeball to eyeball and said ‘go and defend yourself.”

Adeniran, however, reiterated his call on Buhari not to give Fashola any appointment, saying CACOL had found from Fashola’s antecedents that he was anti-people.

Source: The Punch.

Explanation by a former Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, on how the N78m he approved for the upgrade of his personal website is considered unsatisfactory, FISAYO FALODI writes

Admirers of a former Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, if given the opportunity, will like to roll out the drums and celebrate their hero for the successful completion of two terms in office. They will like to use various yardsticks to assess his two tenures in office and come to the conclusion that the 13th governor of Lagos State had fulfilled his electioneering promises to the people.

They will, no doubt, hail the former governor for serving the people meritoriously while in office. The admirers will like to point to the several accolades he won for the various programmes executed by his administration. They will also like to mention the fact that some of his policies were testimonies of his excellent performance.

To some watchers of political events in the state, Fashola’s administration marked a historic turning point in Lagos since the state was created on May 27, 1967. Of the former governors’ achievements while in office,supporter picked five as most significant.

They hailed the former governor for personally overseeing the battle to contain the spread of the deadly Ebola virus brought into the country by a United States-Liberian citizen, Patrick Sawyer, in the state and investment in education leading to the reintegration and creation of new blocks of classrooms, distribution of free text books and provision of workrooms and libraries as outstanding achievements.

Other Fashola’s achievements, according to them, are renewal of infrastructure culminating in the construction of many roads, building pedestrian bridges, execution of over 110 projects in rural communities and prioritising of security with emphasis on turning hideouts that previously served as bases for impostors and armed robbers into beautiful environment. They also listed the establishment of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund to effectively finance the security needs of the state as a major feat achieved by the ex-governor.

Based on the widely proclaimed catalogue of achievements by Fashola, some analysts are already speculating that President Muhammadu Buhari may appoint the former governor as one of his ministers.

But as plausible as the conjecture sounds, critics believe that Fashola has to answer some questions bordering on integrity and how he managed public resources while he was in office as the governor. The critics alleged that the former governor’s hands were not clean in terms of management of public funds and asked Buhari not to consider him for appointment in his yet-to-be-formed cabinet.

Like Fashola’s admirers who catalogued his achievements for likely appointment as a minister, a civil society group, Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, also felt that the former governor deserved no higher responsibility because his administration was engulfed in many controversies that could not be overlooked.

CACOL Executive Chairman, Mr. Debo Adeniran, listed what he considered as Fashola’s “sin” to include failure by the former governor to fix the dilapidated public schools in the state and his refusal to disclose how his administration spent the $200m World Bank education fund even when the Socio-Economic Right Accountability Project invoked the Freedom of Information Act to know how the money was expended.

He said instead, Fashola ran the state’s affairs in secrecy by claiming that the FOI Act did not apply to state governments.

While insisting that Fashola should be made to account for the alleged moral and financial misconducts that characterised his administration, Adeniran said independent investigations by CACOL revealed that the 1.36km Lekki-Ikoyi Link Bridge reportedly built for N25bn actually cost only N6bn.

He, however, wondered why the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission ignored the series of petitions he said he had written to the anti-graft body to probe the various projects Fashola claimed to have executed in the face of the over N500bn debt left behind by his administration.

Based on its finding, CACOL wrote a letter to the President, asking him not to consider Fashola for ministerial appointment while constituting his cabinet.

The group’s letter to Buhari had read, “Mr. President, we are constrained at this point in time to bring to your attention our critical reaction to the unbridled speculation making the rounds for some time now, from the members of the public as well as the media, as to the fact that the immediate past governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, is being considered by the Presidency for higher national responsibility. Feelers have it that his name is prominent on the list of the president’s nominees for key offices in your administration.

“It is gratifying that you have promised at various fora that your appointments would be purely based on merit and that tested technocrats, with impeccable records, would be given their rightful places in your administration, as a way of ensuring good governance to the people of Nigeria.

“It is against this background that our organisation is appealing to you to please take the pains to dig deep into Mr. Babatunde Fashola’s record of performance as well as that of financial impropriety on the part of his government while in office.”

Besides allegation by CACOL, the Lagos State Public Procurement Agency claimed that the former governor approved the sum of N78m for the upgrade of his personal website www.tundefashola.com in 2014.

What made the revelation an attention-grabbing one, according to observers, was that it was published by the state’s agency. The observers therefore doubted that the revelation was meant to malign the former governor’s reputation, contrary to a claim by Fashola’s aides that it was a campaign of calumny against the former governor’s chances in Buhari’s cabinet.

The contract for the upgrade of the website was awarded to Info Access Plus Limited by the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Governor.

The expenditure published on the state public procurement office’s website was first exposed by foremost budget analytic firm, BudgiT.

Other questionable expenditure, among others, said to have been incurred by Fashola’s administration included N1.2bn vaguely spent on the construction of pedestrian bridges along Eti-Osa Lekki-Epe Expressway. The spending was tagged “vaguely” because it did not specify the number of bridges constructed with the money.

Following these revelations, BudgiT called for probe into Fashola’s finances and expenditures while in office.

The Lagos State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party described the N78m spent on the website upgrade as reckless, adding that it was part of the “needless” expenditure that jerked up the Lagos State debt profile under Fashola to N500bn.

The state PDP Publicity Secretary, Mr. Taofik Gani, while stressing that Fashola spent the tax payers’ money on a website that exclusively served him, also asked Buhari to initiate moves to probe the former governor, instead of considering him for appointment.

Gani said, “The website was more than 70 times the actual cost. Little wonder it is on record that he is the former governor that incurred the highest debt in the history of Lagos State.”

But Fashola defended the N78.3m approved for the upgrade of his website, confirming that the money was actually spent.

He, however, accused his critics of refusing to break down the details of the transaction to cause confusion in the state.

He had said, “As far as the website contract is concerned, yes there was a contract. It went through procurement and was approved by the government agency authorised to do so. One of the services was an upgrade quoted for N12.5m but awarded for N12m.

“There were other services that were new like a hand over countdown clock, mobile Apps for Google, for IOS and Ipad, for Microsoft and for Research in Motion (Blackberry), which the existing website did not have, as well as the annual maintenance cost for managing the website.”

The former governor equally told CACOL to stop worrying itself with the belief that he was interested in ministerial appointment.

Fashola said, “I cannot conclude without responding to the crusade of CACOL and their ilk seeking my prosecution on allegations that have no proof and writing pre-emptive letters to the Presidency.

“In case they are unaware, I am not looking for a job. I expect them to know that allegations of wrongdoing are not resolved without evidence, neither are they resolved in press conferences.”

A social scientist, Mr. Ajiboye Akinniyi, who described himself as one of Fashola’s fans, said though he would continue to praise the former governor for surpassing his predecessor in terms of performance, the former governor should see the agitation by the people to seek explanation on how their money was spent as one of the responsibilities of the office.

Allegations bordering on financial impropriety levelled against anyone, especially those who held public offices in one time or the other deserve explanation,” he said.

Akinniyi, however, asked those entrusted with positions of responsibility to bear in mind that people are watching them.

He said though Fashola had explained how the N78m was spent, that did not mean that the former governor would not be asked questions bordering on the financial management of the state in the future, if the need arises.

Akinniyi said, “Fashola ought to have known before now that the people might want to ask him questions concerning how he spent their money for eight years; he ought to have known that holding public office equally demands accountability, especially as speculation is rife that Buhari may appoint him to head one of the key ministries.”

A financial analyst, Mrs. Atinuke Owotutu, said Fashola might have satisfied the curiosity of those seeking explanation on how the N78m was spent, but the former governor should get prepared to satisfy others who might want detailed explanation on how other expenses were made under his watch.

Owotutu said she had never believed that Fashola worked enough in Lagos State, considering the huge amount of allocation and Internally Generated Revenue that were available to him while in office.

She said, “I have always asked people not to be deceived. One thing is when you have a large number of people toeing the same path, you have got to stop and think, ‘Is this the right direction?’ Nobody needed to tell me that Fashola didn’t do enough regarding the level of performance expected from his administration.

“He must come out and account for other allegations that have been levelled against him. It is not enough for him to say he doesn’t want to join issues with anyone. He should; this is accountability we are talking about.”

Source: The PUNCH.