KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
with Remi Akano
E-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com
Michael Aondoakaa, SAN, Attorney General and Minister of Justice of the Republic, is fast becoming the issue in Nigeria’s anti-corruption crusade. And depending on your perception of the man’s activities since coming to office, he can be either an impediment to the crusade or a stickler for the rule of law; a shield for the corrupt or a determined agent of change in the way sleaze is fought; a demagogue or a nationalist; an emerging hero or a burgeoning villain.
Beginning with that famous press conference where he announced that all anti-corruption prosecutions were to henceforth originate from his office, through the allegations and counter allegations on the roles played or being played by his office and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission over the attempt to prosecute ex-Governor Ibori, Aondoakaa has found himself in the thick of controversies.
I have tried to listen to the man, I have tried to read his lips and analyse his body language and I am humble enough to admit that I am none the wiser for my effort.
Take his rhetoric. He says he has the right under the law to supervise the anti-corruption agencies including the power to authorize or withhold approval for prosecution; that has not and, from what I understand, cannot be controverted. So his decision to allow the EFCC to continue to initiate prosecution and step in only when he considers it necessary to do so is an act of magnanimity!
He says the request for documentary evidence from the EFCC to pursue the case against Ibori was procedurally flawed. According to him, the request should have come from the British Home Office and not from a lowly officer at the London Metropolitan Police. In his books that is a slap in the face of our sovereignty as a nation. He also pointed out that the attempt by EFCC to aid the London Mets was also inappropriate, because, EFCC had not only sent documents without his knowledge, even the letter requesting his retroactive authorization did not include copies of the documents he was supposed to be authorizing the Commission to release.
His words, according to a recent newspaper report:
“In Nigeria, a Crown counsel is the equivalent of a state counsel, a level 8 officer. So, I refused and told them that they had to do the right thing. I think Nigeria, as a sovereign nation, deserves some respect. They knew they were wrong, otherwise why did they now write through the Home Office requesting for mutual assistance to quiz Adenuga? I cannot compromise the sovereignty of this country. If they make incompetent requests, I will turn them down 20 times. Any request from the Metropolitan Police will be refused by this office, period. We had made a request in 2004 to the Metropolitan Police. They faulted us and refused until we did the right thing. If they bring another request under the MLAT signed by the appropriate authorities, I will attend to it. .When I rejected their request on Ibori, the then British Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Richard Gozney, came here with a superintendent to say that they did not mean to undermine the AGF and I agreed with them. What I am saying is that the procedure they adopted was wrong. Otherwise, why are they now doing the right thing in the case of Adenuga?”
On his refusal to authorise the use of evidence sent to British authorities by EFCC, he was quoted as follows:
“Now, how can I sign something which did not pass through my office? I do not know the documents in question because they were not even attached to the letter the commission sent to me. How can someone accuse me of shielding Ibori under such a circumstance? People should ask why the commission has not initiated his trial all this while. The truth is that the EFCC sent the documents to London without authority. That is the position of government. I did not write any letter to President Umaru Yar’Adua that Ibori should not be prosecuted. There is nothing like that. I simply refused the request for mutual legal assistance because it was procedurally flawed.”
But of course, this stance of Aondoakaa is being taken with a pinch of salt, dismissed as mere posturing while providing a shield for some governors who are said to be his friends.
Dr Edwin Clark, an Ijaw leader is one of such people. A media report recently quoted him as saying that the Attorney General was working with some unnamed officials in the Presidency to ensure that Ibori did not stand trial. Clark, a lawyer and former national information minister specifically queried what he said was the AGF’s letter to his British counterpart in the United Kingdom, requesting the stoppage of the trial of Ibori in London. “There must be something going on between the AGF and Ibori, if he has approved six cases out of eight leaving Ibori’s, there must be something going on. He mentioned all Ibori’s associates and say they cannot be tried by the British Government,” he said.
Opinions such as Clark’s have endured in spite of an earlier assurance by the Presidency that there would be no shield for any corrupt Nigerian, no matter how highly placed.
Presidential spokesman, Olusegun Adeniyi had issued a very categorical statement on the issue when the Ibori case first broke into national consciousness. The statement read in part:
“In the particular case of Ibori, contrary to suggestions that Yar‘Adua and his administration are wilfully shielding the former governor from prosecution by the EFCC and the British authorities, the President has in fact authorised a visit to Nigeria by officers of the Metropolitan Police who are conducting a criminal investigation of Ibori.
“Furthermore, the President has directed the Attorney-General of the Federation to give the fullest possible cooperation to the officers of the Metropolitan Police in their quest for evidence of offences allegedly committed by Ibori. Because the war against corruption is a process and not an event, the President believes that it is best to follow the path of legality in its prosecution.
“He (Yar’Adua) is convinced that while this may seem unduly slow to some people, it will ultimately prove to be a much more effective and enduring approach to the war against corruption in our country. I reaffirm that as far as Yar‘Adua is concerned, nobody, no matter how highly placed, and no institution, no matter what it considers the rightness of its cause, will be considered a sacred cow or above the law in the bid to rid Nigeria of corrupt practices.”
Beautiful, forthright statement, don’t you think? Yet the doubts won’t go away. And you wonder why. I don’t know for sure, but as a person, I have the usual struggle between my head and my heart. My head, worldly wise and wont to cast do-gooders as the biblical angels of light says to distrust the minister and his principal. My heart, which is where issues of life emanate, says to give him a chance; to err on the side of due process.
I have decided to hearken to my heart. Due process, after all, is of God. As I remember saying on this page before, God could have arbitrarily snatched the world back from satan after Adam wilfully handed it to him in the Garden of Eden. He did not. He patiently went through the due process of raising the “Seed of the woman”, (Genesis 3:15) that is the Lord Jesus, to be born, walk the earth and eventually “utterly crush and eternally defeat Satan” and wrest the prize back from him.
That is the way of God. That is the way Aondoakaa and the President say they are treading. So, let’s give them a chance to prove their sincerity, after all, as the Lord Jesus Himself said “…there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known (Matthew 10:26).
First published in a Nigerian Daily, the Sunday Independent, published in Lagos Nigeria.
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