Ishola Williams is a retired Army General and now a reputable
anti-corruption activist. In this interview with Sun, he spoke on sundry
national issues. Excerpts:
RECENTLY, former President Olusegun Obasanjo described
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC as a toothless bulldog.
According to him, the agency has lost its bite, unlike the time when he was in
government with Nuhu Ribadu in charge. What is your reaction to this?
I don’t agree with Obasanjo’s submission. Obasanjo was part
of EFCC’s problem. I will even say that he made EFCC a toothless bulldog with
the way the agency was set up then. When Obasanjo set up the EFCC, it was
structured in such a way that the chairman of EFCC who is also the Chief
Executive Officer of the body reports to nobody else the President.
Therefore what you discover was that the EFCC was no longer
independent. For example the EFCC can’t investigate the President or anybody
that Obasanjo wanted to shield as at that time, and this was not supposed to be
so. EFCC is supposed to be an independent body vested with the power to
investigate anybody including the President. So what is General Obasanjo
talking about? It is him that from the beginning made EFCC a toothless bulldog.
Again, if the police could handle corrupt practices, why do
you need to form EFCC? I also believe that EFCC was formed to fight corruption
because there is the belief that the police is corrupt but again the irony of
it was that when EFCC was formed you now put Nuhu Ribadu a police officer in
charge, and most of the operatives of the agency including directors are
policemen, so what is the difference between EFCC and the police? This is why
you have police culture in the EFCC. There is hardly a difference between the
two.
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Gen (rtd.) Williams |
Then do you have anybody monitoring EFCC? Nobody, and this
should not be so. If the National Assembly members are what they are supposed
to be, they are supposed to monitor EFCC, but then most of them especially as
at that time of Obasanjo, are their own hands clean? No. So with nobody to monitor
the EFCC, then how do you guarantee the transparency of the anti-graft agency?
Today, EFCC is overwhelmed. EFCC can’t cope. The corruption
problem in Nigeria is beyond EFCC. What the EFCC is doing now is just a tip of
the iceberg. Cases of corruption in Nigeria have become monumental. It has
become a big problem, and EFCC can’t cope.
Ribadu that Obasanjo was painting in glowing colour is not
a saint. Ribadu’s hands are not clean. You know that somebody recently sent a
petition to the National Assembly asking them to ask Ibrahim Lamorde, former
EFCC boss to account for the disappearance of some missing items including
properties that were seized by EFCC.
The properties and items in question were seized when
Lamorde was the Director of Operations of EFCC when Ribadu was in charge.
Obasanjo can’t deceive Nigerians, we are not fools. Ribadu, his boy doesn’t in
any way qualify to be called a saint or super detective. He and Lamorde have
questions to answer. Obasanjo didn’t lay a good foundation for the EFCC. He
made EFCC a toothless bulldog from the beginning because he was afraid of being
probed himself.
Again, is Obasanjo himself a saint? No. He himself has
declared that he is not a saint. So if Obasanjo is not a saint, how do you
expect EFCC to be run by saints during his time? From what I have seen, there
is no way EFCC can be successful with policemen being put in charge. For
instance, the man at the helm of affairs now, Ibrahim Magu is a policeman.
What is your assessment of the war against corruption
under President Muhammadu Buhari?
It is impossible to eradicate corruption because human
beings are not perfect.
But one thing I will say is that for the first time, we have
somebody that has shown willingness and commitment to fight corruption. Buhari
has been fighting impunity. Who would have imagined that he would have courage
to move against those looters that are being exposed now including top
military chiefs who looted funds meant to acquire arms to fight insurgents? We
might say that we are yet to have a change but at least Buhari is making a
difference. Some of the people hitherto regarded as untouchables are now being
made to account for their stewardship.
Buhari is making a big difference and this has been made
possible because he didn’t come to office with a lot of baggage. With these
looters being exposed here and there, you can imagine what would have happened
to Nigeria if Jonathan had won second term.
What would have happened?
The looting would have continued on a bigger scale, and that
would have been disastrous for Nigeria. Nigeria would have been in a terrible
mess. We are lucky that Buhari has come to clean the Augean stable. But he is
still scratching the surface, he needs to embark on systematic elimination of
corruption.
Talking about loots and looters, what should be done to
these looters and the money recovered from them?
To me, those who are saying that they should just recover
the loot and leave the looters alone, I say no. Looters should be punished that
is apart from recovering the money from them. Although Buhari is coming into
office at a difficult time, he is lucky that he is coming into office at a time
when there is a universal agreement that war should be waged against money
laundering – so anybody that steals public fund now will find it difficult to
launder it. It will be easy to trace the money and recover it. The interpol will
also easily pick any looter no matter which country of the world you run to.
To serve as deterrent, all those involved in the looting of
public funds, and are being exposed by the EFCC should be jailed. To leave them
alone untouched after recovering the stolen loot will set a bad example for others.
But some of these people mentioned including Chief Olu
Falae, Tanko Yakassai and Tony Anenih are elder statesmen, and are old people,
are you saying they should be jailed?
If you are not too old to steal money or loot public funds,
then you should not be too old to be sent to the prison if your hands are not
clean. Nobody is too old to go jail. Look at somebody like Falae, he gave all
manners of excuses for receiving N100 million from Dasuki. Few days ago,
another N100 million was traced to him making it a total of N200 million,
public fund that he collected. We need to make scapegoats of some people in
order to instill discipline into Nigerians.
Now for the loot being recovered, they should be put into public
use, part of it can also be used to cover up the deficit in the budget. Even
luckily for us, it is not only within the country that funds are being
recovered, looted funds stashed away abroad are also being repatriated to
Nigeria.
Can we say that is part of the gains of President
Buhari’s numerous trips abroad because some Nigerians are saying that the
President’s trips are becoming too frequent?
Obviously, it is one of the gains of those foreign shuttles
by the President that you now have these looted funds being returned from
abroad. Some of those trips are good for the country especially those ones
where the President will meet one-on-one with the President of host countries.
But those trips that are merely summits involving several nations may not be
necessary for the President to be attending all the time. He can send
delegations.
With the people being arrested over looted public funds
claiming that former President Goodluck Jonathan gave them approval to collect
or take the money, some are saying that Jonathan should be invited for
questioning, while others are saying, doing that will amount to humiliation,
what is your take on this?
I personally believe that Jonathan should have spoken out,
but he will never do so unless they invite him and show him some documents
linking him with the scandal. But I believe that heaven will not fall if
Jonathan is picked or invited for questioning. Jonathan is not bigger than
Nigeria. Look at what is happening now in Brazil, the former President, Lula
has been arrested and is being investigated for corruption. It had happened in
Zambia and Tanzania before where you had former presidents being put on trial
for corrupt practices. But again, I believe that if you are going to probe
Jonathan, you must also probe Obasanjo, but will Buhari have the will to do
this?
Don’t forget that Obasanjo helped Buhari to get elected, and
not only that, at a time when Obasanjo was in power, some people urged his
government to probe the defunct PTF which was then headed by Buhari when Gen.
Abacha was in power. But instead of Obasanjo to agree to the demand he just
dismissed the call for probe of PTF activities under Buhari, saying it was
unnecessary. Where do you think Buhari will have the courage or the will to
probe Obasanjo? It is a case of I rub your back you also rub mine. But honestly
speaking, I believe that it would be unfair to probe Jonathan and leave
Obasanjo alone. The two of them should be probed. The second term of Obasanjo’s
government to me had what I will call K leg.
There were many things that were not transparent during his
second term in office. Even some of those people that worked under him like the
then Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala believe he has questions to
answer. In fact, all the former governors of Central Bank of Nigeria, Group
Managing Director of NNPC and ministers for Finance between 1999 and now should
be probed.
Again, those who think or believe that Jonathan should speak
will be disappointed. He won’t like to speak, I said it earlier that unless he
is invited and confronted with weighty evidence.
I’m disappointed with Okonjo- Iweala because she didn’t live
up to expectation considering the fact that she had worked with the World Bank.
The impression that she used to give us was that she had done her best for
Nigeria, but with all these shocking revelations including Dasukigate and how
her name has been featuring prominently in some of these exposures, I will say
that I’m disappointed with her. She should have resigned her appointment if she
discovered that some people wanted her to compromise the ethics of her
profession.
Senior civil servants and some members of the National Assembly
should be probed because they are too corrupt and also need to be probed.
You mean civil servants …?
Yes. Are they not part of the system? Look at the recent
budget padding controversy. It is not a new development. It is civil servants
that are mostly responsible for adding this extra money to the budget, what
happens is that these government workers and members of some committees in the
National Assembly end up sharing the money. But this time around, knowing fully
well the kind of person in charge, people have to be extra-careful because they
know the consequences of being exposed. We should also commend members of the
National Assembly, this time around, they did well by being vigilant.
Christian Association of Nigeria, and some other eminent
Nigerians have voiced concerns over President Buhari’s alleged pro-Islamic actions
like taking Nigeria into the Coalition of Islamic Nations, fighting terrorism
and his frequent trips to Islamic countries, what is your view?
So far I have not seen any of the president’s actions that
tilts towards Islamisation of Nigeria or that violates the secularity of the
country. As regards Nigeria joining the Coalition Against Terror, there is
nothing alarming about it – the aim is to join other nations who have the same
objective of fighting global terrorism, and with what Boko Haram is doing to
Nigeria , I believe membership of the coalition will help our cause against the
insurgents.
There are also claims that some of the president’s actions
bear the hallmarks of dictatorship?
Do you know what is called dictatorship? We are very free
in Nigeria. Go to those countries where you have dictatorship, you don’t need
anybody to tell you that a dictator is in charge.
May be except for Dasuki’s case where the man has not been
allowed to go after he had been granted bail on several occasions is what
baffles me. But again, government will have its reasons. May be Dasuki is
considered a security risk and if that is so, he can’t be allowed to be
roaming about. If anything untoward happens to him, it may affect the case the
state has against him. But generally speaking, I don’t think Buhari has veered
towards the path of dictatorship.
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