By Jide Ajani

STORY IN BRIEF
This paper first raised the alarm mid-September that the Code of Conduct Bureau was in danger of embarrassing the Jonathan administration with its shoddy preparation for the prosecution of Bola Tinubu.

Last Wednesday’s acquittal of the national leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, deals a fatal blow to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.  This report is about why the case failed as it did.

The Code of Conduct Tribunal sitting

Unmitigated disaster! That is the only way to capture the eventual outcome of the rag-tag case woven together by the Code of Conduct Bureau, CCB, against the showy former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, before the Code of Conduct Tribunal.

The CCB lost the case even before it started.

Sunday Vanguard had published that some commissioners of the Bureau were not on the same page with their chairman, Mr. Sam Saba. But Mr. Saba came out some 48hours later to pooh-pooh the report through a press conference. However, Sunday Vanguard discovered that one of the commissioners was not in attendance at the conference. The commissioner, Sunday Vanguard investigations were to reveal, is one Dr. Ademola Adebo. The CCB has its commissioners designated to take charge of some zones in the country. For the South West geo-political zone from where Tinubu hails, this said Adebo is the one in charge.

In building the case against Tinubu, Sunday Vanguard was made to understand that the CCB actually rode on the back of a brief already packaged by the Justice Ministry. But Saba had to play along. Then there was the issue of legal representation and fees. Sources at the CCB told Sunday Vanguard that with the resources at the disposal of the Bureau, “I doubt if the CCB footed the bill”.

Interestingly, as at last Wednesday when the CCT pronounced Tinubu free of the charges, the critical commissioners in the Bureau were yet to be formally briefed or a conference on the matter held within the commission.

Meanwhile, lead prosecutor was not at the CCT last Wednesday when the result of his prosecution was announced by the CCT Chairman, Justice Danladi Yakubu Umar.

That is not all. (READ ‘WHEN THE BULLET RECOCHETES)

In fact, what the CCB may have unwittingly done to the fight against corruption is to pour cold water on its own activities as an anti-graft agency, constitutionally established.

For instance, the commissioners in the Bureau are out in the field carrying out their verification exercise on the assets declared by public office holders.

Sunday Vanguard gathered that part of the conundrum that the commissioners are attempting to tackle is the issue of foreign accounts.

Sunday Vanguard learnt from an authoritative source in the Bureau that some public office holders actually declared their ownership of foreign accounts in the latest round of asset declaration.

Upon verification, Sunday vanguard was made to understand that some of the accounts which were declared were dormant.

“What we discovered in some instances was that some of the accounts that were declared were dormant and had not been in operation. And we even asked some of the public officers why they made such declarations knowing that the accounts were dormant, the standard response we got was that they had to declare it because not even declaring it may be considered a breach of the law”, a source at the CCB told Sunday Vanguard.

However, in the Tinubu case, what made the CCB’s pursuit of the case the way it did and which turned it into a fool’s errand was because the basic steps needed to have been followed before even docking him were not followed.

Sunday Vanguard has been informed that neither the CCB not the Justice Ministry went after the account details in question.

“One of the steps that ought to have been taken but which was not taken was that the CCB should have established how the accounts in question were operated and maintained; whether monies came into them; who withdrew the monies, where did the monies come from; to whom were the monies given or where were the funds lodged; were the monies meant for round-tripping or laundering?” Sunday Vanguard was informed.

Justice Umar alluded to some of the slipshod of the CCB while delivering his judgment when he said the CCB failed to establish a prima facie case before docking the accused. (See next story)

The CCT Chairman, fiery and articulate staved off insinuations that he was being used to persecute Tinubu.

Sunday Vanguard discovered that his tenure, which is for five years, is secure and no level of executive interference could remove him from office and, therefore, “he exuded confidence in carrying out his responsibilities as CCT chairman, without fear or favour.

In fact, Sunday Vanguard was told that some retired and serving respected justices frowned at the “manner in which the CCB carried on; not that they liked Tinubu or even knew him closely but the case from the beginning made a mockery of the Evidence Act”.

In the end, Tinubu was pronounced free of blame.

But not without Justice Umar letting it be known that Tinubu’s argument that he could not be tried in Abuja was nothing more than a flight of fancy, a voyage in grandstanding.

For now the pervasive air of sloppiness that appears to be infesting different spheres of the Nigerian life was manifestly brought to bear again in the Tinubu case.

Questions continue to trail the motive behind the move in the first instance.

Why the hurry in docking Tinubu?

Conversely, the leadership of the PDP in the South West Zone woulkd now need to brace up for a renewed onslaught by a Tinubu who has now been told to go without any blemish, especially one that had been incubated for several years but which died on delivery.

But unlike Alfonse Capone, a gangster and muderer of unparalleled standing in the 1930s America who was convicted for tax evasion in the absence of any other possible case against him, the Bureau chose to doctor up foreign account operation charges against Tinubu but failed to monster the will, sagacity and strategy to convincingly prosecute.