THE story of corruption in Nigeria has become like the story of tortoise in most Nigerian folklore. Everyday when Nigerians wake up, they are eagerly waiting for the release of next list of names of allegedly corrupt government officials and politicians; be it Dasukigate (the list of persons and companies allegedly involved in the stealing/sharing of the $2.1 Billion meant to fight Boko Haram), the alleged fraud in the Ministry of Defence (which I refer to as Defencegate), particularly the one against the top officials of the Nigeria Air Force, or the alleged fraud at NIMASA or the alleged fraud in Nigeria Customs Service or even the one at the National Broadcasting Commission. The number of allegations surfacing daily are so much that Nigerians are getting desensitised about corruption in the country. Nowadays, the question on the lips of most Nigerians is: who will be next or which government ministry or agency will be next?

Most informed Nigerians know that what we are seeing currently is a tip of the iceberg. As Mr Magu, the EFCC boss stated recently, the EFCC has not even opened one percent of the petitions they have received. President Buhari has not visited most of the Federal Ministries. To my knowledge he has only visited the Defence Ministry. Also the president is yet to visit most of the Federal Parastatals. From information available in the public domain, he has only visited the Nigerian Maritime and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC).

We still have Nigeria Customs Service, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA)(formerly Federal Environmental Protection Agency), Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), The Nigeria Police Force (NPF), Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Nigerian Prison Service (NPS), just to mention a few.

Then, what of the almighty Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)? For those who have had the time to read the 163 page report on NNPC published by the Natural Resource Governance Institute in August 2015, they would have known that NNPC stinks up to high heaven. President Buhari has not even looked at State governments and Local Governments.

I am not oblivious that investigating states and local governments has its own constitutional challenge due to the Federal system of government we currently run. Let me sound a note of caution here. I am not suggesting that any of these government ministries, agencies and parastatals have done anything wrong but with the level of madness under Jonathan’s government, we cannot bet our necks that there will not be revelation of high level corruption in any other government ministries, parastatals or agencies in Nigeria.

I recall last year after the election of Buhari, April 8, 2015, I sent a proposal to him on what I thought then (and I still believe so) was the best way to fight corruption in Nigeria.

I advised him that as corruption has attained a pandemic level in Nigeria, it would not be the best use of his tenure to devote his 4 year term to fighting corruption. I posited that if Buhari were to devote a significant part of his time fighting corruption, he would have little or no time to implement the much needed social and economic programmes that will improve the life of Nigerians and the change that Nigerians yarned for, and for which he was overwhelmingly elected, will become a mirage.
War against corruption

Most importantly, I noted that just as War Against Indiscipline (WAI) died after he was overthrowned in 1985, the currently war against corruption will die a natural death, after he leaves office in 2019 or 2023, if he is re-elected. Instead, I advised him that what Nigeria required was to build the two principal institutions (the Police and the judiciary) that will make it impossible or at least difficult for Nigerians to get away with corruption, just as it is done in most western countries. I will publish the full letter in due course.

It is not a secret that we do not have a police force in Nigeria that is capable of preventing and detecting crimes. This is not an attempt to paint the Nigeria Police black. I have huge respect and admiration for members of the Nigeria police Force, who are doing a difficult job in a very difficult circumstance. As a lawyer, I have done so many cases against the Nigeria Police Force and some of the finest people I have met in Nigeria are in the Nigeria police Force. In my view, the Nigeria police Force itself is a victim of the Nigerian system.

The painful truth however is that the Nigeria Police Force, as currently constituted was not designed to prevent and detect crimes. I will leave the discussion on the Nigeria Police for another day. Even if Nigeria Police Force has the expertise, they do not have the capacity to take on the flood of allegations of corruption that we are experiencing today. The current staff strength of the Nigeria Police Force, obtained from information available in public domain is about 371,800.

According to the Country of Origin Information report on Nigeria published by UK government, February 1, 2013 at paragraph 8.03 ‘Approximately a quarter of the NPF staff perform personal protection and guard duties’.

That leaves the Nigeria Police Force with only about 278,850 staff to perform operational duties. With a population of about 170 million, we have a ratio of one police man to about 611 Nigerians, (1/611) which is probably one of the worst in the world.

What of the EFCC? I have my personal view about the EFCC, which is not important to this article. However, the real issue is whether the EFCC really have the strength to take on the deluge of allegations of corruption that we are currently witnessing? According to Mr Larmode, the former boss of the EFCC in a testimony to the Senate sometime ago, the total personnel of EFCC was about 3,000 and there is no evidence that the number has gone up. With the pandemic level of corruption in Nigeria, the EFCC does not have the strength and capacity to take on this large volume of caseload.

Assuming the police and the EFCC have the capacity to investigate, arrest and prosecute these high volume of corruption cases, where are the courts to try these cases? Everybody in Nigeria is familiar with the usual adjournments in Nigeria courts. These cases will never see the light of the day until president Buhari’s 4 year term is over.

Even if the cases are heard, Nigerians are not confident that justice will be done. We are too familiar with the case of Ibori who was discharged and acquitted on all counts of corruption charge by a court in Nigeria but was later convicted by a court in the UK for several offences, which arose from his acts or omission during his tenure as governor of Delta State and was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment and currently serving his prison term in the UK. It is for the above reasons that Nigeria must seriously consider setting up a corruption truth commission.

The Corruption truth commission

Truth commission generally is more popular in the political and human rights spheres, where the aim is usually to encourage warring parties to come together to speak truthfully and candidly with a view to reconciling various factions and assuage the feelings of victims of political intimidations, oppression and human rights abuses. A case in point in Africa is the widely publicised South Africa Truth Commission. It is generally believed by some commentators that a truth commission is not suitable for corruption matters. However, as Elizabeth Loftus noted in a blog posted on the Global Anticorruption Blog on 17 August 2015,

“… even if it is impossible – or undesirable – to fully integrate the anticorruption and human rights agendas, it is still worth considering what lessons we can draw from the human rights regime and incorporate into the anticorruption field.”
In the past, some countries with endemic corruption problems, similar to Nigeria have established a corruption truth commission to deal with corruption, with varying degrees of success. These include Philippines, Hong Kong, Bangladesh.

Hong Kong
Hong Kong was in a state of rapid change in the 1960s and 70s. The massive growth in population together with the rapid expansion of the economy created the atmosphere for corruption to thrive and indeed, it really thrived. Corruption was called different names: “Tea money”, “black money”, “hell money” and almost all segments of the Hong Kong society accepted corruption as a way of life. It was in order to tackle the high level of corruption that the government of Hong Kong established the Anti Corruption Commission. With the support of government and the community, the Independent Commission Against Corruption became a huge success.
Bangladesh

The story of corruption in Bangladesh is no longer news. Just like Nigeria, for several years now, Bangladesh has been occupying a ‘coveted’ position in the corruption perception index (CPI) compiled annually by Transparency International. Indeed, the situation was so bad that in January 2007, the then President, Iajuddin Ahmed declared a state of emergency in the country and cancelled a scheduled national election in January 2007.

Following this unsavoury situation, the government established the corruption truth commission in 2007. One of the aims for the establishment of the commission was to ease the burden on the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission which faces a huge backlog and which government officials said could take decades to prosecute all of the offenders.

Philippines

On July 30, 2010, President Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines signed Executive Order No. 1 establishing the Philippine Truth Commission of 2010. The Philippines Truth Commission (PTC) was given power, among others to:

Collect and receive evidence

Require any agency, official or employee of the Executive Branch, including government-owned or controlled corporations, to produce documents, books, records and other papers

Upon proper request, obtain information and documents from the Senate and the House of Representatives and records of investigations conducted by their committees

Upon proper request, obtain from the courts, including the Sandiganbayan and the Office of the Court Administrator, information or documents in respect to corruption cases filed with the Sandiganbayan or the regular courts
Invite or subpoena witnesses and take their testimonies, and for that purpose, administer oaths or affirmations
Recommend that a person be admitted as a state witness

Turn evidence over to the appropriate prosecutorial authorities for expeditious prosecution
Call upon any government investigative or prosecutorial agency such as the Department of Justice or any of the agencies under it, and the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission, for assistance and cooperation

Engage the services of resource persons, professionals and other personnel, when necessary
Engage the services of experts as consultants or advisers, when necessary
Promulgate rules and regulations and rules of procedure
Exercise such other acts incident to or appropriate and necessary in connection with the Commission’s objectives.

Structure of the proposed corruption truth commission

Corruption truth commissions have taken varying forms in different countries. But one thing that is common to all of them was that they presented avenues for corrupt officials to come forward to make full and frank disclosure, followed with refunds of all ill-gotten wealth and a case by case review, as to whether or not any particular official should be granted amnesty or should be referred for prosecution.

Let me sound a note of warning here. Any corrupt official who thinks that the proposed corruption truth commission can be used as a smokescreen to escape justice and keep their ill-gotten wealth will be utterly disappointed. I have no doubt in my mind that if the corruption truth commission is properly set up, well resourced and ran transparently, it will achieve its aims of recovering looted wealth, punish in appropriate circumstances corrupt officials and lay foundation for the building of a corruption-free Nigeria, just as in Hong Kong.

The corruption truth commission being proposed should have at least four committees: (a) The Public Hearing committee, (b) The Refund/Recovery committee, (c) the Amnesty committee and (d) Anti-corruption policy committee.

(a) The public hearing committee

The public hearing committee should sit in public to hear evidence from corrupt officials, as to how they looted Nigeria resources and where the loots are kept. There should be adequate publicity to warn corrupt officials of the consequences of failure to take advantage of the hearing to come forward to make full and frank disclosure. The commission will also encourage any person, whether Nigerians or foreigners who have evidence of corrupt activities of any public officers to send it to the commission. This can be done anonymously. If they are willing, such witnesses should also be encouraged to appear before the commission to testify.

In this digital age, it should be very easy for such information to be spread around the world. The idea of advertising for witnesses to crimes to come forward has been used successfully in Europe and America. As some of the funds may have been stashed away in foreign banks or invested in foreign properties, we may be shocked by the response we may receive from abroad. Most importantly, the hearings should be covered by both local and international press. Currently, President Buhari enjoys tremendous goodwill all over the world and therefore I believe both foreign governments and individuals may be willing to assist, in any way they can.

(b) Refunds/recovery committee

The refunds/recovery committee will deal with the receiving of monies or properties that officials who appeared at the hearing have declared. Again, any sum refunded or properties surrendered will be made public, with invitation to individuals and organisations who may have knowledge of undisclosed properties to come forward. Again, with digital technology, it is very easy to spread this information to every nook and cranny of the world. We can also experiment with advertising for witnesses, with offer of reward. Again, this approach has been used successfully in Europe and America. Each concluded file will be passed to the amnesty committee.

(c) Amnesty committee

The amnesty committee will grant amnesty on case-by-case basis. For the corruption truth commission to produce the desired result, the only amnesty that can be granted by the amnesty committee should be a reprieve from prosecution. Upon receipt of files from the refunds/recovery committee, the amnesty committee will review the file and decide whether or not any particular official should be granted amnesty. If the committee is satisfied that a particular official has made a full and frank disclosure, the committee may decide to grant him/her reprieve from prosecution. The committee shall however have the power to prescribe other forms of punishment.

For example, depending on the extent and/or the nature of the loot, the committee may decide to ban an official from holding any public office for life or for a number of years. If the committee takes the view that a particular official did not make full and frank disclosure, the committee shall have the power to refer the file to EFCC for investigation and possible prosecution. The Amnesty committee must remind every person appearing before the corruption truth commission that the statute of limitation does not apply to criminal offences. Accordingly, the Amnesty committee should have the power to re-open any file in future, if it turns out that an amnesty was granted on the basis of false information or misrepresentation or subsequent facts come to the knowledge of the commission that there was no full and frank disclosure, at the time of the grant of an amnesty.

(d) Anti-corruption policy committee

Part of the term of reference of the corruption truth commission should be to ask the commission to come up with policies that will reduce corruption in Nigeria. No doubt, they would have gathered considerable information during the public hearing, which will greatly assist them to formulate future anti-corruption policies.

They should also be tasked to come up with effective anti-corruption programmes that can be included in the curriculums of our primary and secondary schools and tertiary institutions. These anti-corruption courses should be made compulsory in all levels of our schools, whether primary, secondary or tertiary institutions. Corruption has become a culture in Nigeria and if we want to destroy corruption, we must destroy that culture by re-orientation of future leaders and elites. And the best way to achieve that, is to catch them young from primary schools.

Which way Nigeria

I am aware there is currently a huge debate raging on in the Anti corruption community globally about the efficacy and desirability of a corruption truth commission, the details of which I do not wish to go into in this article. For example in Hong Kong, it was a huge success, so much so that Hong Kong has now become one of the cleanest countries in the world, in terms of corruption. However, in Philippines and Bangladesh, it was mixed.

However Elizabeth Loftus beautifully summarised the advantages of setting up a corruption truth commission in her Blog referred to above as follows:

“First, a truth commission’s focus on gathering information would allow it to delve deeply into complex societal issues, exploring the causes and consequences of corruption more fully than in a prosecution scenario. Such data could reveal, in an organized way, which offices are most corrupt, what form bribes are likely to take, which segments of society are most likely to behave corruptly, etc.

Second, granting amnesty can greatly facilitate information gathering and can reduce the amount of time and resources necessary to conduct an investigation. This was, in essence, what the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did in the mid-1970s, when it called on corporations to come forward to reveal their bribe-paying activities abroad; the resulting information–which shocked regulators and the U.S. public alike–was instrumental in generating political momentum for passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 1977.

Third, truth commission amnesties have a strong public aspect that contributes to collective justice. Amnesties often can and should be accompanied by required admissions of guilt, commitments to reform, limitations on holding public office, and, at times, restitution payments.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, truth commissions allow for community members to participate in accountability mechanisms by sharing their own stories in a formalized process. On a larger scale, a truth-seeking model would nationalize anticorruption discourse. All of these traits would help to conserve prosecutorial and judicial resources.”

Also in a recently concluded International Anti-corruption Conference, the following recommendations were included in its official communique:

“prosecutorial approaches are always preferable [in a transitional justice situation] in order to stem impunity from past [corruption] crimes, but full disclosure and truth-telling for past crimes is an essential element of any transitional justice process”

Again, Elizabeth Loftus, in the same blog referred to above concluded in favour of corruption truth commission, when she stated:

“while anticorruption advocates may balk at the amnesty provisions that are often an essential element of these systems, as the experience with systemic human rights violations shows, this approach is sometimes preferable, in the long term, to an unrealistic “zero tolerance policy.”

Conclusion

An important advantage of the corruption truth commission is that it will reduce the workload of EFCC significantly and allows EFCC to focus on the few cases referred to it by the commission and thereby allowing them to do more thorough investigations. Also, it would mean that the number of cases going for prosecution will be reduced. The judiciary faces several challenges but one that is undeniable is that judges are currently being over-worked as a result of too many cases in our courts.

Notwithstanding some of the imperfections in corruption truth commissions, in case of Nigeria, the fact that we do not have the resources to investigate and prosecute these floodgate of allegations of corruptions, should make us give serious thoughts to setting up a corruption truth commission.

Mr Omatsuli, a Legal Practitioner in Nigeria and a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England & Wales is a commentator on Public affairs.