politicians use anti-graft agencies to witch-hunt opponents – CDD

By Emmanuel Elebeke

Mark Arthur Foundation says insecurity has remained prevalent in Nigeria because funds meant for security agencies are poorly utilised.

Director of the Foundation, Mr. Cole Shettima made the observation on Thursday during the launch of Anti-Corruption Support Project by Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD in Abuja.

Shettima said resources being giving to security agencies sometimes are not well use for the purpose they were meant for, which has continued to fuel insecurity in the country.

He said that if we are able to reduce the level of corruption in our country, some of the security challenges we are currently facing will not be there.

He listed insecurity, lack of accountability and corruption, lack of public services and inability to work with young people to create wealth as major issues that stampede development in the country.

Among these four, he said insecurity is more critical but central among all the points, saying that the issue of accountability and corruption is so critical to all of them.

‘‘If you look at the challenge of insecurity in the country, one of the major challenge is the reality that the resources that is being budgeted for security purpose do not go for security purposes. There are so many issues in Nigeria. Central in all of this is lack of accountability and corruption.

‘‘If we are able to reduce the level of corruption in our country, some of the security challenges we are facing will not be there. Resources that are giving to security agencies sometimes are not well use for the purpose they were meant for. If our soldiers are not well equipped, they may not have enough resources to do what they want to do.

‘‘Government budget a lot of money for education and health and if those resources are not well used, they are not going to there is no way we are able to reduce corruption. Some of the challenges we are facing in the country is lack of accountability and corruption.  The solution is to make sure all the resources budgeted and spend by government are effective and efficiently used.

‘‘That is why the fight against corruption should be a way of promoting   development in our society so that the fight is not about jailing people, development interventions whereby those development indicators they were voted for which those funds were voted for are actually used for them.’’

To anti-corruption agencies, he said their  focus should not be about jailing and harrassing people, but about improving the quality of lives of the people. ‘‘They should see themselves as development agencies in different way more in terms of development rather than rules and regulations, jailing and harassing people.  We therefore must change the discourse for anti-corruption agencies.’’

In her remarks, the Vice Chairman of CDD Governing Council, Dzodzi Tsikatta from University of Ghana, said one of the inhibitions against the fight against corruption in is the use of anti-graft agencies by politicians to  retaliate against perceived opponents.

She said attention must be paid to the official abuse of anti-graft agencies so that our anti-corruption drive will not lose legitimacy.

According to her, CDD is working with five important agencies to fight corruption and called for collaboration among all anti-graft agencies  to enable them win the war against corruption.

‘‘Corruption is not peculiar to any country as is a multi-trillion-dollar problem and is something all country have to fight if they will develop. Fighting corruption is about reducing waste and reiterated the importance of not prosecuting the war in uncoordinated way. All the agencies must collaborate to win the war against corruption.

‘‘I want to draw attention to something which has been happening in my country, which I think is a problem.  Politicians sometimes misuse anti-corruption agencies to basically retaliate against their opponents. When a government comes to power, they start investigating the government that has just left, thereby wasting time and credibility and the legitimacy of anti-corruption agencies in this exercise.

‘‘I hope in this our exercise, this is something we must pay attention to so that our anticorruption drive keys into legitimacy, and is not used as a tool for dealing  with political opponents. I believe that the issue of coordination will help address this issue as well. We in the CDD pledge to do what we need to do to ensure that this project is successful.’’

In his goodwill message, the representative of National Financial Intelligent Unit, NFIU, Mr. Abdulrahaman Mustapha blamed the slow speed of the fight against corruption on lack of coordination among the various anti-graft agencies.

He called for robust detective measures that will either prevent or stop perpetrators from continuing from doing it.

‘‘What is making people to think that when they commit crime, they are going to get something at the end of the day; put on very robust detective measures that will either stop them from continuing from doing it when they are doing it or prevent them from doing it. That thing is to ensure that penalty is proportionate and dissuasive. When you punish people for crime they committed they will not be attracted to it again.

‘‘We need agency collaboration strengthened. There are so many things that will lead to conviction, good investigation, good intelligence, good data, knowledge of crime from the judicial end. There are so many things that will lead to poor conviction.

‘‘ The agencies have different levels of understanding, then understanding of the global objective. Agencies have been found to be bickering over who is going to prosecute what.  These things cannot happen individually; crime affects virtually everybody. People look at crime as a global thing. We should not be looking at it as individual thing but collectively.

Everybody has his own role to do, what is raw material to you will be a finished product to someone else, and what is finished product to another person can be a raw material to another. So, we cannot work in silos. That is what we are asking the asking the agencies to do, not only agencies but down to individual levels.’’