By Gabriel Enogolase

THE Public Complaints Commission (PCC), established in 1975, was envisioned to restore the dignity of man through the enforcement of the rule of law and protection of the individual, organization against administrative injustice. In this interview, the commissioner in charge of the commission in Edo State, Felix Alari, speaks on the mandate of the PCC.

This is your third year in the saddle. How has it been?

It has been very challenging. We have a lot of people coming in here, but we don’t have enough resources to adequately address them.

Felix Alari

The commission is in great need of funding. Of a truth, the commission is not well funded and yet we are saddled with enormous responsibilities. The extent to which we can address our mandate without adequate funding is the problem. For example, in the Edo State office, we have only one vehicle- a pick-up van.

The van is used for investigation and serves as my official use. If we want to go to Auchi, Igara, Iguobazuwa and Okada and other places in the state on official engagement, that is the only vehicle we use. As the only vehicle we use for investigation, it is constantly under pressure. More often than not, it breaks down.

Does the Act establishing the commission permit you to seek partnership with individuals and corporate bodies for funding?

That shouldn’t be, it is not even in the interest of the commission. The Ombudsman is an international institution. There is a minimum requirement or standard that is required of the Ombudsman to function. And one of these basic requirements is that it has to be adequately funded to ensure its independence.

By the time you make people to partner with you, compromise will set in. The commission has to be well funded and the commissioner well paid. In fact, the standard is that of the High Court judge. If you look at the Act, we are not subjected to control by anybody. Once appointed, no one should control you on how you do your job.

What is the level of public awareness on the existence and importance of the commission?

For a commission that has been in existence for the past 40 years, you will think that everybody is aware of its existence. I think the reason many people are not aware of its existence is because people who are majorly our complainants are the down-trodden. Those who are aware come here. There is still need for publicity. We have done a lot of engagements here – I mean engagement with persons who come in here to seek justice.

Statistically speaking, would you say you have done enough in addressing complaints since your assumption of office?

Within the limits of our available resources, I think we have done well. For example, between 2015 and 2016, the commission received a total of 2,526 complaints out of which 1,200 were successfully resolved; the rest are still pending. That figure is just from Edo alone.

If you take the statistics from the 36 states in the country, you will appreciate the number of cases the PCC is resolving. This is more than what EFCC and ICPC can generate and resolve in a year. Last Monday, our premises were a beehive of activities. Market women from Ogida came with complaints that could have resulted in serious problem if not meticulously addressed.

At the end of the day, the complainants and respondents were smiling. One of them called me few days after and told me they had settled the matter. We do this without cost to the complainant and the respondent. When you came to Public Complaints Commission, you are not expected to pay a dime.

It is a case of ‘no victor, no vanquished’

Exactly! And that again is part of the reasons people don’t get to know about our activities. For example, if we are able to resolve a matter, there will be no point for any information to go out to the public; it has to be on the instruction of the commissioner.   Imagine you are a complainant or respondent and you come here and tell us ‘please, let this thing be,’ you will not be happy if you now hear that it has gone to the public domain.

Can you let us into the naturre of the complaints you receive?

The commissioner is enjoined to look into cases of administrative injustice arising from acts of federal, states, local government and their agents and the officials of these agencies of government. We are also enjoined to look at acts done by the companies incorporated under the Companies and Allied Matters Act.

For example, wrongful termination of appointment, delay in promotion, failure to allot shares when they have been fully paid for, non- payment of gratuity and pension are some of the issues we deal with.

Do you have coercive power to enforce your decisions?

That is a very big problem. The PCC Act is one of the five Acts listed in the Constitution. The idea was to ensure its independence and security. The reason for setting it up was to provide a platform for people to have access to justice without necessarily paying for it.

The reason for protecting it in the Constitution is to ensure that the commission is sufficiently safe-guarded. When you refuse to honour the commissioner’s summon, the fine is N500 or six months imprisonment. That has not changed since 1975.

To amend it has become a problem. In other climes, the Ombudsman has coercive power; every attempt to give the Ombudsman in Nigeria coercive powers has ended in failure because of the tedious process of amending the Constitution which involves the National Assembly and all the 36 state Houses of Assembly. So at the end of the day, we rely on security agencies to do the enforcement.

So the Act needs amendment. And quite recently, the National Assembly attempted to do it; some Acts were deleted from the Constitution-The PCC, NYSC. The reason was that they wanted to amend it. But some of us were scared because there is no guarantee that they would return it to the Constitution. And by international standards, every Ombudsman must be protected by the Constitution.

So we tried to engage the lawmakers and gave them the Oliver Thambo Declaration standards of the Ombudsman. We really have the problem of enforceability. But we have our way round of doing things. If we give a verdict and you don’t honour it, we will engage you. You must be responsible to somebody.

So we can take you up to that extent. The problem is that in Nigeria, we are not able to pursue issues to logical conclusion. For example, a verdict is given that this man has been wrongfully terminated, reinstate him.   Instead of complying, we leave it like that.

The man then goes to court. Maybe after ten years he is reinstated by the court and his money paid. You must go back to the same person that caused that mistake. If the state now spends millions for negligence, is it not expected that they would go after the man that made them not to implement the report of the Ombudsman. But we are not doing that in Nigeria.

How regularly do the 36 state commissioners meet?

We meet once a month. There could be an exception or an emergency one. The meetings of the commissioner are called plenary.

How do you see the future of PCC?

With adequate funding and right personnel, preferably lawyers engaged as commissioners or very astute administrators, the future is bright. As a quasi-judicial body, you need somebody with the knowledge of law or that has a legal background because you have to be conversant with the Act. The PCC is the first anti-corruption agency and the first whistle – blowing agency in Nigeria. So I am calling for adequate funding.

Nobody thinks you’re doing anything whereas we are doing a great work. If the complaints we handle here are allowed to explode into the society, they will cause considerable crisis. Let me emphasis again the need to implement the Oliver Thambo Declaration which spells out the minimum standards for an effective Ombudsman, to include independence and proper funding for the Ombudsman to be effective in its contribution to strengthening good governance through investigating and redressing maladministration, complaints, injustice and excesses in the society. It must truly be independent and well-funded.