Daily Independent (Lagos)
McNezer Fasehun
2 December 2008
opinion
The alleged harassment of the former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) boss Mallam Nuhu Ribadu by the security agents needs more dispassionate attention than the hoopla that is making the rounds now. In a cultural society that has had its values and mores hinged on the achievement of an individual as opposed to that of institution, this is not unexpected. Yet the tendency to measure the success or failure of an institution by the achievement of individual office holder is one of the major problems of our nation.
As I tried to highlight in this column last week, the politics of Edo State, and ipso facts elsewhere in Nigeria, has never centred on issues but on who's-who, who is the godfather, who are the detractors, on whose toes has who and who stepped, who is the power behind whose appointment? ad naseum. By unnecessarily deifying an individual office holder, he not only sees himself as a demi-god, he simulates it, and before you say Jack Robinson the bandwagon deification catches on and we, too, begin to see him as a demigod.
Yet, since humans are not perfect, when the simulated myth around the individual is exploded, we see it as an anti-climax. We are disappointed and disillusioned. This is comparable to how Jesus Christ berated the Pharisees and Sadducees of his time for compassing land and sea to make someone a proselyte, the individual hero-worshipper, having seen through it all and is backslidden, becomes twice the son of hell than he ordinarily ought to be.
The emergence of Mallan Nuhu Ribadu from relative obscurity to the limelight in the last political dispensation of the Obasanjo regime as a crusader against corruption came as a relief for a nation that has, for years, been groaning under a corrupt bureaucracy.
That he has not only done a yeoman's job but has been seen to have so done it is also commendably heroic. Others, who in that dispensation, had also distinguished themselves in their respective official engagements include Chukwuma Soludo, the renaissance Central Bank Governor whose radical bank consolidation has given the banking sector a new lease of life; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, renowned for reinventing Nigeria in terms of external debts and reserves; Dora Akunyili, arguably the most publicly applauded public office holder of the regime; Obiageli Ezekwesihi, the outspoken, low-cut wearing minister of solid minerals and later that of education, etc.
Apart from Ezekwesili and a few others, the appointment and performance of individual in that government was so personalized that even when the president who appointed them into office was getting a bad press, these individuals were coasting home with praise and accolades as if they appointed themselves into office.
By the time Madam Okonjo-Iweala was moved from the Ministry of Finance to that of External Affairs a largely mischievous public affairs analysts branded her a saint and his 'persecutor' and erstwhile boss ceased from being a benefactor to becoming a malefactor. Nuhu Ribadu, on a network television programme One-on-One, (we may need a playback of the tape) declared that not even Obasanjo (sic) can stop the then hurricane from sweeping the land clear of corruption even if he (Obasanjo) were involved.
Mallam Ribadu's claim is fundamentally correct because law and governance is not about the President but about the people. That you are in office today does not preclude you from accounting for your misdemeanor the day after. The case of the former Inspector General of Police, Tafa Balogun, is a good reminder that no one rules forever on the throne of time.
In the same vein, that Mallam Ribadu once superintended a government watchdog like the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, EFCC, does not preclude him from being investigated, and if found culpable of any misconduct having him appropriately sanctioned.
If his promotion to the rank of a Deputy Inspector General of Police had flouted due process, and has to be comprehensively reviewed, there is no reason why that could not take place within the ambit of the law. And if within that context of due process, the former EFCC Boss' promotion has been faulted, sheer hubris ought not to be the tragic flaw besetting his rightly carved out riche as one of the heroes of contemporary Nigeria.
It is anti-heroism for a man whose achievement is hinged on the dispassionate adherence to the rule of law to now carry himself as someone who is above the law. To refuse to report to the Inspector General of Police on invitation is out of sync with a profession that emphasizes a superior-subordinate hierarchy of relationship. Nothing would detract from the public perception of him as a man who meant well for his society if he publicly comes out to carry out the orders of his superior. Rather such open show of civility would enhance his public image.
The state must, however, not allow any individual who in his truest conscience had tried to serve the interest of the ordinary man while in office to be subjected to ridicule, humiliation, vilification, and disgrace after leaving office just because his tenure was not the best of time for the perpetrators of corruption in government. It should not be a payback time to have a patriot's pound of flesh by a hawkish cabal, which always wait on the wings for prevented retributive justice. Every citizen must come before equity equitably and be examined on the basis of fairness and equality.
The Nigerian public should be interested in how an individual fared before the court of justice than whether or not he was once the former boss of the police or that of the EFCC. Only then can this nation know the truth. Only then can the truth set this nation free. Only then can we deconstruct institutionalized corruption that tends to make individuals loom larger than life, and larger than the law. Only then can we rightly lay claim to civilization, the type that would summon everyone before the judgment throne of history and make us answerable to our past deeds and misdeeds.
If indeed the tenure of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu was one of simulacrum and hyper-reality which has filthy underbelly, then we should be honest before the public to show our tragic hero as the Obi Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe's No Longer At Ease, who at the inception of his story he gets irritated of bribery only to end up collecting a pittance of 20 pounds that would land him in jail.
We have heard and read so much about what this person and that other did while in office. Let the investigation go round in the interest of the sanctity of the law and that of nation-building. The aggregate will of the citizenry is vested in the state through the instrumentality of the law. And we all must appear before the hallowed temple of justice with due reverence.
In so doing we would dream of that land flowing with milk and honey, fairness, equity and social justice; a land where no man is oppressed.
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