Getting it Twisted

Why empower and set up a financial crime commission in a nation already riddled with corruption, only to make such an institution a toothless bull dog. The fact that Nigerian judicial system seems to lack the structure to dispense justice quickly and the fact also that defence lawyers on the side of people accused of financial crimes have perfected the act of stalling cases, all tends to make high profile corruption cases a sort of ridicule on the sensitivity of the average Nigerian. I for one believe most people would rather not want to hear every other day that so much million and billion of naira gets stolen, and yet the accused walks away freely on bail and the case drags on endlessly or turn cold case or is a closed case without justice done to anyone, the accused or the accuser.

Virtually every adult Nigerian without criminal, investigative or even financial forensic knowledge; know a thing or two about high profile Nigerians with a strong case to answer for public office corruption, allegedly carried out in or out of public offices. Interestingly, the body set up to seek justice for the Nigerian state by prosecuting corrupt Nigerians or corrupt foreigners in Nigeria, can hardly do anything to get convictions. Certainly not because they don’t want to get convictions, but simply because the political and even legal systems just makes them a toothless bulldog. Read through the list of high profile corruption cases obtained from EFCC website (see link below) and you will wail for Nigeria and ask yourself the question “if these cases and the amount alleged to have been stolen are true” is there a future for Nigerians yet unborn?

In my opinion the EFCC can only start getting real convictions and not these charge and bail court appearances, when and only when, we have a serious leader or leaders who are willing to breakdown the structure of corruption that has been institutionalised in Nigeria. Past, present and future public office holder or anyone saddle with holding any office that require vast amount of public trust, can fleece the system financially via any corrupt means as long as the a sitting leader in Nigeria is a product of public corruption, thus lacking the full will to totally fight corruption.

My take is this, either two things can happen someday, either a revolutionary change occurs in Nigeria and I certainly don't mean MEND, BOKO HARAM or type of bloody/violent revolts, but true acts of remonstration born out of "righteous anger" that can brings about drastic change in governance, leadership, our value systems and importantly followership or on the other hand, corruption continues to thrives both at high and low places, in public and private up until the main stay of Nigeria economy (Oil and Gas) that provides this country with so much cheap money to steal dries up and the nation is faced with unimaginable loss of income. Either way a change is coming the hard way, hopefully let that change be for good.

ECONOMIC&FINANCIAL CRIMES COMMISSION, EFCC ON-GOING HIGH PROFILE CASES – 2007- 2010

http://www.efccnigeria.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=15&Itemid=82