In this interview with Prof. Itse Sagay, chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on anti-corruption open his mind on the modus operandi of the committee and public concerns. –
Your appointment was well received by the public but there were also pockets of concerns about your relationship with certain political figures, how do you react to this?
I wasn’t aware of that. What concerns were that and in relation to who?
You have spoken on certain political issues favouring certain political class. How do you reconcile that with this new assignmnent?
Well, the two are totally different. I am the type of person who has taken certain positions on issues. I am not a neutral person. I believe that a person who is neutral shirks his responsibility towards the society. He should be able to take a position. I have always taken a progressive stance on all political matters. It is true I have had such opinions in the past; they are political and are my orientation to public life but they have nothing to do with the question of fighting corruption. We are dealing with identifying people and supporting agencies that are fighting corruption by coordinating what they are doing and intervening vigorously and comprehensively as opposed to the struggle against corruption. So, it is not based on what I feel about certain individuals and their politics but what I feel about corruption as such and the attempt to root it out of the country.
This appointment came a few days after you weighed heavily into the Osun State crisis. There was also this insinuation of you pushing things the governor’s way and vice versa. People are asking if this isn’t a kind of reward.
This is interesting. I wasn’t appointed by the Governor of Osun State.
There are also thoughts that since it is his party that is at the centre, that he weighed in…..
(Cuts in) Can I tell you something, I am not sure I have seen the Governor of Osun State or spoken to him physically since January 2013. There is no connection at all. Don’t forget that I was not the only person who commented. Somebody who is even senior to me, Mrs. Folake Solanke did and I took part in this. She is my senior even in the rank of SAN, so to what has she been appointed now, if that is the argument. As I said, people who know that they are guilty of corruption and who know that they have looted the resources of this country, let them come forward and confess instead of looking for excuses and calling people names.
You faulted the procedure adopted by Oloyede that she isn’t one of those intended by the constitution to bring up such petition, but you were heavily criticized in the media and the public sphere that instead of you being concerned about the weighty allegations against the Governor, you were more focused on the technicalities.
Of course, process is important. It is only people who are indisciplined that are saying that and that is why this country has gone down. You don’t just jump into something without proper process. It is obvious that these characters that attack me are either indiciplined or are behind this lady in her irresponsible and totally indecent attack on the Governor.
What she should have done was to approach the person representing her in the State House of Assembly and submitted whatever complaint she had, and he would have investigated and brought it up as his own and convince his colleagues to support him.
The whole point I am making is one which is not technical but substantive; a judge with the decorum of a high office vested on her, you don’t bring youself down to the level of a streetfighter, who has no care about honour and dignity. These people have been placed on a pedestal and for us to have confidence in the judiciary, they must conduct themselves in a particular way which shows that they have a sense of honour and self repect. This woman went into the gutter, discarded her robes and effectively walked about naked in public. That is a disgrace to the judiciary.
So you were more concerned about the disrepute she perceivably brought the judiciary…
She brought disgrace to the judiciary and to the administration of justice. She is painting them in a bad colour which can affect public respect for the judiciary.
You almost called for her exit from the bench….
(Cuts in) I am still calling for her exit from the bench right now. She does not deserve to seat on any bench. She is a disgrace to her profession and the judiciary. She should not be there. Right now, I am still very angry that NJC has done nothing about that woman.
But are you taking any step towards this?
No, I have made my point clear and it has been published. It is up to the people who are responsible to do what they are supposed to do.
Let’s agree that Oloyede was wrong, would that be enough to rubbish the allegations against the Governor? That is why I said that she should have taken any allegations that she had to the appropriate quarters. The important thing is to make the allegation and allow the House to intervene. They would need evidence and be convinced that all those various offences and acts of misconduct are established.
But such petitions have been used to impeach many Governors in Nigeria since the onset of Democracy in 1999.
I don’t take those past impeachments seriously. A lot of them were just acts of political victimization. Once our courts became more knowledgeable, they started overturning those impeachments. I was one of the earliest people who wrote then that the process of impeachment was getting messy. Starting with Alamieseigha, Ladoja, were illegal. I made my intentions known and coincidentally, a senior colleague of mine, Professor Nwabueze, has written extensively about it. From Ladoja’s case, our judges got the point and started implementing it. Peter Obi’s case was overturned and we found out that it was all political victimisation. Nigerians typically abuse everything.
Your position now is different, making people feel that you were biased, But now, you have said that you don’t care if Aregbesola is investigated or impeached but that Oloyede should not be involved.
At all. She shouldn’t be involved.
That means both both Oloyede and Aregbesola are not justified?
Only allegations have been made against Aregebesola and nothing has been established. As far as I am concerned, he is innocent of all charges. If they like, they can report it to the police or any other investigative agency. The police can investigate a sitting Governor. Immunity does not cover that. They investigate him so that when he leaves office, they can question him. They have to take all those charges to a panel. The Chief Judge will appoint a panel which would look objectively into it. If she had done all that, I would have had no problems with that. But for a judge to emanate such hostility, personal vendetta and hate is very strange. In fact, when I first read the story, the first thing I asked was if it truly came from a judge and if somebody was not just using the name of the judge to cook up some allegations. When I finally confirmed that she was a judge, the next thing I asked was if she is mentally inbalanced or having psychological problems which required treatment. Her actions has no precedence in the history of this country.
What about Salami? There is an instance of bias cited against you that you supported him when he used the media to lambast the former CJN and NJC…
Salami did not attack the former CJN. Salami was a victim of attack. They conspired to try to remove him as the President of the Court of Appeal and pretended on his behalf that he applied to be a Supreme Court judge in order to get him out of the way, to which Salami replied that he did not apply for the position. However, they said they were promoting him whether he liked it or not. It was in that process that he brought an action. He did not go to the press, he sued to restrain them from removing him. He did not go to the press and start talking like a market woman like this woman did.
But the NJC suspended Salami primarily for granting an interview to Thisday newspaper and he was asked to apologize, to which he refused.
Oloyede must have sent her petition to the press or how did it find its way to them? In any case, she was not supposed to petition Aregbesola. In the case of Salami, you could see that the NJC was just obeying the voice of its master, the CJN. When all the actions of the CJN were exposed, all hell was let loose and Salami had to pay for it at any cost. Salami is one of the most upright judges Nigeria has ever seen and he was sacrificed by these people. Because he refused to be perverted. Didn’t they turn round and ask Jonathan to suspend the suspension and bring him back which he refused to do?
Just a few days back, a constituent of a senator wrote a petition through him against Ibrahim Lamorde. The Senate ruled that it was a wrong procedure. This is in sharp contrast to what happened in Osun. What is the right procedure bringing up a petition against a public officer?
The petition was rightly directed. Having received it, it was supposed to be tendered before the whole of the Senate before being referred to a committee. It was wrong for them to summon the party immediately to an investigative hearing without first allowing the matter to go before the Senate, which would direct the Commitee to hold a public hearing. There was probably an error there.
You have been given a national task which should make you unbiased and in the past, you had taken certain political positions. Do you think those positions would not come back to haunt you?
They can never haunt me.
Critics are saying you are Tinubu’s man.
That is interesting. Maybe I am his man without knowing. He has never picked up his phone to call me to say, “Prof, can I see you?”. Never. He never called me as governor. He has been out of governorship office for eight years and he has never called me once. We don’t have that relationship. I admire him. He is a great man. He is a man who, for the first time since colonialism, ensured a progressive government at the center. He is an outstanding man. I admire him and I can’t deny that. I also admire the President for being such a highly principled man. I am not neutral and nobody would force me to be neutral. I can’t see forces of good and say I am neutral. Anybody who is neutral, in face of differences, should be condemned.
Isn’t neutrality a kind of objectivity?
It is cowardice, laziness and cheating. Neutrality is simply irresponsible.
You are practically spitting fire with this your new assignment. What is going to be new?
Let me start by saying that the committee has nothing to do with arresting and charging anyone to court. We are going to coordinate the struggle against corruption. We are a deliberating body. We are going to support the anti corruption agencies. We would try and correct the shortcomings. For example we examined the EFCC and discovered that they are losing a lot of cases. What is the problem? Is it technical? Do they lack a lot of equipment. Is it skill or lack of manpower? We are looking into a lot of things. We will try and look at all these and provide a solution to the challenges. We are going to strengthen the agencies and make them more effective and productive.
I am certain that the president must have told you about his own agenda on how to fight corruption. What did the President tell you about his agenda?
The information is extant. He has made speeches and taken decisions in which people have been relieved of offices. Everybody is seeing it. We already know all that. We would work with this. Our mandate has been emphasized to us. Our strength lies in the President’s response to anything we hand over to him.
He must have told you how far he intends to go with this anti corruption war.
He intends to go to the full extent. We have actually not met physically with the President. It is his Vice (Osinbajo), who has been acting for him in this regard. We are going to eventually meet him. However, we have had extensive meetings with the Vice President.
The justice system would be key to your assignment’s success. Somehow, the Babalakin report on corrupt judges is coming into the open again. What is your take on making the report public?
We have taken some steps to identify judges with high levels of integrity and who have the passion and capacity for justice to rid this country of corruption. We are going to identify them and they would form the core of those who would prosecute corruption.
That means you will have special anti corrupt courts…
The special anti corruption court is very important. We are keen on it but it is not something that would start operating immediately. For the court to be established, it has to go to the National Assembly. It involves constitution amendment. It would go to the various states of assembly before coming back to Abuja for the National Assembly to pass it into law. It would take six months to one year, but we can’t really say. But, we have a plan that can be operated immediately.
What is the plan?
It is the identification of justices and judges like I earlier mentioned.
So how many of them have you found?
Sorry, I can’t give that number.
But we have heard from security circles that a lot of those who were initially fished out, failed the integrity test.
That’s new information to me. I am not aware of that but I don’t dispute it. We can identify corrupt judges from the kind of judgements they give. When a judgement is out of sync with the law, it involves corruption and a lot of money so, you know straightaway that the judge is questionable.
Is it your committee that is screening these judges?
No.
Is it the NJC evaluation committee?
I cannot tell you everything. We have a project that cannot be implemented by us solely. The heads of the judiciary will be involved.
So the process is on?
Yes. We have started it. It has been done before. There have been some corruption cases where some judges were singled out.
That means you will not be encouraging anti corruption agencies to prosecute suspects for corruption cases until you have found those A-list judges.
I won’t say that. What we are doing is an ongoing thing. If there are cases that are ripe for hearing, then they would go through the normal courts. We are watching and monitoring any case before the normal courts. We are going to ensure that wherever unusual things are happening, we will be able to note it.
You said ‘We’, as if your committee is an investigative body.
No. We are not an investigative body. We are also lawyers. We have technical committees made up of experts in various fields.
Security agents included?
Yes. We also have a mandate to co-opt professionals in different fields. So, if we need to investigate a judge in an ongoing case, all we need to do is to get the professionals and give them a list of the case and any other thing, so that we can determine what is going on.
I tell you that the country is behind the President. Even some members of the National Assembly, who may be uncomfortable, can appreciate the improvement this country has enjoyed in terms of credibility and a high level of integrity. Hopefully, the bill would come out before the end of next year.
Are you a fan of death sentence for corruption?
No, I am not. I believe the finality of death is too awesome for me to wish that anyone be executed because of corruption. I think a very strong term of imprisonment and above all, recovery of assets, is very important.
Which one do you favour. Recovery or long prison sentence?
Combined. Recovery, because we have to recover. We can’t just allow those assets to go. This country is suffering. There is no money. Millions are out of work, so we need that money for basic amenities.
What happens if the suspects are not forthcoming with the money?
We will prosecute them.
Some people have been advocating unconventional anti corruption crusade. How unconventional would you go and isn’t the President raising adrenaline with the figures he keeps mentioning?
This is a democratic system that we are practising. You can’t blackmail the government in abandoning billions of dollars and let the country suffer as a result. If we follow what Kukah said, then this country is finished.
That means that you don’t want us to go the 1983 way and at the same time, you don’t want us to remain the same way.
Yes. This is democracy. You must charge a person to court after 24 hours. If you don’t, he will go to court for the enforcement of his fundamental right and he is going to be released.
If the Babalakin and the Esho reports are made available to you, will your committee welcome it?
They are very good background materials to enable us move forward. We can draw some of those recommendations and add them to what we have.
What have you recommended to the President?
I cannot give you details. We have just started work. We were appointed three weeks ago. We have just let the President know how we intend to proceed.
I contacted some agencies and they said your committee has not approached them for an interface.
What they are saying is rubbish. A lot of people who are supposed to assist and welcome us are hostile as if we have come to take away their jobs. What are they afraid of?
How bad is the looters’ list that the President got from America?
The infamous list is bad as they get. It is really bad. These people set out to grab whatever they could, without a thought for the future of Nigeria. They did it without a care whether this country would survive that level of looting. What happened was a form of depravity like people who had gone out of their senses. I can’t claim if the bank details were contained in that list. You can see that Sanusi was right all along. Look at all the figures. Look at what NNPC, NPA and some other agencies kept for themselves. It was a scourge. Everybody was helping themselves.
Including the former President.?
I have no information that the President was directly involved, but while he was there, all the people around him were carrying out looting activities.
So, he is guilty by association?
He presided over what would have been the disintegration of Nigeria.
Economically?
What remains of a nation without an economic base?
Since you always have a direct opinion, I want a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to this question. Is it right for the President to be bandying figures without investigation.
Yes, it is right. The figures were calculated from sources that have them.
Is America to be so trusted?
When those people tell you something, it is with substance. The president has been receiving a lot of information, both locally and internationally. So, he knows what he is saying.
Almost all the immediate past Governors, have been accused of one corruption crime or the other and suddenly, we are not hearing anything about them. Why this fixation on Jonathan and his ministers?
We must distinguish between cases which are reported by petitioners and those reported by political opponents who are out to slander them. All the mud being thrown at Fashola is just mud. Nobody has produced anything concrete.
(Cuts in) But CACOL did and figures also came from Lagos State official website.
What I know about Fashola is that there would probably be an explanation for all the allegations. If they have written a petition then the EFCC would look at it and at the end of the day we would know the truth. I see this as mud slinging. The same thing in the case of Amaechi. Look at the man who is alleging corruption, Wike.
Will that not be a bit of bias?
If he has any facts, then let him send it to the investigative agency and stop making political capital out of it. Having studied his history ,Wike is just a desperate man slinging mud all over the place.
But it is almost the same thing the President is doing?
No. As I said earlier, at the end of the day, everything would be hinged on facts. They should send whatever facts they have to the EFCC and other concerned agencies. I have been watching what has been going on in Rivers in the last few years and I think prima facie, I can’t take Wike seriously at all because he is a desperado.
Will that vitiate Amaechi’s alleged wrongdoing?
No, it doesn’t. But at times, accusations sound wrong in the mouths of bad people.
But you have to put your grievances aside in this new assignment.
Yes. It doesn’t concern me. But I know Wike. Personally, from his reputation, it would take a lot for me to take him seriously.
One of the allegations against Amaechi is that he used Rivers State money to fund Buhari’s election.
They need to prove it. Frankly, in the USA, they spend billions on elections and campaigns. It is actually wrong for governors to spend state money on campaign funds. What we are waiting for is concrete evidence from those pointing accusing fingers.
Is your committee thinking merger of anti-corruption bodies?
It is possible but it is not something that could be done just like that. They were not set up by presidential order. Certain laws established them. So such merger can only go through the legislature but we have to start from somewhere.
When will Buhari and Osinbajo make their assets public? Don’t you think assets of public officials should be made public since many do anticipatory declaration?
They will soon make their assets public. These are two people with integrity so much that Nigerians could go and sleep and be confident that their commonwealth is safe with them. I learnt the Code of Conduct is investigating those assets. Yes, we know many of them do anticipatory declaration and we are going to ensure that Code of Conduct is empowered to make public everybody’s assets, by publishing in newspapers..
How soon do we expect your committee to come out fully?
We are already out working, with a functional secretariat in Abuja and a website where whistle-blowers can contact us though we have been receiving materials from the public. We will also be receiving petitions. We shall look at them, before sending them to appropriate agencies. Our mandate covers everything. We will monitor the inside from outside so that the process of investigation is not compromised. We will also get people inside to monitor the process. With all the relevant agencies like EFCC, ICPC and others, we intend to effectively collaborate with them.
They have nothing to fear. We are not out to take their jobs from them. All this hostility must stop. We have been vested with the powers to recommend people for prosecution. A lot of people who are supposed to welcome us have been hostile. We are here to make their work lighter. All we are going to do is to increase the investigative capacity of these agencies. Very soon, we will be meeting with the leadership of the anti-corruption bodies to put the whole thing in proper perspective.
Culled from Tribune
