After much speculation about her possible removal, President Goodluck Jonathan finally bowed to pressure and issued a statement pronouncing her removal while mandating Ibrahim Lamorde, the EFCC director of operations to take over in acting capacity.
The statement signed on behalf of the President by his Special Adviser on Media, Reuben Abati did not state categorically, the reason for the action. Reports indicate that many reasons of both remote and immediate causes informed the decision.
While Farida Waziri endured criticisms about her style from both local and international observers throughout her tenure, the ‘Lioness of EFCC’ -as she was fondly called- never stopped blowing her trumpet. According to her, since the battle against corruption should not be limited to investigation, arrest and prosecution of suspects, she had at the beginning of her tenure, launched the Anti Corruption Revolution (ANCOR), as an advocacy arm of the commission to help draw the attention of Nigerians to the evils of bribery and corruption as well as the dangers of keeping quiet instead of reporting fraudulent acts perpetrated anywhere by anybody.
By March 2011, the EFCC had arraigned some 1,200 people for advance fee fraud, securing so far, more than 400 convictions.
The EFCC under her leadership, also made important progress in recovering assets that were proceeds of crime. According to Waziri, “since its inception in 2003, the agency had recovered over $11billion of which some $6.5 billion was recovered during my tenure. Most of them were recovered in the Central Bank’s overhaul of the banking sector”. The EFCC, had between June 2008 and March 2011, recovered $4.3 billion from the banking sector; $903.3 million from asset forfeitures, advance fee fraud, and other related cases; $240 million from penalties imposed on multinational corporations and $10 million from local businesses; and $23 million from tax evasion.
But one area most Nigerians seem disenchanted with, is her seeming inability to bring down high profile suspects. While there were some that she had been incapable of arresting and prosecuting, there were a good number of former governors and top government officials whose cases have dragged on for too long without any tangible result.
Waziri however, claims that the number of prosecutions targeting allegedly corrupt nationally prominent public officials was higher under her leadership (16 cases) than Ribadu’s (10 cases). Currently, the EFCC claimed that it had about 60 “high-profile” on-going cases and that more than 41 of them had been filed.
On the issue of delays in courts, Waziri had kept hammering on the need to create special courts for the trial of corruption suspects since the conventional courts since the conventional court are too busy with other cases.
There were of course, so many former governors whose cases had been in different courts for ages without judgement. In her argument, if there is a rent tribunal for rent litigations and election petition tribunals for post election litigations, why can’t there be a special court for corruption cases since all stakeholders agree that the monster had done incalculable damage to the country
Ironically, it was recently reported that her advocacy for special courts as well as frustration on the issue of delay in courts received attention when the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Dahiru Mustapha ordered high court judges to dispense with corruption cases within 6 months. Before she could savour the priceless solidarity, she was booted out.
Another issue that earned her condemnation in some quarters, was the EFCC’s plea bargaining concept to dispense high profile corruption cases in courts. Though, she didn’t start it, plea bargaining allows suspects to part with some of their loot and get an insignificant conviction. This she said, in one of her interactions with the media, is the last resort when defense counsels employ all sorts of technicalities and legalities to frustrate cases. According to her, the country gains nothing when there is neither conviction nor recovery of assets and cases are stalled in courts.
The scandals
Criticism against Farida Waziri was rife, that she had a discreet way of shielding highly placed corrupt individuals against the long arm of the law. The accusation was so strong that there was a time she was said to have allegedly written many letters to British authorities to clear accused persons.
Even though a top Presidency official confided with Peoples Daily Weekend that the Benue- born police officer had committed an avalanche of sins that warranted her dismissal, she was said to have recently offered a car gift to a senior Presidency official in her determined bid to retain her plum job. This, we gathered infuriated the President who placed her on watch and later ordered her dismissal.
Her battles
For the greater part of Waziri’s tenure there was no love lost between her office and that of the minister of justice and attorney general of the federation, Mohammed Bello Adoke, her supposed boss. While Adoke wanted the commission to be firmly under the control and supervision of his office, Waziri insisted that the anti-graft battle was too important to be denied full independence.
It would also be recalled that Adoke had insisted that the EFCC under Waziri must not go ahead with the investigation, arrest and prosecution of high profile suspects without recourse to the minister’s office. This according to the minister’s view point was to avoid high handedness and disobedience of the rule of law, which the anti-graft crusade had been accused of in the recent past.
The minister had also proceeded to the National Assembly to suggest the merger of the EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) while lambasting the two leading anti-corruption agencies for not living up to expectation.
Waziri on her part, was consequently accused of sponsoring media attacks on the minister where she gave reasons why EFCC must be fully independent. While the two parties insisted publicly that they had good working relationship, it was obvious to keen observers that there existed unhealthy rivalry between them.
Waziri scored a good point against the minister when at the opening of the last national anti corruption confab, held in Karu, Abuja, Liberian President, Mrs. Ellen Sirleaf Johnson said her country’s top anti corruption outfit was not under the supervision of any government ministry and that this should be so in all countries. This comment was made in the presence of the minister and it drew applause from most people in the audience, who were EFCC staff.
However, a top source in the Ministry of Justice told Peoples Daily Weekend that the decision by President Goodluck Jonathan to relieve Farida Waziri of her coveted job came to the ministry as a shock, speculations were still rife that her refusal to budge while the minister wanted to have his way on some issues in the past, may have contributed significantly to her fate.
Another source informed our reporter that Waziri may have been sacked because of the human rights records of the commission under her watch which the Presidency didn’t see as impressive.
Our reporter gathered that an unnamed human rights group had forwarded a petition to the Presidency, where cases of alleged human rights abuses which the EFCC under Waziri’s watch committed in the course of investigating corruption suspects.
Another reliable source confided in our reporter that Waziri’s fate may have been due to many factors which include the pressure on the Presidency by some lawmakers for her removal, even as it was also widely speculated that the former EFCC boss may have incurred the wrath of the members of the Lower House going by the way she tackled the Bankole N40 billion loan saga.
Peoples Daily Weekend recalls that the lawmakers recently toyed with the idea of enacting a law that would make only a retired high court judge eligible for the top job. This step was widely believed to be targeted at her. It would seem that when it failed, they approached the Presidency.
Prior to this development however, Nigeria’s development partners, prominent among which is the United States of America have been opposed to the leadership of the anti-graft agency by Farida Waziri.
The US is widely reported to have suspended funding of Nigeria’s anti-corruption activities due to alleged compromise and lack of transparency and vigour in the supervision of the EFCC by Mrs. Waziri.
Peoples Daily Weekend recalls the wiki leaks information which accused her of desperately seeking the attention of one time US ambassador to Nigeria, Robin Sanders, who on a particular visit to the country snubbed her advances on the instruction of the US government.
Waziri walked in the shadow of Nuhu Ribadu and was consistently on the defensive trying to convince an incurably sceptical populace that she was working even without the earth shaking and headline- grabbing moves and comments of Ribadu.
Who said what?
Her unexpected exit has expectedly generated a lot of debates with regards to the propriety or otherwise. According to Human Rights Watch, Mrs Farida Waziri’s sack would not help the agency which is in ‘dire need of broad institutional reforms.’
“The EFCC’s mandate is to fight corruption that the political system actually rewards, and to accomplish that by working through institutions that are either broken or compromised,” “That’s an almost impossible job no matter who is in charge,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa Director at Human Rights Watch.
He said, “One of the EFCC’s greatest weaknesses has been its lack of independence and susceptibility to political pressure.
“President Jonathan’s sudden firing of Farida Waziri will only make that problem worse unless the government pushes through reforms to bolster both the EFCC and the other institutions it depends on.”
The group recommended legislative amendments granting tenure security to the commission chairman as it can never be truly independent if the president can dismiss its chairman at will.
According to former commissioner of police in Lagos, Abubakar Tsav, Waziri must have stepped on big toes by her recent arraignment of some big political fishes. “But I believe that if the war against corruption must be won and sustained in Nigeria, there should be continuity and the political will to tame this monster. I doff my hat for Waziri,” Tsav said.
In his reaction, former chairman of Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Makurdi chapter, Barr. Donatus Dzuana described the removal of Waziri as unfortunate and a monumental setback in the battle against corruption.
He argued that Farida’s sack on a day that the President jetted out of the country to France to attend the EU meeting, sends a wrong signal to the nation’s international development partners on her genuine commitment to waging war against corruption.
