Date Published: 08/01/11

Are there powerful interests after Farida Waziri's Job?

IS Farida Waziri, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) chair, crying wolf, by claiming some powerful interests were after her job?

If you were to peer into her rather bumpy ride so far as EFCC chair, you would notice that early in the Umaru Yar’Adua Presidency, Mrs. Waziri cried out, that certain interests in government were after her; and were trying to tar EFCC under her leadership with a view to undermining her and eventually taking her job. And if you recall too, there was a lot of hoopla back then, comparing her style and the result she was getting, to the mercurial Nuhu Ribadu, the somewhat unorthodox pioneer EFCC tsar, that nevertheless grounded out sensational results.

Now, would it be right, on this track history, to dismiss Mrs. Waziri as crying wolf just as she did at the advent of the Yar’Adua Presidency, thus repeating the same histrionics, just to grab attention, at the beginning of the Jonathan Presidency? If that were true, it would be condemnable, for Mrs Waziri would have been guilty of culpable paranoia, just for the sake of keeping her job at all cost, even if she is perceived not to be doing it well.

But what if the manoeuvres against here were real? What if indeed some powerful forces within government, for reasons best known to them, really want to put her nose out of joint? What if the recourse to her crying wolf at the beginning of the Yar’Adua Presidency to give a dog a bad name to hang it was the result of the hostile and unfair moves against her?

Mrs. Waziri’s current odyssey must, therefore, be judged solely on its merits. And indeed, there are grounds to smell a rat, with the sudden activism of Mohammed Adoke, SAN, federal attorney general and minister of justice. Out of the blues, Mr. Adoke has come with the proposal that the two graft-fighting agencies, EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) should be merged. Pray, what is the compelling reason for that, given that both agencies have their duties and functions clearly delineated?

It could well be to save costs, which is reasonable. But saving cost at what expense – muddling the operational waters, so that the focus of each body is lost in the labyrinth of cross-agency bureaucracy, not to talk of cross-agency envy and mutual mischief by the operatives? Indeed, to hone this argument, perhaps the ultimate solution would be to graft the two agencies with the Nigeria Police! That would save a lot of cost!

Then, out of the blues, came some controversy over Mrs. Waziri’s last post as a Police officer – Police Commissioner (PC) or Assistant Inspector-General (AIG)?  Suddenly, what a routine check could establish became a budding subject of sensational probe hugging newspaper headlines!

Indeed, there would appear some legitimate grounds to suggest that the federal attorney-general and minister of justice, as the EFCC supervising minister, appears interested to weaken the EFCC, just as Michael Aondoakaa, SAN, President Yar’Adua’s justice minister did, on the James Ibori affair. Mr. Adoke, for instance, would appear to have tactically killed the Halliburton case, which involves the high and the mighty in the Nigerian corrupt establishment. Could Mrs. Waziri therefore be having a running battle with him, the result of which is the counter-campaign against her in the media?

But fact: the anti-corruption war appears to have lost steam. But it would lose more steam, and even stutter to a halt, if the agencies continue to be distracted from within (as it appears now). That is why Mr. Adoke (read the Federal Government) must leave the agencies to function unhindered. That is the only way for them to rise or fall on their own merit.

The Nation