EFCC lost its objective after the exit of Ribadu

Barrister Juliet ibekaku appeared in the political scene as deputy governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the 2015 Enugu State election. But before thatshe had worked with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and some international organization in her drive for national development. In this interview with MAURICE OKAFOR in Enugu, she advocated for the total reform of the justice sector by President Muhammadu Buhari, saying that this is the era of change. Excerpts:

What has occupied you since after the governorship election in which you contested as the All Progressives Congress deputy governorship candidate in Enugu state?

I have a lot to do at the moment in Abuja.  I am assisting a sub-committee to make recommendations to the present administration under President Muhammadu Buhari on justice sector reforms. For your information, the justice sector reform covers anti-corruption institutions as well, depending on how you define justice sector institutions. It will include the ministry of justice, Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC; the prisons, police, Customs and Immigration. It also includes institutions that are related to the judicial body to the extent that when the Buhari administration comes in, it will want to know exactly what has been going on in those institutions and what
the administration can do to change the situation, because this is now the era of change.  And everybody is so eager to know what the APC government is actually coming on board with.
Are you motivated by your pedigree in the EFCC to be a member of the sub-committee on justice sector reform?

I started my career working with civil society body, and demanding for justice, equity, fairness across board.  I spent my career working for the United States government, the United Nations and the Commonwealth secretariat before venturing into government in 2004; precisely; I went into the EFCC through the nomination of Nuhu Ribadu, former EFCC chairman. I was actually working with the UN at that point in time, but he (Ribadu) wanted me to come in as a Nigerian at that time to assist in developing the international corporate measures for the EFCC, just when the EFCC was about being set up. And the idea was that we wanted to create an interface between Nigeria and the international bodies so that in everything we are doing, we can communicate to the outside world. We also knew then that we needed a lot of support, given the type of problem and the way Nigeria’s reputation had been messed up outside the country. And that was myrole and I am sure I played that role effectively.

And following that also, I proceeded to do some other work outside Nigeria. I spent almost four years as an advisor to the Commonwealth secretariat and ECOWAS in Senegal, working on anti-money laundering and financing of terrorism. I came back in 2010; went back again to the EFCC, and for some of us after Ribadu left, that place lost its original tone, the original foundation and the original objective. And that became a
problem.
In your own view, what went wrong with EFCC after Ribadu left?

If you say you want to fight corruption in an environment where predominantly every case that comes into that environment is compromised from the point of investigation, to the point of prosecution, to the point of conviction then that means that there is a problem in such an environment. But later, I had to go on leave
of absence on secondment to the British Council to manage its anti-corruption project. And as manager of that programme, I was providing support to all the anti-corruption agencies; helping them to develop their strategic framework, helping them to identify their internal problems, and also questioning, and if you like interrogating
some of the on-going cases. Of course, this did not go down well with so many of the people who considered themselves leaders in that sector, and you could now begin to define who are the leaders in that sector. I was eventually made the acting director of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU),between 2010 and 2012. That body is one that often is neglected, and it was neglected because when it was set up in 2006 under EFCC, there was only one definition of what the body was meant to be.  Internationally, this body exists
across more than 140 countries today. The NIFU is a body that was set up to assist countries where it is located to generate what we call financial intelligence both from outside Nigeria and within Nigeria.
When you generate financial intelligence, it means that you are going after the front link to criminal activity.  You can now ask yourself: How did UK government trace the funds of former governor of Bayelsa
state, Diepreye Solomom Peter Alamieyeseigha, or how did the UK government trace the funds related to the former governor of Delta state, Chief James Ibori? It was through the Financial Intelligence
Unit. And one thing we realized working in the Financial Intelligence Unit, was that the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit was not properly set up.
How do you mean by saying it was not properly set up?

You cannot have a situation where the IFU is hiding under the EFCC. We realized that it was a misnomer. We also realized that there were several requests coming from international bodies, such as Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the IMF, the World Bank, and the ECOWAS, requesting Nigeria to develop a strong legal frame work for the NIFU. Unfortunately, the leadership of the EFCC did not allow it to happen. For me, when I was appointed the director of the FIU, it became a major mission and objective.
What then was your action?

It became critical that information coming from outside Nigeria relating to criminal activities should be dealt with in a timely, prompt and effective manner. One thing we also realized was that because there were concerns that some of this information coming in to the IFU could relate to high profile people in Nigeria, they
were ready to fight and they could fight to any extent. I am giving this background for us to understand the anti-corruption architecture that Nigeria has. And when you are building such architecture, you either get it right or you get it wrong.  And in building such architecture, you also have to determine that you must have credible
people to run these institutions.  As it were, when I was the sitting acting director, I had to do what was needful. And fortunately, I was able to come up with a bill on what we know today as the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Centre.

That bill has walked its way through the National Assembly since 2013.  In November 2013, I fought
extensively, but this time we already had the bill rolling before the National Assembly. Unfortunately, EFCC and the ministry of justice fought against the bill. If you go back to November 2013, some of you
may have read in the newspapers that the office of the director of FIU was attacked by EFCC mobile police men, I was then the acting director.
What do you think might have prompted the attack?

At that point in time, they realized that if the bill went ahead, and if I continue to be the acting director, of course, the first thing I want to do is to make sure that anti-corruption agencies are held accountable for failure to do what they are supposed to do. Since that 2013, we now have a matter before the court which I filed
against EFCC, asking for them to pay benefits, and for them to pay for what they did which was clearly against any known existing law in Nigeria. That matter is still before the court.

Since then, I have moved into politics, and continued with my consultancy outside Nigeria, and within Nigeria, essentially dealing with anti-corruption, anti-money laundering and issues related to terrorism because when we deal with the financial intelligence, we also look at terrorists financing, because they are all inter-twined
and you cannot do one without the other. I am coming from this background. This government, and of course the people who have known me before now, know that if you don’t have somebody who has the
combined knowledge ,both practical and theoretical, it is difficult to deal with what we have seen today. Both in the North-East with attacks from external insurgents on Nigeria, and we know that people are funding it. Ordinarily, with a strong financial intelligence unit, Nigeria should have been able to find out the people funding terrorism in the North. In some cases, we have even been able to identify them, but nobody dealt with those people. We know of a case that was already in the court, but unfortunately, that person is still sitting
in public office as we speak because that case never moved ahead. We know of the Lebanese case. You may know that the court eventually acquitted the Amigo brothers, owners of Amigo Super market in Abuja.
They were found with arms; it was recorded. The DSS took them to court, eventually they were acquitted. Of course in the background you heard about how money exchanged hands. It then goes to show how
bad our system is. When a country is not able to deal with criminal activities squarely, what happens is that these people come out to fight the system that is trying to deal with that problem. In thecase of the Amigo, the Americans have now sanctioned the Amigosupermarket, and included them in the list of what they call designated entities who are known to be terrorists.

But do you know what? Today in Nigeria, we are still harbouring the Amigos. I just heard the other day that they have changed their name from Amigo to something else. That was one of the cases I handled sitting in NFIU.
That is one of the cases and several others which could touch on high profile persons, and I will rather not speak about them in the public.

What I will rather do is that as we move on into the new government, the new government is interested in strengthening its institutions. But how do you strengthen your institutions when there are stillindividuals there who are hell bent on making sure the institutions do not work?  And the only thing they could do is to attack persons whom they feel are going to be responsible for strengthening thoseinstitutions.

Even while I was campaigning in Enugu as deputy governorship candidate on the platform of APC, I was still following that particular NFIU bill because it is so important for Nigeria that we have a system that we can say this place is credible, and we can go there and get the information that we require to fight corruption, to fight armed robbery, to fight kidnapping. So, that is how NFIU will give you information that will help the incoming federal government or other agencies to look at criminal activities that are just beyond the surface, and to begin to look at the people behind those criminal activities and make sure that our system deals with them. So right
now, I am happy to say that the Senate has passed that bill; they have adopted the conference report and they have concluded work on the bill. What used to be the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit is now called the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Centre Bill 2014.  Now, the House of Representatives has concluded its report, and they are not waiting to adopt the conference report. For me, that is a significant development, and we are hoping that President Muhammadu Buhari will see it as a very important bill, and make sure that it passes through the House of Representatives. We have approached the leadership of the House of Representatives, and we hope that they will pass or adopt it so that the new government will have to take it up. Let’s take the oil subsidy scam for example, today how many persons have been convicted?  All of you know that Nigerians went on rampage, people protested, stopped the government from functioning in January 2012, but two years after what has happened? What has happened is that we are worse off than we were in 2012.
Speaking on national issues and the way they will impact on us, We have ran our campaigns and we did it because we saw in president Buhari as somebody who will effect that change and we are all working closely with him to make sure that when he brings the change.

Why do you think EFCC and ICPC should be emerged?

I think it is important that we all know here today that if EFCC, when it was set up was something we thought will help us effect change during Olusegun Obasanjo’s time, that was the essence of it. To stop financial crime and stop the lootingsthat was going on in the banks, in the various financial institutions. Many people lost so much money in the process. We also wanted to stop Nigeria from being branded as a “419” country outside the country. But today the question is have we achieved that objective. If we have not achieved it then we need
to go back and ask ourselves question: where did we start from? Where are we today, and where do we need to be?