Is Malami Deliberately Misrepresenting Facts? (II)

Editors Note; Written By Lanre Adewole, Originally published in Tribuneonlineng

“The man is just shopping for justification to unseat some heads of court he despises for personal reasons”.

The quote above, was the conclusion of a ranking official of the judiciary to me, on last week’s piece. He isn’t the only one with such a conviction. Many senior judicial operators hold similar view. While most of them, like the official quoted above, are very certain that Mr. Malami is deliberately portraying judiciary as corrupt without evidence, to achieve a sinister end, a few, are still ready to wager on him being honourable enough, to desist from the public campaign, once verifiable facts are presented, that judiciary is being duly and thoroughly audited, in and out.

A Senior Advocate told me many Chief Judges would go to jail if proper audit is done in state divisions, where they function as both the heads of divisions and accounting officers. The well-connected Silk mentioned states to me where governors had to be passionately pleaded with, not to expose deep corrupt practices of some CJs, in the management of funds, meant for capital projects which states always provide to judicial divisions.

While Mr. Malami is obviously referencing the federal and not state judiciary in his anti-corruption crusading, accountability and transparency issues in the management of funds being provided by the states to their judicial divisions, should also concern all stakeholders. If governors won’t enforce it because of their political interests and self-serving gate-keepers who keep talking them out of exposing straying CJs, anti-corruption agencies under Malami, can take up this challenge. Thankfully, most of the anti-corruption agencies have zonal offices and indicted state judicial divisions, can become the low-hanging fruit, that proves the minister isn’t just on a vendetta mission against the judiciary at the federal level.

You ask why not the National Judicial Council, the umbrella body for the judiciary and the entity under the direct attack of Malami? NJC only pays judges’ salary in states. It has nothing to do with funds for capital projects at that level. However, the Supreme Court has since, settled the country-wide powers of EFCC and co, and there won’t be shortage of whistleblowers if the minister decides to move his men into the state divisions.

That should also not stop a genuine inquest into the federal judiciary and instead of engaging in town-crier style of mud-racking, he should go after the “books” and use his constitutional powers, to price them. Until he does that, any allegations he publicly raises against the judiciary, would amount to just crying wolf. In fact, the allegation by the senior judicial officer that Malami is mainly out, to scrape the scalp of some court heads, is difficult to dismiss, considering available information about how federal bodies are audited.

Today in Nigeria, the office of the Auditor General of the Federation (AuGF), coordinates all audit activities at the federal level. It is the responsibility of the holder of the office, to ensure that federal funds are judiciously spent. Ordinarily, whenever provable infractions are spotted anywhere, federal auditors, should be the first to be asked. They are like security guards in an environment. If security is breached in such an environment, the guards, are the first to be spoken to. Except the allegation that the judiciary is refusing to open its books, came to the AGF through the office of the AuGF, the Attorney General would remain guilty of deliberately misrepresenting facts, possibly to achieve a sinister end, as being suspected. That is why he should be challenged on the source(s) of his information. He should tell Nigerians how he arrived at the conclusion that an arm of government which is receiving money annually, from our commonwealth, is refusing to be accountable. It becomes a serious matter, considering the multiplier effects his claim could have elsewhere. If the claim by the minister is left hanging, without anyone subjecting its factuality, to empirical analysis, what stops another government entity from going completely opaque next time, using the yet-to-be verified claim as a basis? The argument would be, if a whole arm of government is not opening its books, why should we, a smaller entity, with much more smaller budget, bother. That will fit into the general joke of using Nigeria’s unprecedented debt portfolio to justify personal indebtedness to others. You hear something like “Nigeria na je gbese” (Nigeria too is owing).

If the financial books of the judiciary are truly kept away from scrutiny as alleged by the minister, federal auditors should receive all the blame and not the leadership of the judiciary. If anyone should be answering a query from anti-corruption agencies, it should be the auditors, that is, if they are not doing what they should do. But the facts available to me, completely exonerate both the leadership of the judiciary and the federal auditors.

As we speak, all institutions of the Nigerian judiciary have resident federal auditors, resuming and closing duties every day of the week, alongside employees of the judiciary. My finding showed that in the NJC alone, there are 12 resident federal auditors, daily scrutinizing the books and verifying all spending of the council. The team is currently led by a deputy director named SafanaHadizaAminu. Another eight, are stationed at the Supreme Court, daily seeing to fund utilization by the apex court. The Supreme Court team is led by an assistant director in the person of Aliyu Mohammed. At the level of the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC), there are six federal auditors daily resuming at the commission. They are led by a chief auditor, a level 14 office, named Philomena Irogbehim (Mrs). The exact numbers of those seconded to the Court of Appeal, the National Judicial Institute (NJI) among others, could not be verified as of press time, but the fact remains they are there, even if it is one per entity. They are also well-separated from the in-house auditors, to avoid conflict of interest and they report directly to their boss; the Auditor General of the Federation! So, who is closing the books!

Available facts also showed that the judicial bodies being daily scrutinized by these federal auditors, must work with whoever is sent to them by the AuGF office and the auditors are free to query any spending and judicial entities don’t get to see their reports until queries are sent by the office of the Auditor General, as due.

It is doubtful if any other arms of government is so policed by federal auditors, yet it is the one being monitored, as they say, bumper-to-bumper, that is being harangued with corruption rhetoric. Maybe, there is something the rest of us, don’t know, that the AG knows. Maybe the resident federal auditors are complaining to their boss, of poor cooperation by the judicial entities they supervise. That should be for the Auditor General of the Federation, to clarify. If that is the position of things, then the question will be how well Mr. has Malami helped in getting the auditors to do the needful, using the awesome powers of his office.

Well, it can be argued that his rooftop approach is his way of doing something about it, which will be ok, save that something will still be missing, choosing an indecorous path to a supposed noble cause. The raid of 2016 was vigorously condemned because Nigerians were practically blindsided. Is it likely a legacy raid is in the offing and this time, Nigerians are being duly mobilized ahead of time?