Metuh’s handcuffs symptomatic of underlying malaise

ARRESTED on January 5 for money laundering, first arraigned on January 15, and granted stiff bail on January 19, the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh, must by now be feeling both bedraggled and defiant.

Even before he met the stringent bail conditions, he was arraigned a second time for allegedly tampering with evidence while in custody, and will probably go through a second bail hearing. He will, if his luck holds, be admitted to bail a second time, and further arraignments or even rearrest will naturally be at the pleasure of his interrogators, chief among which is the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). If he is defiant enough, he may match the bail record of former National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, a retired army colonel, who, according to his lawyers, has been admitted to bail three times to no avail.

Both Chief Metuh and Col. Dasuki (retd.) are facing legal processes that amount, in business, to contract splitting. The investigating and prosecuting agencies are ideally expected to investigate and consolidate a suspect’s known crimes, charge him in court, and go through the process of bail hearing. It is not often that someone admitted to bail is rearrested even before meeting bail conditions. However, legally, there is nothing wrong with rearresting a suspect if fresh evidence of other crimes come to light in the intervening period. If, as the case of the former NSA shows, new evidence came to light about other crimes he is alleged to have committed, the public may be forgiven for giving the prosecuting agency the benefit of the doubt. But in the case of Chief Metuh, his other alleged crimes for which he was arraigned a second time, were public knowledge even before he was charged in court for the first time.

Strictly speaking, the anti-graft war has followed legal stipulations. But the anti-graft agencies have not demonstrated enough good faith. More and more, for a good public cause involved in bringing corrupt officials to justice, the government and its agencies are demonstrating bad faith almost of equal amperage to the bad faith demonstrated by thieving public officials. There is, however, danger in the government’s demonstration of bad faith becoming a huge and needless distraction. Rather than focus simply and efficiently on the merits of the state’s cases against the suspects, the public may begin to wonder whether there is not more to the cases than meets the eye.

Contract splitting is bad in business, for it often dangerously signposts the determination of officials to circumvent rules and regulations, subvert financial guidelines and provisions, and generally overthrow spending limits. In prosecution, splitting charges, except in rare cases, is equally an abuse of legal and constitutional provisions and is designed to harass and intimidate the suspects rather than simply prosecute and punish them according to the dictates of the law. When a prosecuting agency is deliberately splitting charges, that fact cannot be hidden. In both the Dasuki and Metuh cases, it is hard to shake off the feeling that the state is not pursuing objectives, including political, far in excess of the time-tested axioms of crime and punishment.

The public must bring pressure to bear on their government to return to the path of moral and legal rectitude. The government must not embrace self-help or the reprehensible methods adored by criminals. The government and prosecuting agencies represent the people; they must subscribe to the highest and unimpeachable moral and judicial standards the civilised world finds awe-inspiring. Criminals clearly have nothing to lose, thus their penchant to subvert rules and laws; the state, which doubles as policymakers and law enforcement agents, has much to lose when it heedlessly descends, through the use of legal subterfuges, to the abysmal level of petty criminals. The government needs to urgently reform.

If that reform is done, if the government should submit to the highest prosecutorial standard, if it is capable of disentangling the charges against the suspects from hidden objectives, it will be clear that both Chief Metuh and Col. Dasuki have cases to answer. Even though so far only one side to the corruption accusations has been heard, largely on various media platforms, it is generally believed that there are substantial reasons to drag the two men, and many other suspects, to court. The public rightly and sensibly supports the efforts to bring those who looted public funds to justice. Huge funds were transferred to the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), but according to the anti-graft and security agencies, the funds were either embezzled, misapplied or spent directly, mischievously and malevolently for politics. The government has a right to find out what went wrong, how and why. If Col. Dasuki should attempt to hide behind some far-fetched stories of the role he played in the 1985 coup that unseated the then Gen Muhammadu Buhari, he would not only be wrong, he would be irrationally attempting to sidetrack the question of the illegitimate uses he is alleged to have put the huge funds entrusted to his care.

Chief Metuh also definitely has a case to answer. He should strive to respond well to the charges rather than plead extenuating political circumstances. It is true he is a spokesman of the opposition PDP, and he has a responsibility to project and aggregate the pains and triumphs of his party. He is right to warn of what his party describes or suspects as the Buhari presidency’s proclivity for arbitrariness. If the public buys his rationalisation, then he must consider himself fortunate indeed, for at the moment, the public appears to support President Buhari to the hilt. The reality, however, is that neither Chief Metuh nor anyone in the PDP has been able to convince the public that what is going on in the courts is deliberate persecution of the PDP and its leaders.

The Buhari government’s and anti-graft agencies’ methods may fall far short of expectations and civilised standards, but they are improbably targeted at the opposition party, as many PDP leaders, including Chief Metuh himself, have suggested. The PDP has a responsibility to dispassionately lay its case and claims before the public. Disgraced party elders cannot continue to insist that the government is persecuting anyone when, from available reports, leading PDP officials who superintended the affairs of the country were proven to have received or transferred huge public funds between themselves and other third parties. The trail of fund movements is clear. No political explanation can obfuscate that trail or diminish its pernicious relevance to the ongoing trial.

Putting Chief Metuh in handcuffs was, however, indefensible and a distraction. It strengthens the claims of the PDP to persecution against their members and weakens the moral high ground from which the Buhari government is attempting to respond to the corruption problem gripping the country. If rather than heed criticism the Buhari presidency chooses to stick to its guns, it will be a question of time before parallels are drawn between the human rights and judicial records of the discredited Goodluck Jonathan government and the Buhari presidency. Such a comparison will be unfortunate, given the terrible pass corruption has brought the country. Splitting of charges, needless handcuffs even if Prison authorities operate within their powers, and repeated disobedience of bail rulings do grave injury to a great cause and just war, and symptomatise the underlying malaise of governmental indiscipline and ignorance.

The Buhari presidency, already goaded into having a fit by massive public support, has a responsibility both to itself and the country to modify its methods. It feels the weight of the massive financial rot engendered by the PDP, and seeks quick measures to ameliorate the country’s problems. The government’s concerns are legitimate, and its anxiety not misplaced. The president must, however, remember that posterity did not view his first time in office kindly, not because he did not mean well or work hard, but because he embraced extraordinary measures that riled perceptive and forward-looking Nigerians. President Buhari’s redemptive second time in office should make him mindful of what the future will say about his person, style and methods.