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Senator Lawal Shuaibu, Chairman of the Senate Ad-Hoc Committee on the investigated allegations of the doctoring of the EFCC advisory list is one of the leading  experts on the operations of the EFCC in the country, being the chairman of the Senate Committee that crafted the EFCC law.

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The Senate minority leader until last month, Senator Shuaibu now the gubernatorial candidate of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) in Zamfara State last Friday  opened up on his recent assignment affirming that the EFCC was as it is now bound in its obligations to the President just as he calls on the President to rise above  political partisanship and allow the EFCC be.

Can you narrate your experience in your assignment as chairman of the senate ad-hoc committee on the alleged doctoring of the EFCC advisory list?

It was not as if I was not aware of the provisions of the law establishing the EFCC, but my eyes have honestly been opened with regards to the compliance of laws  passed by National Assembly of this country. I can tell you what the senate wanted could have been possible if the constitutional amendment had been effected by  this National Assembly. Gradually we are coming to know the extent of Section 137 of the constitution, particularly with the kind of powers vested in the president I  think has been exposed by our investigations with regards to the manner in which the president was able to “doctor” the list submitted to him by the EFCC. What  people didn’t know was that he decided to hide under that Section and did what he did.

Moral question

And I think to a large extent, he is covered, except of course when it comes to moral question.

In view of this, are you bound by the constitution from sanctioning the president?

You see, what we did, honestly speaking was to ask the Senate to raise such questions to Mr. President and probably if need be, persuade him to look at issues from  their objective point of view not from political point of view. And by so doing giving some considerable amount of protection to EFCC.

This EFCC is something that every Nigerian has to be proud of. It has regained for Nigeria the international image that we have been yearning for over the years,  particularly where it has to do with the credibility of Nigerians and Nigeria as a country. And in that regard, I would like to say that if Mr. President is really to sustain  the momentum, particularly in the international arena, he should protect the EFCC.

How does Mr. President protect the EFCC? It is the statutory responsibility of the EFCC under the provisions of the law establishing it. It submitted its report to the  National Assembly on 27the September 2006.

During that period, the Chairman of EFCC made a revelation. Under Section 88 & 89 of the constitution he was supposed to or he is mandated by the constitution to  tell us everything with regards to its activities, which he did.

During that period, he told us of about 31 public officers in Nigeria who are going through investigation. In fact, some of them, their cases are before the law court. In  the constitution also, it said that whoever is found to have been engaged in fraud and embezzlement is not eligible to contest elections and EFCC now indicted them  because most of them their cases are before the law courts. And INEC sent to them the list of candidates for scrutiny because the constitution says anybody found  guilty of fraud or embezzlement, or found to be a member of secret society, or found to have been engaged probably in armed robbery is not eligible to contest  elections. And for that reason, in compliance with that provision in the constitution, the Independent National electoral Commission (INEC) sent the list of the  candidates they have as at the close of submission of forms by political parties.

And not only the EFCC, they sent to the police with regards to people who are involved in either forgery or armed robbery. The police authority has their records.  They sent to SSS with regards to people who are engaged in secret society and they sent to EFCC with regards to people who are engaged in fraud or  embezzlement. And the EFCC did their work, they did it fine (and) in compliance with Section 137 of the constitution as well as Section 36 of the EFCC law, they  sent to the government the list and what the president did was to hide under Section 137, where the constitution gives him the power to accept.

Justice and fairness

When the constitution gives him the power to accept, it means he also has the option of rejecting. And when they said, you can accept or not. So what he should have  done was to look at image of the EFCC, the credibility the EFCC has established for itself and for the country. And the kind of applause the EFCC was enjoying  from the common man of this country and do justice and do fairness, instead, certain governors who were in the public knowledge today were the biggest looters of  public treasury, Mr. President removed their names and we found out not to be in consonance with fair play, in consonance with equity, in consonance with good  conscience.

And that’s the only thing we thought the Senate should do in persuading the President. However, the INEC now has gone through series of substitution by political  parties’ candidates and they have gone through a lot of other exercises as permitted by the Electoral Act. Now, they are still going to submit another list to EFCC to  the SSS and to the police for similar exercise. We think the President still has an opportunity to save this country, to save the image of EFCC, to save the credibility  the EFCC has been able to build so far and do what Nigerians expect him to do, not to cover up criminals in public offices and gave them another opportunity to  occupy yet another public office. If he (Obasanjo)  does that, he will carve himself a good place in the annals of the history of this country.

With hindsight, don’t you think that it would have been better for the National Assembly to have amended the constitution last year despite the third term saga so that  these offensive sections of the constitution could be addressed?

Yes, I can tell you I have regrets. The regrets I have are two. One, I was not part of that historic exercise, that of participating in the amendment of the constitution of  my country. Another regret I have was that the third term issue even though imported by some individuals who don’t have the interest of this country at heart, caused  a lot of damage to this democracy, caused a lot of damage to security of this country, caused a lot damage to the image of Nigeria in the comity of nations.

I can tell you, there was no how  we could have killed the third term issue if we had gone ahead with the debate. Because we know that inside that chamber, there  were people if you take them away from the glare of the public, they could have done a different thing. They could have voted for the tenure elongation of Mr.  President. But because it happened the way it did, the same people who are going to Mr president to tell him they were with him, to tell him they were going to do it,  now came back and started persuading us secretly, that on the date of the voting, they were not going to avail themselves in the chamber. In fact, it was not our idea  because we never had the idea of killing the entire amendment process until those same people we called third termers, who became very frightened by the attitude of  the public towards them, came and sold that idea to us that it could be killed when the question for the second reading came.

We checked our rules, we talked about it and we realized it was true, it was quite possible and that was how it happened. However, my advise to the incoming  National Assembly is that if they are serious in amending our constitution, and addressing all these lapses in the constitution, they better do it early enough before  whoever becomes the president after Obasanjo will start muting the idea of extending his tenure.

However, if they don’t want to waste time, they can pick on the report we have had so far and build  on  it. Remove from the draft what they don’t want and leave  what they want. And I can assure you what they would want could be what Nigerians want. I assure you it is going to be possible to have a very good constitution for  Nigerian democracy.

 Asa strategic participant in the operation of the EFCC law, do you have any regrets arising from recent activities of the commission?

I can tell you I don’t have the regrets in the operation of the EFCC except, in that area where they don’t have or they don’t enjoy as much independence as the  Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, as well as the Federal Character Commission, and the ICPC as well. I led the team that worked on the  draft bill that established the EFCC. When we passed the law in 2003, they started operation and in 2004 we realized there were certain lapses.

They had a lot of bottlenecks particularly in the area of prosecution. And the law was brought back to us for amendments. The amendment I proposed to the Senate   was part of the amendments my Committee proposed in 2004, which Senate said there were politics in it and that we are members of the opposition, we don’t want  the PDP president to enjoy such powers. So, so many senators from the other side of the divide, from the majority group, opposed it and that was how they were not  accepted by the Senate. Now we were vindicated when the bill we are presenting now was informed by the decision of the Senate to give EFCC this kind of leverage  where they would use their initiative to do things without outside interference. However, when you look at Section 5 sub section 1a & b, of the constitution of this  country, the EFCC is purely an executive function. They operate like FBI. There is no how you can extract it out of the executive function because there is nowhere  you can take it to. You can’t take it to the judiciary, judiciary’s responsibility is not law enforcement.

Presidential directives

Whether we like it or not, for as long as they are going to work like police, they have to be under the presidency. Even if they are not going to operate under the  directives of the President, you cannot deny them the responsibility or deny the President that privilege of taking reports from them and once in a while, directing them  as to what to do particularly, in certain areas, particularly the fact that the executive has to fund them. The Senate disagreed when we asked the Senate to grant  EFCC an independent source of funding, particularly, similar to that the Customs is enjoying, similar to that the FCT is enjoying, similar to that the NPA is enjoying.

What they said was that these agencies with these other organisations are revenue generating organisations and that the EFCC is purely law enforcement outfit.

And with that we felt well, we found ourselves hands down, but we concluded that the effectiveness of every law enforcement agency depends on good leadership.

When we have good leadership in the country, the kind of leadership that would not abuse privileges, abuse powers granted them by the constitution, the kind of  leadership that would look at every aspect of governance, not from a political point of view but from the objective point of view, even where politics is involved. I  think law enforcement agencies should enjoy considerable amount of free hand and independence.