Forfeiture of Illicit Assets by Public Servants
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has set a new tone in its anti-corruption fight with the discovery of mind-boggling multibillion naira undeclared assets by former powerful public servants. Those uncovered in the last two weeks include the illicit assets of former Customs boss Abdullahi Dikko, who is standing trial over alleged diversion of N40 billion. The assets on which the Federal High Court in Kaduna has granted an interim forfeiture were stashed away at unsuspecting locations, around Western by-pass, near Nasfat Village, Igabi in Kaduna. They include 17 exotic cars, 32 tricycles, 16 motorcycles, 32-seater bus and other items.
Also, as part of evidence that Former Minister of Defense, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, may be culpable in the case of the alleged $2.1 billion arms fraud in the Office of the National Security Adviser, the EFCC traced a mansion belonging to his wife, Alhaja Moroophat Obanikoro, to No.44, Mamman Kontagora Crescent, Katampe Extension, Abuja.The EFCC argued that the property was acquired with the use of funds from the alleged arms fraud. A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has ordered an interim forfeiture of the exotic property to government.
Last week, Major-General Abdullahi Sarki Mukhtar (rtd), who was National Security Adviser between 2006 and 2010, was in the news, with the discovery of multimillion jewelry traced to him at an unsuspecting location in Kano. They were hidden in a fireproof safe at his brother-in-law’s residence at No. 375, Gwagwazo Quarters of Kano Municipal in Kano. Besides the jewelry, 50 title documents of landed property bearing the names of the former NSA and his wife Binta were found in the safe.
Furthermore, last Wednesday, EFCC Chairman Ibrahim Magu, disclosed to the Senate Committee on Financial Crimes and AntiCorruption that a former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Power, Mr Godknows Igali, had forfeited some 47 Special Utility Vehicles to the Federal Government while being prosecuted for corruption.
The logical question that dovetails these discoveries is: ‘what happened to the Code of Conduct Bureau? Why didn’t the agency discover these frauds?’If the assets declaration law were effective over the years, the bureau would have uncovered these obscene assets well before the EFCC raided the locations where these items were hidden. According to the law, every public officer must declare his assets before he assumes public office, and must do so after he quits. The Code of Conduct Bureau is supposed to verify the authenticity of the assets, but over the years since the bureau was set up, only countable public officers, from among the thousands who stole the country’s commonwealth to the tune of trillions of Naira, have been dragged before the Code of Conduct Tribunal. And among those countable cases, the bureau has failed to assert itself by providing compelling evidence of fraud and prosecuting offenders to a logical conclusion.
The weakness of the assets declaration law is very clear: the law may not be able to trace illicit properties acquired by public officers in the names of their extended family members. That seems to be why in some of the cases mentioned above, the assets were not discovered at properties instantly traceable to the public servants. It also explains why thousands of civil servants perpetrate corrupt acts, live lifestyles of vanity, roll in stupendous wealth they cannot account for, but still escape the arm of the law because it is too short to catch them. It is for this reason that the EFCC should be commended for the daring roles it is playing in uncovering the frauds, dragging suspects to court and seeking the forfeiture of ill-gotten assets to the Federal Government.
What is glaring from the current discoveries is that assets declarations by public officers are no longer the reliable means of ensuring transparency. We have learnt that there are anticipatory declarations, where public servants declare assets they expect to use stolen public funds to acquire, and false declarations, through which they mislead the CCB on the values and qualities of assets they declare.We have now discovered also that they evade CCB scrutiny by acquiring property in the names of their extended family members, making it difficult for the CCB to legally trace those properties to them.
In order to effectively actualize the letter and spirit of the law on assets declaration, it is essential to publicize assets declared by public officers. That way whistle-blowers can play a role. If there are assets not declared, or if there are assets acquired in the names of family members of public officers, those who are aware of such deceit could expose them under the whistleblowers’ scheme.
Furthermore, a situation whereby the CCB says the assets declaration forms of public officers could not be accessed by the public, even under the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) request, is not helping the anti-corruption strategy of government. Unless the public can access and scrutinize the claims made by public officers, fraudsters would continue to hide under the cover of the law to acquire illicit properties by looting our treasury.
For the sake of transparency, it is necessary to amend the assets declaration law by including sections calling for unconditional forfeiture to Federal Government, of assets acquired by public servants fraudulently. If a public servant acquires property which his salaries and other emoluments cannot cover, he should be made to forfeit them to government. Here the onus may not be on the anti-graft agencies to prove that the money used in acquiring the property was from corrupt act. This is the approach in many developed societies. Nigeria should follow the same legal pathway in the fight against corruption.
Meanwhile, we call on the EFCC to regularly publicize the assets recovered from public officers and from who; they should indicate those on interim forfeiture and those permanently forfeited to government. This is another approach to naming and shaming corrupt public servants. We also urge the Judiciary to support the EFCC by speedily deciding cases of forfeiture of corruptly acquired assets brought to it by the anti-graft agency. A situation in which cases linger on interminably is not good for the fight against corruption. The legislature should also join hands in this battle by amending the country’s assets declaration law to ensure it reflects the realities of the current anti-graft war.