Magu: The war of attrition

It did not have to come to this. It has. Unfortunately. The request by President Muhammadu Buhari to the Senate to confirm Ibrahim Magu as chairman of EFCC has degenerated into a war of attrition between the Presidency and the Senate. Twice the president submitted his name to the senate and twice the Senate rejected Magu’s nomination. We wait to see which blinks first – the Presidency or the Senate.

However, the matter if eventually resolved will leave ashes in the mouth on both sides. Magu has been the acting chairman of the commission since November 2015. By all standards, he has done pretty well going after those who failed the temptation to direct the outflow of our common wealth into their private accounts. He has created a record that would be hard to beat in that office. The commission no longer engages in what the lawyers call a fishing expedition. His predecessors in office were happy to slap a former governor with as many as 153 charges of alleged corruption. In such a fishing expedition, the camel walks through the eye of the needle.

Magu has effected changes in much of the way the commission does its job. His predecessors based their prosecution on investigation. Magu bases his, as indeed the law requires, on evidence. It should not be difficult for him to get the thumbs up from the Senate, all things being equal. But all things are hardly equal. So, the man who ought to sail into office as substantive chairman of the EFCC on the crest wave of his own performance records finds himself shackled with a millstone, struggling to breast the surface of the water. Not a pretty sight!

There is no contesting this. Magu is the man in whom Buhari is well pleased. The problem is that the past has caught up with the acting chairman. The Directorate of State Services dug up the dirt on him to show that he might glitter but he would be wrong to claim gold. And so, the Senate, convinced it would be wrong to let a man whose past does not sparkle, prosecute those who are not poster children of honesty, refused to confirm him.

 It came as a big shock to many of us who admire Magu’s work and believe that he is not motivated by the need to score points but by the greater need to help the public make some sense of the anti-graft war more famous for its smoke than its fire.

The Senate has refused to let the DSS report gather dust on the shelf. It whipped it out again when Magu came before it last week. It has become its smoking gun. The new twist is that the Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, said last week the decision of the Senate was not based on the DSS report. The Punch newspaper of Sunday, March 19, quoted him as having told TVC News in Morocco, that he did not “think there was anywhere we said he was rejected based on accusations.” Saraki contended that Magu came before the Senate but that “he did not pass the screening.”

It is difficult to buy that in its entirety. But when Magu went before the Senate last week, he did not impress me as someone who quite understood what he was up against. He showed no signs of putting up a fight to a) show the public the record of his performance in the office so far and b) fight to clean his name and burnish his image and professional integrity. I wonder if he has problems with these.

When he was asked to tell the Senate how much he has recovered so far from the treasury looters, he said he needed time to provide the information. I thought I misheard him. Did he need anyone to tell him he should have appeared before the Senate fully armed with the record of his performance?

The senators asked him to respond to the DSS allegations against him in its report to the Senate. Magu said something piffling like he did not want to engage in inter-service rivalry. I think it is naïve of him to be a Mr Nice Guy when his integrity is fast sinking in the murk of the damning DSS report. Magu needed no one to tell him he has a duty to himself and to his principle to fully and publicly clear himself of the allegations in the DSS report. He let the opportunity slip through his fingers last week. I find it painful for him, for the president and those of us who believe he is the best thief catcher-in-chief so far in the commission.

The president has a major mess on his hands. If he ignores the DSS report and pushes ahead and wins the war of attrition, he would have to confront a huge question mark on his sincerity and the integrity of his anti-graft war. If he lets Magu go, he would probably feel that he blinked first. Presidents hate losing wars.

Buhari is largely to blame because he failed to do the needful. The legislators need to be lobbied; failing which they are duly persuaded. That is pretty much the way the system runs. The legal minds tell us that Magu could continue to act as the EFCC chairman until probably the Senate blinks. But it would be morally, if not legally, wrong to let him continue in office in an acting capacity indefinitely. The president should let him go. The protracted war of attrition over his confirmation serves no useful national purpose.