Malami and shadow boxing

BY MICHAEL BISOLA

The ongoing investigation of Abubakar Malami, erstwhile Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC has opened my eyes to the fact that drama can be a weapon in the cause of evading justice or in seeking to scuttle it.

No doubt that these are indeed desperate times for Mr. Malami, a man of immense centripetal pull in the Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year reign, but his tactic of spiraling into a fit of tantrums and histrionics against the same legal and judicial systems he nurtured and approved their application on the citizens are obvious and obnoxious stunt at evading justice or redrawing its course. Not too dignifying and glorious for a former Chief Law Officer of the Federation, one may say.

Malami’s serial media campaigns, targeted at whipping up public sentiments against the EFCC for investigating him for what the public has clearly seen as aggravated and multiple allegations of frauds, hit the bull’s eye as throwing in the kitchen sink just to discredit and scupper a lawful pattern. It is scraping the bottom of the barrel to say the least and dovetails perfectly into what looks like his wobbly plan to go down clutching and clawing at anyone and anything on the way.

Foundational and at the core of Malami’s endless scream of blue murder is that his criminal investigation by the EFCC is a political persecution for his switch of allegiance from the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC to the African Democratic Congress, ADC. If the former minister and his handlers have any measure of respect for Nigerians or have ever bothered to feel the pulse of the citizens, they won’t wait to be told that the defrauded and traumatized citizens of this country have grown weary of such weather-beaten, mundane and predictable line of defence.

Malami’s more recent and additional layer of escapist tour de force in which he targeted Ola Olukoyede, the Executive Chair of EFCC for character assassination in an old wives’ fable of chasing vendetta against him for causing the Justice Salami Panel to probe his stewardship while he was Secretary to the EFCC amplifies public conviction that he is in fact more concerned with shadow boxing.

I am constrained at this juncture to remind Mr. Malami that whatever is his own version of the Justice Salami Panel’s report is of no consequence and bears no weight on the corruption issues for which he is obligated to provide answers to the EFCC and the Nigerian people by extension. Again, it will serve Malami’s purpose rather to concentrate on whatever are the corruption issues the anti-graft agency advances against him and be careful of unguarded libelous utterances.

Let me even agree without conceding that these fantastical ideas the former minister is mouthing, actually underlie his current criminal investigation, yet how and why he thinks that they nullify the accountability explanations he owes Nigerians for his stewardship leaves me in stitches.

I don’t have to rub it in, while stating that it is typical of Nigerian public office holders to adorn tin foil caps when faced with accountability questions, in or out of office, but depressing and self-centered as such behaviour is, arriving at its explanation requires no deep dive, given for starters, the abject lack of idea in public office holders that they occupy such positions in trust for the people, much less understanding that even though the day of reckoning may tarry, it will come when it will come.

No public officer holder who understands the place of accountability and service will spiral into a fit of tantrum, histrionics and shadow boxing when faced with an accountability test, in or out of office for his stewardship.

The irreducible minimum Nigerians expect from the former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice is simply to man up and wait for his day in court to prove his innocence, however, the processes leading up to his arraignment must necessarily run its full course. No half measures, no middle-of-the-road approach.

While Malami is simply acting for optics, as a lawyer, he is in full grasp of the fact that both his arrest and detention fall squarely under lawful and constitutional provisions, making it tenuous to see where the EFCC has infracted its Establishment Act in the processes it has followed in this matter.

It is well understood that Malami has enjoyed immense privileges, power and ostentatious ways of life, dating back to a not distant past, but it will be helpful to the course of justice if he minimizes his influence peddling to the extent of not seeking to stampede the wheel of lawful investigation but rather concentrate his energy and time more on how to prove his innocence. Cases are not won by crying wolf.

Bisola wrote from Abuja.