Since Nuhu Ribadu, now National Security Adviser, it seems no executive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has demonstrated a greater zeal to fight corruption in Nigeria than Ola Olukoyede, a lawyer and an insider who spent considerable time at the management level of the renowned anti-graft institution before his appointment as executive chairman in October 2023 . His first task on settling in office just about three months ago had been the re-branding of the image of the EFCC, away from the unpleasant resemblance of the infamous secret political police of Nazi Germany, to one with…
Author: Godwin Onyeacholem
The African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL) has called on Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State to stop further persecution of Adewale Adedayo, chairman of Ijebu East Local Government Area of Ogun State who was impeached and is now being prosecuted in court for accusing the governor of withholding statutory federal allocation to local governments in the state in the last two years. Adedayo had last month written a letter, which went viral, to former governor of the state, Chief Segun Osoba, urging him to use his influence to correct the persistent zero allocation of federal funds which…
When this piece reaches the public, assuming all other factors remain constant, President Bola Tinubu will have sworn in all 48 nominees who underwent screening for confirmation as cabinet ministers during the senate plenary. They will have started the process of settling into their offices as cabinet ministers, thus effectively becoming members of the federal executive council. Together with members of the national assembly with whom they share the same partisan convictions, the ministers will occupy the front row in the implementation squad of the Renewed Hope agenda of the Tinubu administration. However, disregarding general positive action in favor of…
Whistleblowing is steadily growing to become the dominant theme in ethics literature. It has earned a prime position as a forceful vehicle not only for delivering clarity and openness in workplace culture, but also for defining responsible behaviour expected of an individual. On a wider scale, whistleblowing has shaped up to become a democratic accountability tool, and a check on secrecy and abuse of power in many different contexts. In July 2016, the ECOWAS Commission met in Cotonou, Benin Republic, to launch a whistleblower protection strategy and plan of action to encourage member states to enact whistleblower protection legislations. This…
By Godwin Onyeacholem If all goes well as is expected, the whistleblowing and whistleblower protection draft bill which sprung from a five-day stakeholders’ retreat on the whistleblowing policy organized by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning in May 2021 in Keffi, Nasarawa State, would be considered this month at a Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting and then transmitted as an executive bill to the National Assembly for passage into law. Many stakeholders, local and foreign, including citizens who are enthusiastic about the efficacy of whistleblowing as an anti-corruption instrument, are agreed that in addition to mustering the…
To say it wasn’t foreseen would be for one an absurd indulgence in self-denial. Last month’s compulsory retirement of Captain Emmanuel Ekpe Owen of the Nigerian Navy marked yet another act of horrendous injustice that has become more of a permanent feature in both public and private sector governance in the country. The wicked behaviour manifests in various forms but none comes close in its egregiousness than the impunity enjoyed by top government officials in the workplace. More often when such officials are caught in one form of barefaced wrongdoing or another, they get away unpunished using their privileged status…
No sincere follower of the purported ongoing investigation of Ibrahim Magu, who was recently forcibly sacked as Acting Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), would not describe the exercise as what it truly is: a charade. An orchestrated extralegal act so brazenly packaged in the worst form of travesty. Without any tinge of doubt, Abubakar Malami, the infamous attorney general of the federation and minister of justice, is the architect of this conspiratorial affair that unfortunately bears a presidential rubber stamp. From the moment Magu showed his hand as one who would be his own man outside President…
Just off Ozumba Mbadiwe Street in Victoria Island, immediately behind a cluster of residential apartments popularly known as 1004 flats, and directly opposite a quaint one-storey building on the other side of Adetokunbo Ademola Street, lay a row of bungalows finely spruced up with middle-class taste. It was in one of these bungalows that the fortuitous encounter with the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka took place in the early 90s. The one-storey building was the residence of Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, the first indigenous Chief Justice of Nigeria, while the bungalow was the official abode of Maxwell Nemadzivhanani, a South…
Much as one tries, it has been difficult to find something for which to commend Nigeria’s current Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami. He has been the chief law officer of the country since he was first appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari at the take-off of his administration in 2015, and re-appointed in 2019 as Buhari returned for a second term. Malami is one in the privileged club of distinguished lawyers who tag their names with that smug title of SAN (Senior Advocate of Nigeria), a legal title keenly coveted by the typical Nigerian lawyer. But he also…
Whistleblowers are the first line of defence against corruption, crime and cover-ups, according to a 2019 paper by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on whistleblowing in the UK. For Sambo Abdullahi, head of internal audit at the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) Plc, it has been one long tortuous journey. Over the past two years, he has been at the receiving end of the retaliation whistleblowers around the world, including in Nigeria, face for shining the light on malfeasance around them: denial of wages, job losses, expensive court cases, abuse, psychological trauma, blacklisting across their sector, and sometimes death. Abdullahi has…
The death knell for a much-anticipated revolutionary justice system, and indeed the Buhari administration’s promised war against corruption, sounded the moment Abubakar Malami, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, was awarded the post of Attorney General and Minister of Justice in Buhari’s unduly delayed first list of cabinet ministers. With that appointment, it was clear to the discerning that not only would the reactionary side of the justice sector be prolonged and reinforced, but also that the fight against corruption, the flagship of this administration’s campaign portfolio, would end up as a fluke. And no one who held this view has…
Between fighting corruption with bare knuckles in an inspired manner and wearing well-padded gloves to do half-hearted battle with a monster that has literally crippled the country, the Buhari administration has to make up its mind on which style to adopt. And because time is not on its side, it had better do so now. Although Buhari says he is fighting corruption, the question to ask is, how is he fighting it? It is true that waging war against corruption was at the top of his agenda in 2015 and he set up a think-tank of seasoned eggheads as well…
