President Muhammadu Buhari [PHOTO CREDIT: @MuhammaduBuhari]
President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo did the uncommon in September 2015 by making public sketchy details of their asset declarations, although, it was in response to growing pressure on them to fulfil a major campaign promise.
The presidency released the details of the duo’s asset declarations in a statement a few days before their first 100 days in office and promised to release the full versions after verification by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB).
Some who hailed Mr Buhari and his deputy for the gesture recalled that then President Goodluck Jonathan had blatantly told shocked Nigerians in 2012 that he would not publicly declare his assets no matter the level of criticism.
Mr Jonathan, who earlier declared his asset publicly as the vice president in the late Umar Yar’adua presidency, said he only did so in 2007 in deference to his boss, and not based on personal conviction.
Therefore, Mr Buhari’s public declaration, even with the initial reluctance and the incompleteness of the disclosure, was a forward leap in transparency and accountability, his supporters said.
But others who judged Mr Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), by their campaign vow to make public declaration of their assets within the first 100 days in office, were disappointed that it took pressure from the public for them to fulfil their promise.
Mr Buhari, a former military dictator who ruled Nigeria with an iron fist in the early 80s, ran an anti-corruption-based campaign which earned him his electoral victory over then incumbent President Jonathan and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015.
He had promised to fight corruption and end the lack of transparency that dogged the 16 years rule by PDP.
Despite its corruption label, PDP has an unlikely record of producing the first Nigerian leader to ever make his asset declaration public.
No law compels public officers to reveal their asset declarations submitted to the CCB to the public, but then President Umaru Yar’adua and Mr Jonathan published the full details of their asset after assuming office in 2007.
Yet, over six years after, the Buhari presidency has yet to fulfil its promise to release the full details of the asset declarations of the president and his deputy.
Worse still, they have not said anything concerning subsequent asset declarations the president and his deputy made at the end of their first term and the beginning of their second term in office in 2019. Nigerians can only guess if they would make such public declarations by the time they complete their second and final term in May 2023.
For Lukman Adefolahan, a human rights activist, without the access of Nigerians to the details of the asset declared by public officers, the anti-corruption war cannot produce the desired result.
“The law only says public officers should declare their assets; it is not mandatory for them to make them public. That is why it is difficult for Nigerians to access what they declare,” said Mr Adefolahan.
According to him and many other public accountability campaigners, with public declarations of assets, members of the public have the opportunity to track the expansion or contraction in the assets of a public officer or help the CCB to uncover assets not declared.
Citizens, who are needed partners in the war against corruption, are therefore deprived of a vital tool for demanding accountability from their leaders and other categories of public officers mandated by the Nigerian constitution to declare their assets to the CCB every four years.
The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), in its report, ’20 years of Anti-Corruption efforts in Nigeria,’ recommended that ”The National Assembly should revise the Code of Conduct Bureau Act to permit public disclosure of officeholders’ asset declarations without jeopardising office holders’ privacy or safety.”
The CCB is empowered to receive public officers’ asset declarations and verify them.
It also has exclusive power to prosecute breaches of the code of conduct for public officers contained in Part I of the Fifth Schedule of the Nigerian constitution at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT).
The constitution acknowledges the importance of citizens’ access to the details of assets filed with the CCB by public officers – it makes provision for it in Paragraph 3 (c) of Part 1 of its Third Schedule.
But that right of access is technically taken back with the clause contained in the same constitutional provision which predicates citizens’ access to public officers’ assets details “on such terms and conditions as the National Assembly may prescribe”.
CCB often flaunts this provision in rejecting citizens’ requests for the details of the asset declared by public officers, even when such requests are anchored on the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.
In March 2021, CCB chair, Muhammad Isah, said the bureau never honoured citizens’ requests for such information because the National Assembly had yet to give the guidelines for such public disclosure as provided for in the constitution.
Mr Isah, who was speaking through his special assistant, Mustapha Musa, at an event organised by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) in Lagos, said the provisions of the FoI Act concerning citizens’ access to the asset declaration forms of public officers were subject to the conditions which the constitution prescribes should be set by the National Assembly.
![Yemi Osinbajo [PHOTO: TW: @profosinbajo]](https://i0.wp.com/media.premiumtimesng.com/wp-content/files/2021/01/1611092502133.jpg?resize=949%2C599&ssl=1)
In January 2020, SERAP decided to channel such requests to the various officials concerned. The organisation sent FoI requests to President Buhari, Vice-President Osinbajo, the 36 state governors and their deputies, urging them to provide the details of their asset declared to the CCB.
With no positive responses from the officials, SERAP sued the CCB, urging the Federal High Court in Lagos, to compel the agency to provide the asset details the officials refused to disclose.
CCB opposed the suit, insisting it had no power to provide the details without legislation made by the National Assembly.
Delivering judgement on the matter on May 11, 2020, Muslim Hassan (now a Justice of the Court of Appeal), upheld CCB’s position by holding that “the duty to make the asset declaration form of public officers available depends on the terms and conditions to be prescribed by the National Assembly.”
SERAP has since appealed the judgment.
The CCB and some of its development partners had put forward a draft of legislation to guarantee citizens’ access to public officers.
With no greenlight from the legislators, who are likely to become targets of the application of such law if passed, the draft legislation has simply died on arrival.
But PREMIUM TIMES understands that there are ongoing collaborative efforts of the CCB, civil society organisations and some development partners to see how such public disclosure can be done without violating constitutional provisions.
Such options, our reporter learnt, is likely to be a disclosure of the details of asset of various public officers on a designated online portal without giving the details of the concerned public officers.
Beyond CCB’s hands being tied with legislation that prevents it from granting citizens access to asset declaration forms, experts say inefficiency runs deep in the organisation.
In the last five years, CCB has turned a blind eye to landmark journalistic revelations tagged Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and Pandora Papers all of which pointed to likely asset declaration breaches by current and serving public officers.
The revelations are based on leaks to a consortium of over 100 investigative journalists from different countries including PREMIUM TIMES.
Former Senate Presidents Bukola Saraki and David Mark, and a former Delta State Governor, James Ibori, were listed amongst prominent Nigerians who have links with offshore assets revealed in the Panama Papers released in 2016.
Like the Panama and Paradise papers of 2016 and 2017 respectively, recent Pandora Papers exposed at least 10 prominent persons, some of whom are former or serving public officers, who hid their wealth offshore ostensibly to evade tax.
Names mentioned in the Pandora Papers include former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi; a senator and former aviation minister, Stella Oduah; the acting Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Mohammed Bello-Koko; Governor Gboyega Oyetola of Osun State, and his Kebbi State counterpart, Atiku Bagudu.
Weeks after the release of the Pandora Papers, the most recent of the three, the CCB chairperson, Mr Isah, said the bureau would carry out its investigations on the revelations, but nothing concrete has been heard of action taken by the agency or sister organisations involved in the anti-corruption campaign.
Mr Isah’s comment turned out to be a repeat of the CCB’s reaction to similar revelations in August 2016, when the agency, under its former leadership, claimed that it had started investigation of present and past government officials named in the leaks, but nothing has been heard about such moves.
Tunde Ajileye, a policy expert and partner with SBM Intelligence, a geopolitical research consultancy firm, stated that the CCB had only shown vigour in pursuing prosecution for political reasons.
“The CCB is not interested in doing its job, except for when it is politically beneficial,” Mr Ajileye stated, referencing the trial of Mr Saraki and a former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, who were believed to have been taken on by the Buhari administration for political reasons.
In January 2019, the CCB, against the often-touted constitutional provision that prevents public disclosure of the details of public officers’ asset, provided Dennis Aghanya of the Anti-corruption and Research-based Data Initiative (ARDI) the details of Mr Onnoghen’s asset declaration forms.
Speculation was rife that the Buhari administration was uncomfortable with having Mr Onnoghen as the CJN, who was then alleged to be sympathetic to the opposition PDP, by the time disputes arising from then imminent 2019 presidential election would get to the Supreme Court.
The asset declaration forms released by the CCB to Mr Aghanya formed the basis of his petition sent against Mr Onnoghen, and subsequently the charges filed by the bureau against the CJN at the CCT.
In the end, Mr Onnoghen, earlier suspended by Mr Buhari, was convicted of asset declaration breaches by the tribunal. He was punished with a permanent removal from office, prohibition from holding public office for 10 years, and forfeiture of asset which were the subject of the charges.
On his part, Mr Saraki fell out with Mr Buhari’s camp after becoming the Senate President in 2015 against the choice of their party, the APC, for the position.
In September that year, he was charged with asset declaration breaches at the CCT. But after years of trial, the CCT acquitted him, and in July 2018, the Supreme Court also affirmed his acquittal.
Despite his victory, the injured relationship between him and the APC as well as Mr Buhari’s camp never healed, leading to his eventual defection from the party to the opposition PDP just weeks after his acquittal by the Supreme Court in July 2018.
PREMIUM TIMES’ recent analysis of the 2022 budget proposals for seven anti-corruption agencies, revealed how the CCB and CCT have been poorly funded.
During his recent budget defence before the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions, CCT chair, Danladi Umar, said his tribunal had concluded only 30 cases out of the 257 referred to it by the CCB in 2021.
Mr Umar attributed the tribunal’s inability to treat all the cases referred to it to underfunding, among other challenges.
CCB has a more severe underfunding problem, PREMIUM TIMES’ analysis has shown. The N2.9 billion proposed for it in 2022 was about 9.4 per cent lower than the N3.2 billion appropriated for it in the 2021 budget.
But beyond the issue of funding, Liborous Oshoma, a lawyer, identified general inefficiency, especially in the area of proactively giving information to relevant anti-corruption agencies, as one of CCB’s major problems.
“There is no law that bars the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) to file a complaint to the appropriate government agencies when you (CCB) do investigations and you are unable to verify asset so declared; nothing stops you (CCB) from informing the ICPC and EFCC which are the appropriate agencies of the state of those properties,” he told PREMIUM TIMES.
Lack of synergy among relevant agencies has also been identified as the bane of the anti-corruption war.
Adetunji Ogunyemi, a lawyer and Senior Lecturer at Obafemi Awolowo University, said the prevalence of “internal corruption” is also affecting the performance of the CCB.
He said what the bureau needs “is to cure itself of its internal contradiction and its administrative inefficiency. And when you deliberately create administration inefficiency you are corrupt.”
He also noted that the lack of proper record keeping of asset declaration forms is undercutting the efficiency of the agency, citing a survey he conducted in the past.
“Go and check the ones they keep in Borno, it’s eaten by termites. They do not have stores, the offices are not well kept and anybody can make claims to say I have an asset declaration form,” he said.
Mr Adefolahan called for the digitalisation of the asset declaration forms as the best way to safeguard the records, a step the CCB has said it is working on.
“So there is a need to introduce technology. And also to build the capacity of their staff,” he added.
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All content is Copyrighted © 2020 The Premium Times, Nigeria
