In particular, Justice Nyako called attention to the fact that Section 5 of the constitution vests the powers of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the person of the occupant of that office at any time, adding that when read along with Section 148, which allows the president to delegate authority, it must mean that where and when the delegated authority, through appropriate approvals, is carried out lawfully, the person exercising that delegated authority is free from any liability. This is not just a casual judgment or judicial assertion as it unearths the basis of legitimately holding agents responsible for their acts: when they act outside of the directive of their principals, when they do not get any directive for their act, and when they go beyond the directive of their principals. These would be legitimate grounds for holding them liable, but not when carrying out the legitimate directives of their principals.
The implication, to be sure, is that the society must come to terms with this important principle and use it in its dealings, especially as it relates to obeying its own laws and helping itself to set acceptable frameworks for action and behaviour. And this should affect the way people call out others for their actions and the way allegations of infractions are investigated. In the particular case of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other investigative agencies in the country, what this judgment calls for is the need to avail themselves of the responsibility of checking with the principal where an agent claims to have acted on the directive of the principal and ascertaining the truth instead of choosing to go public with allegations and even charging such people to court, thus creating the necessity for the agent to later call the principal as a witness during their trial. If such defence would hold up in court in the light of the ruling by Justice Nyako, why the need for the trial in the first place when the principal is alive and could have been contacted to confirm the claim?
The idea that the EFCC, for instance, could charge agents to court and ask them to go and defend themselves, including by calling their principals to come and defend their claims rather than it doing the needful by ascertaining the truth from the principals in the first place, would trivialise the processes of investigation and make a mockery of the fight against corruption. When the EFCC makes a spectacle of arraigning an agent for issues that could have been covered through the principal’s legitimate directive, the society is only treated to entertainment without the benefit of curtailing and combating corruption while also working against the institutionalisation of procedures and processes and the strengthening of institutions. The whole society is diminished by such acts that could well continue to make it impossible to institutionalise a sustainable anti-graft war.
What a credible and viable fight against corruption requires is requisite acknowledgement and appreciation of all the known provisions and procedures recognised by the Nigerian constitution, such that the fight would not be waged outside of such provisions and procedures. Those provisions and procedures were put in place for a purpose. This purpose should not be sidetracked by whimsical conduct on the part of investigative bodies. We call attention to this, especially in the light of various trials under the auspices of the EFCC which border on issues of the relationship between principals and agents. What is required in this context would be for the EFCC to always endeavour to carry out a comprehensive investigation that would not focus only on the agents without checking with their principals. Doing otherwise would be no more than simply seeking to punish the agents without just cause.
However, the critical need not to punish an agent for acts covered by the legitimate directives of principals is such that should be heeded at all levels of engagement in the society, both public and private, for healthy growth and consciousness of the fine details of relationships. Such appreciation would help to prevent unnecessary acts of vendetta masquerading as fight against corruption and would ensure that the entire society benefits from concerted efforts at combatting corruption instead of dissipation of energy on needless pursuits of acts of victimisation.
and then