Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Mr Ekpo Nta, in this chat with LANRE ADEWOLE, speaks on what he described as his socio-scientific anti-corruption style, the variables and unpopular narratives.
How have you added value to what you met on ground?
We migrated basically to the electronic platform. The first thing we did, in the petition registry where we get thousands of petitions, was to put this on electronic platform. We have migrated all our file copies to electronic copies. So the issue of missing file of petitions never arises again in ICPC and you can recall any files at any point in time. Even if I’m outof the country, I have access to all the information I need online. It is a major feat because that is where collating and coordinating create major problems. I have also, since coming in, introduced the ICPC Law Report. It was never in existence and I did that deliberately so that people can distinguish between corruption cases and general criminal cases. It helps the courts, lawyers and prosecutors to understand the difference between corruption cases and general criminal cases and the opinion of the court in such cases. If you don’t know the distinction, you might actually be running after low-level matter, thinking that is corruption, while corruption is much more invidious than what we are looking at. I have also introduced, with the assistance of donor partners, an e-law library. My lawyers can access that at any time.
We have put in place an academy on Keffi, Nasarawa State, which is world-class by any standard and removed the urgency on the need to send most of our staff outside of the country for training because we were able to get the best brains to come and train our staff here. As a matter of fact, the provost of the academy is a very well-known scholar, Professor Sola Akinrinade, who was the pioneer Vice Chancellor of Osun State University. He has really raised the bar and most of the international agencies that deal in corruption issues-UNDP, UNODC, DFID and the US Embassy-have collaborations going on with us at the institute. It is also well-equipped to address ICT issues. I think it is one of the most advanced ICT centres in the country and it has been attracting a lot of attention and resource persons to the place. I’m very proud of the activities.
We have done a lot of training for those involved in looking at processes in the country. We have done training for all the Houses of Assembly in Nigeria, here, especially in the area of oversight functions, because a lot of things were going on in the name of oversight functions and we have had very good partnership out of that exercise. We have done a lot of training for chief executives of MDAs on how best to run their systems and reduce corruption-prone processes and it is not surprising because most of the request we now have is from agencies, deliberately asking us to come and help and advise them on corruption-prone processes. We have been involved in corruption risk assessment, because if you don’t know what will constitute corruption risk, then when you are getting into it, you will probably not understand you have done certain things.
Our corruption-risk assessment report on selected Nigerian ports, led to the introduction of new operational guidelines. It was launched by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo last year and it was reported internationally as one of the eight best anti-corruption initiatives in the world. We did one on system study of the international airport because of the corruption that went on there. The one at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport was well-publicised and I’m happy that the acting president has issued an executive order that is now being complied with. We highlighted the corruption-prone processes, so it will be difficult for you now to see any artificial bottleneck.
We have done corruption risk assessment in the education ministry; we did for health; we have done that of utility services and for land administration in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), ending a major headache for everybody. These are major interventions we have had.
We looked at sectors that have high risk for corruption and then we take apart the system and inject new processes. We don’t do it like law enforcement versus people carrying out infractions. We go into partnership with those organisations so that on their own, they begin to regulate the system and that had moved us into working with international bodies on how they should regulate their members. We have standing MOUs with the Nigerian Society of Engineers, COREN, Institute of Chartered Accountants, ANA, Quantity Surveyors and across board like that and we are working with civil societies on how to monitor budgets. If you add the oversight functions of national and state House of Assembly on how to monitor the budget, with that of civil societies that have been trained specifically on budget monitoring, a lot of infractions witnessed in the past will reduce. We also trained community leaders on how to monitor projects. If this is standardised, we won’t have to be waiting for infraction when the money is gone, to make arrest and spend more money looking for convictions and the case drag on and on. We are now monitoring from budget allocation to spending and alarm would be raised at any point that infraction is to be brought to attention. Even before money gets anywhere, we are monitoring everyone.
This is like creating a new orientation in public sector. How does it affect the collaborators in the private sector?
The private sector has no alternative than to join because, for them to survive, they have to resort to doing good business. In fact, we are coming up with a new policy which we have been thinking about for two, three years now, that if you are blacklisted ethically after committing an infraction, it will be difficult for you to use that company name again for contracts and we have started this. When they did public bids and they invited ICPC and other anti-corruption agencies to sit down there generally for the purpose of saying due process was adhere to, we took it a step further, we collected all the bids and brought them to ICPC and from there we discovered that some of the audited accounts were doctored. The companies were using forged tax clearance certificates and some of the claims they put were not really true. When the power stations were being sold, we took a few companies to court and since they are aware of it, they would not try it again and we made sure that those companies didn’t move to the next level of bidding. It was tough, but we succeeded in getting the companies off.
You went into ministries and higher institutions of learning. What were the striking findings?
Most of these universities and ministries use codified system. In the civil service, there are civil service rules and financial regulations which anybody is bound to follow, but we don’t have these things spelt out with punishment. When infractions are committed, you will now be begging. What are you begging for when you know what the punishment is like? That is what we should promote more. All the seizure we made, I made sure they were put on our website, with their location and even published in the newspapers. You must be able to access whatever anyone is doing through ICT, including the naming and shaming aspect you talked about, for those convicted. So, in the future, they want to do business, people will say sorry, we don’t want to do business with you. But beyond that, there must be opportunity for people like that to come and say publicly that we did wrong and then given an opportunity to change for better, to become models unto others.
You sound more a moralist than someone who wants to arrest, prosecute and convict…
Conviction is a natural process. In fact, the strongest way of prevention is sanction too. People tend to get me wrong most times that I don’t want sanctions. A good deterrence is having sanctions. At the end of the day, will it not be better if you could have prevented that activity from happening, instead of celebrating sanctions? I will rather celebrate the prevention aspect of it. No matter, how much I moralise, whether in the Church or Mosque, it won’t prevent a hungry man from stealing in the supermarket. When the hungry man comes to the supermarket and has CCTV watching him, that urge to want to take is curtailed electronically and that is what we are not doing in this part of the world. We demonise, but we are also not putting in place things that would get the citizens to stay away from such activities. Don’t we have Nigerians and others who go to foreign supermarkets, do you hear the stories that they were taking things off the shelf and all that? No, because they know that the CCTV is watching. Even if you are not caught by the CCTV, in each of the items you are taking, there is a small chip which will be removed at the counter when you pay. If you don’t pay and you want to go out, alarm will go off and you will be arrested at that point. People have invested in that technology. But here you are not doing that. Like you have seen in the payment of salaries to civil servants, the moment you transfer this to the electronic platform, it becomes difficult to manipulate. In ICPC, I don’t have to run after people to come and sign attendance register because I have installed a biometric attendance register. All you need is when you come in the morning, put your finger on it and register that you have come to work and when going out of the premises, you also do same and at the close of work, you repeat the process. At the end of the month, it calculates the number of hours you have worked in this commission and if you don’t show up at all, your friends cannot help you because it can only accept your fingerprints. Now, if you install that in all the ministries, departments and agencies of government, the stories of people who are friendly with their bosses and get to travel even abroad when they should be at work, how would they beat that?
Why are you not introducing it to government?
A few government departments have done it. I have set up the infrastructure that would make this kind of thing to work. It is running on a solar inverter; it is not running on electricity. Government departments that would use it must also invest in solar power in their compound. If you call our toll-free lines to complain after the close of work, I don’t need any staff to be there before we take your complaint. The machine takes your complaint and we review it in the morning. Doing so, you have a 24-hour service. I don’t need to have generator running in ICPC because we have solar-powered street-lights within the premises. With things like these, you don’t have a choice, but to be a good staff and you can translate this into different aspect. If you install CCTV cameras in wards in hospitals and theatres and you link that up to the CMD in his office, he can watch all that is happening in the wards and theatres and no doctor or nurse will be misbehaving in the theatre or ward. It is a form of control. Even if he is not watching, it records and he can review it at any time and it will be difficult for you to deny being rude to patients. This is what is happening elsewhere. Or would you rather the patient die and then set up a commission of inquiry to find immediate and remote cause why he died when, with a small amount, you can monitor the medical staff through CCTV?
This is what I’m introducing in my anti-corruption that let’s teach the children from primary school to be good citizens and also aid them to grow up to be good citizens, by showing them that if you commit certain acts, it will be monitored and you will receive immediate punishment. That is the key to having successful anti-corruption fight. That is why I’m happy with the Attorney General of the Federation because, from 2001 to now, we never had an anti-corruption strategy in this country. It was on the front-burner for about six years, but he came in and fast tracked it and launched it publicly recently. The electronic interface is part of it. I’m more for prevention through provision of necessary needs and platforms for checks and balances and some will come and say I’m not fighting corruption and be grandstanding by arresting 100 students for examination malpractices when you are the one who caused that. Go and study the rate of examination malpractices in eminent schools like Loyola, Queens, Kings Colleges, compared to some kind of secondary schools. We are not animals in this country and if you treat your citizens very well, they will rise up to the kind of citizens you want. Corruption is an opportunistic crime. If you give equal opportunities, even the most religious person may be tempted. When you have Nigerians begging for financial help from members of the public for N8 million-kidney transplant abroad, that is national shame because, that individual lying down there is a weak link to your national security. These people are less than one per cent of the population. I will rather spend state money on them, than holding some funny reception where people come to eat and go.
Do we have platforms, capacity and instruments to sustain this socio-scientific approach to anti-corruption?
Yes, we do. The advantage I have is having trainings as a social scientist and as a lawyer. If you are looking at the issue of corruption only from the legalistic approach, you will miss the point. You must also look at the sociological processes that had led us to where we are today. Why don’t you apply the legalistic approach in your family all the time? If your son stole your money in the house, why don’t you send him to jail? The first thing you do as a father is to sit him down and ask questions. You might be surprised that because you are busy working, the house girl didn’t provide food for that child. What you will need from there is little adjustment at home. If the child persists after providing all he needed, you know you need strong measures before he contaminates the other children. You must go to the root cause and that is what we are doing in ICPC. We are asking, “why this behaviour”?
Nigerians would answer you, sheer greed…
Yes, but let me give you a simple example. A Grade 12 Level civil servant who is your wife has breast cancer and you need N8 million to address it and you don’t have access to the National Health Insurance Fund because the scheme has taken off certain ailments they can attend to and you see your wife is dying before you. But where you work, you have an access to N15 million, what will be your reaction as a human being? Most likely you take that money and hope you find other means of returning the money before you are caught and if caught, you say let me go to jail and let the woman survive. We shouldn’t even create situations where we put our people between the devil and the deep blue sea. We should have a minimum standard value on the life of any Nigerian so that he believes his country can protect him.
When we do investigations here, we try to find out the root causes. There are some people who will still steal, regardless of the amount of money they have. Those ones I have absolutely no pity for, but they constitute a small percentage of real good Nigerians. Our sanction system should be addressing that, instead of thinking every Nigerian is a thief. Address those specific ones and give them the hardest sanctions to take them out of the society, if they are not ready for reform. But one thing we have not been doing is to reward honesty. We don’t legislate in that regard too. A clear example is the Whistle-blower Act which is a form of reward if you come and tell me someone stole a certain amount of money. You see how we are now being overwhelmed by people coming out to blow whistle. If they see you carrying carton of noodles into the house, they will report to ICPC that it is full of money. That is not done out of altruistic processes. As good citizens, you report without expecting that kind of cash reward. It should be police being with you in less than 10 minutes of reporting and your children can have free education as a reward for making sure that the money meant for the commonwealth didn’t go into the pockets of a few.
So, you are not really for the whistle-blower policy?
No, it is a very good policy, but the people who are doing it should know that the reward should be higher in value for the society, instead of ensuring that you come to report basically because of the cash you will get. It should be something of higher value-your safety, the comfort of your family and all that.
Why is loot recovery sound-bite not loud from the ICPC end?
The ones you are hearing are because they get into public domain with a lot of publicity going into it. For the kind of recoveries we are making in ICPC in the past which didn’t get the kind of acclaim you are seeing today, at the end of every year, government agencies are supposed to return the leftover of their allocations to the treasury. Quite a number weren’t doing that. ICPC has been monitoring all these and I can tell you, several billions were returned, out of ICPC’s oversight functions. It is documented, but not getting the kind of publicity you are seeing around today. We are always careful about managing processes because of unintended outcomes. It takes a lot of convincing for us to move into properties and all that. The Central Bank rules forbid you to keep more than a certain amount of money in your private home. So, at a point, you must use banking platforms and you leave behind trails. But information sources are also to be managed well due to greed. Banking reforms will help a great deal. I remember in a New York restaurant, where I wanted to pay with 100 dollar bill, I was told that the state regulation forbids acceptance of such bill, that I should use a credit card to pay for the food. In some hotels, when you pay cash, they put in an envelope and put your name on it. But they will tell you they prefer electronic transfer. It will eventually happen here and it will help anti-corruption fight. The future of investigation is ICT and forensic processes and we are investing on it heavily here.
What about those hiding money at home. Don’t we need some brawn to recover such money?
They know the consequences of keeping money illegitimately. Your home is not a bank and so if government recovers such money and with the whistle-blowers everywhere, any member of your family can still blow the whistle for a fee.
Nigerians desire to know how much of their stolen wealth is back in the coffers and are also desirous of seeing big-men who looted their commonwealth jailed. Can you put a figure to your recovery efforts?
I belong to a committee which is chaired by the acting president Yemi Osinbajo and we don’t go about banding figures anymore, that this is what my agency recovered, this is what other agency recovered. We do a report centrally; it is the function of that committee to release those figures, to ensure no ambiguity and, of course, they will check to ensure what is recorded, you can go and find and see. The release of that information is now coordinated centrally.
And convictions too?
Fortunately for me, those convictions are now being put on our website and you can always go there, instead of giving you a figure that may not tally because I insisted my staff must link the date, the court. We are wary of bandying figures because a distinction must be made between corruption conviction and someone convicted for breaking pipelines after confession and summary trial and now listed as conviction. You can post 100 convictions and ICPC will post five and you think you are doing better than I am. No, you are not. Fortunately, the UNODC has started a peer review of member states who are signatories to the UN Charter on anti-corruption and they ask you to break down the type of offence that your conviction is related to.
We should look at quality and not quantity in conviction. Jailing supermarket thieves who were caught in the act isn’t the same thing as pursuing a major looter whose activities affect the whole country. It is not easy to get conviction for corruption cases, except the fellow comes up with a confession. The big fight against corruption will be won on the drawing table. I will like you to go and look at the Chatham House report on “Collective Action Against Corruption in Nigeria”.
People don’t fear ICPC. The usual reaction to threat to drag somebody here is “go ahead” which isn’t same as the sister agencies. How do you feel?
I feel very happy. I’m sure you are surprised. I’m happy because it is most likely that such a person knows that if he is not guilty, he would rather have ICPC investigate the matter and it would not be sensationalised and he would get a fair hearing. Some people might see it the other way, but that is the way I see it with people who have ended up with us. Ask them, including those charged to court, they will tell you they have a fair deal; that they had every opportunity to defend themselves. We are putting a more humane face to the campaign because the man has not been convicted. Even if he is a convict, he is entitled to be treated in a civil manner.
Let’s look at your novel recovery model and I am going to mention names since it is already in public domain. Former Kano State governor, Ibrahim Shekarau, had a case to answer and had no money to refund. Then you worked something out. How did you come about the idea getting him to forfeit his entitlements to the state?
You are the one who said it is in public domain because I know that before now many thought the petition had been buried and the people at the commission settled. The main thing is that ICPC stands for substantive justice and if there was system failure, we will get to the bottom of it and try to reform the system bottom up, to allow the society know what it should be. It had to do with the approval for the property he is entitled to when you leave government and it is also available to all former governors and deputies. The costing that was involved had to do with the size of the property eventually built and we got experts to do the valuation and work out the difference of the right amount. This is because those executing were also Kano State civil servants and you know how busy chief executives are and sometimes you have civil servants who are doing eye-service, doing what the principal didn’t ask them. So, we weighed all the circumstances and came out with a difference of what we thought was not part of what it should be.
You still don’t want to mention a figure?
No, I don’t carry the figures in my head. Then, we wrote that this is what is in excess and that he should please study and get back to us. We all went through the processes and his legal team was in agreement, but the thing is that there was no cash. But the state government owed him and so we worked with the state government and the monies which were available for him would cover exactly the same amount and since the money belonged to Kano State in the first place, it went back to Kano State government. So, there was no ambiguity and that was effectively done.
In the same process, I remember a matter that had to do with rural electrification where the contract was not fully executed and was to be re-awarded at a cost more than the original cost. We told the contractor, it is either we recover the full project money or you go and complete the project. He opted to get assistance from his friends and completed the project. The community was very happy and ready to give him chieftaincy. Do you know a neighbouring local government area gave him another contract on the basis of the completion of the abandoned one, without knowing the background and the suspect who was very angry initially with us became very happy?
Can’t we apply this model to all the stalled trials involving former governors, including those who completed their tenure in 2007?
Part of why you don’t see us talking is our Act which says we can’t discuss on-going investigations. But I can assure you, we have been using different options because if you use funny bargain somewhere, you will be accused of letting the suspects get away with certain things. But when we look at issues and see that it is not the public interest that has been injured or bordering on criminality, then we can discuss a few things. But when it involves absolute criminal tendencies, such matters are taken to court in public interest. If suspect wants plea-bargain, let him do it in the court.
Why is your commission, known for its dovish approach, uncharacteristically engaging former Vice President Namadi Sambo?
No, we are coming out with a public statement soon. The commission can never plant anything on him, never. I can understand his anger, but we are going to clear that aspect very soon (This interview was conducted before the arraignment of the whistle-blower). I have very high regards for public officers at certain levels, but that doesn’t mean we won’t investigate anything we need to investigate and follow up on whatever lead we get. I’m already investigating the process, not just his house, but to also determine if operational guidelines were met or not. That matter is already undergoing in-house review.
The man said he was not aware of any petition against him and ICPC Act says you can’t act without petition…
You can have legitimate and malicious petitions and why would we wake up one day and begin to go to someone’s place? That is very uncharacteristic of the commission and I will never accept that kind of image for this commission. The commission is not trying to nail anybody at whatever cost and definitely not somebody like him (Sambo) or anybody who may be taken as inconsequential. The petition might not even be against him as a person; it might be against the property because that is the mistake some people usually make. We must distinguish all those things. ICPC has never been used by either the past or present government to execute any agenda against anybody. It is a cardinal principle of whistle-blowing that if you are found out to engage in malicious reporting, we prosecute you because everybody is entitled to the protection of his name. In-house processes are going on and we don’t want to precipitate the outcome.
On the Paris Club refund and bailout fund, Nigerians will want to know how far you have gone with the probe involving many states. I remember there was a tango between the Osun State government and ICPC over the commission’s findings. I also remember that of Edo State…
In fact, it involved several other states and that was the bail-out, not even the Paris Club refund. We published the full report and some newspapers published it in full, but other newspapers did summaries and gave their own conclusions. Some of the conclusions were not correct and that led to the reactions you saw from some state governments. We sent letters to all the states that had taken the loan and the accountants-general were given forms to fill, on whether they collected, how much, how much already disbursed, what was the indebtedness, what is the balance? They filled those forms and signed them. We now went to the banks, we went to CBN, saw the transfer orders, traced the monies to accounts used by the states to receive them, to find out if the monies went into salary account or some other operational accounts and the exact outcome was what we published as Part One. Some states we traced straight to salary accounts; some didn’t pay full money and said they were doing verification before paying the balance, saying they were not too sure of the number of persons in the local government area in particular. Some states took the money and went back to their state Houses of Assembly for resolution to apply it to other things like paying contractors since they did not owe salaries. We now said when you went to pick this loan and you did not owe salaries, why didn’t you disclose that fact.
In some other states, we saw double payment and the state reacted and said they used it to pay vigilante. We said fine, at least, you have come out in the public by yourself to say you used the loan to pay vigilante. Another state said it was for payment of their outstanding allowances. We are waiting for the second part of the bailout report to ascertain who committed what infraction and I’m going to publish that too.
Your commission is silent on the Paris Club fund probe while EFCC has been very active, engaging the governors and even alleging one of them of outright stealing…
It is ok if they have evidence to support the allegation, but we don’t do double investigation. If they have facts, it means all the agencies are working towards same goal. If I could have prevented that, I would be happy. If they go to court and court can affirm that, then that is also a strong statement you can make and get away with it. We play complementary role; we have been able to prevent many things from happening and other sister agencies went ahead to grab someone who did what he should not do. Once a sister agency is in a matter, we don’t barge into it. If I start an investigation and see it is more of economic crime, I will send it to EFCC and vice-versa.
Almost all the governors took bailout. Does it mean you are investigating all?
Investigation is a strong word and it is the states and not governors. If an infraction is noticed, we go for the person that signed the salary, in this case, the office of the accountant-general.
If you were Magu, the EFCC chairman, what would you be doing now?
I’m not Magu. I don’t have any opinion.