Magu’s odyssey and Nigerians’ ‘herd mentality’

“Be so true to thyself, as thou be not false to others.” -Sir Francis Bacon

Ibrahim Magu has had a turbulent tenure as the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nigeria’s most noticeable corruption-fighting agency. Even now that his fate as the head of the anti-corruption agency is dangling precariously on a feeble strand, he’s still in a wild turbulence.

When the news broke on Monday that Ibrahim Magu had been arrested, Nigerians ignored the leprosy and were battling the ring worm. Rather than debate (if need be) the veracity or otherwise of the action, after overcoming if his arrest was actually true or not, they were enmeshed in a gruelling exchange on whether it was indeed an “arrest” or an “invitation”! However, all the semantics were soon flung behind like the proverbial cloth garment of the busy masquerader and we quickly moved on to yet another part of the soft underbelly of the Magu miasma: “He is a victim of power play.”

Not a few Nigerians spat in the air and received their falling spittle in their faces as they reeled out reasons why they felt that Ibrahim Magu is a victim of a sordid political power play. Such people anchored their debate on their ever ready, easy mantra of “corruption is fighting back”. The angered back up singers of Buhari’s anti-corruption fight reeled out long lists of ‘unpardonable crimes’ committed by the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami, (SAN) upon whose petition Magu was arrested and is currently being secretively grilled. They traced the short genaeology of EFCC chairmen from the pioneer Nuhu Ribadu to Magu and threw light on how each of them had had an uncooperative or compromised AGF to contend with. It’s like a case of ‘your criminal is bigger than mine’ in the tone of the title of Nkem Nwankwo’s 1975 beautiful but unsung work, ‘My Mercedes is Bigger than Yours’.

It’s however not for this debating class of Nigerians if the man in question was rightly or wrongly arrested and is being interrogated, it is more of the why and by whom. These people have been carefully distilling their thoughts to not give any hue that all the parties in this messy Magu  affair are members of the same government. For those who see through the cacophony, it’s one disturbing historical point that for the first time since the country founded EFCC, its chairman is caught in the dragnet set for corrupt, fraudulent individuals.

It seriously rankles the brain, because it wasn’t as if there were no early warning signs of this disastrous denouement. Of a fact, the writing on the wall was so clear that Magu’s nomination to head the EFCC by President Buhari was the cause of a bitter battle in the eternal war between the Bukola Saraki-led National Assembly and the Buhari presidency. When that National Assembly refused to confirm the nomination of Magu, the echo from, again, the back up singers, was not the issues raised by the legislature to back its action, but how crooked the members of the Senate were, especially how Bukola Saraki emerged as Senate President.

Part of the writing on the wall ignored by the President and the supporters was the report by the Department of State Services (DSS) which gave a damning verdict on the persona of Ibrahim Magu. Again, Nigerians on the ruling political divide were more vociferous on Senate-labelling and “corruption is fighting back” mantra, and edited out the fact that the head of the DSS that submitted the anti-Magu report then was Mamman Daura, seen as an insider in the presidency.

Another surprise in this Magu’s Odyssey is why the President stuck with him even after the same President inaugurated and mandated a committee to look into various complaints about  some aspects of the operation of the EFCC, led by Magu. By the mandate of that committee, headed by Mr. Olufemi Lijadu, the President said there were gaps in “ensuring that the recovered assets are accounted for, and managed in an accurate, transparent and logical manner.” Yet, after this, among many other observations, Magu still remained in the saddle of that agency, albeit in acting capacity. It might be taken that the then leadership of the National Assembly was not in the good books of the Presidency, and therefore would not get their ears, what about reports by other government agencies? A lot was wrong with the EFCC under Magu and it is unfortunate that whatever gains the agency has made under him would be relegated while this season runs.

The various layers of thoughts on this Magu matter reveal that many saddening ports dot our turbulent sail towards true nationhood. It is sad that at each of the landmarks as we trudge on as a country, we leave one awe-inspiring problem or the other dotting and clogging the way of our own progress. As bad as the situation is, it is still the same suffering Nigerians who would rise in defence of those killing their country; and they do this simply because we belong to the herd. We have demonstrated this again in this Magu issue.

French polymath, Gustave Le Bon gained wide reputation in early 20th century with his work on crowd psychology. By the time he died on 13th December 1931, he had published many papers in areas as varied as Medicine, Sociology, Anthropology and Physics. He even joined the French Army and fought in the Franco-Prussian war. But his work, “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind”, made it look like he used Nigerians as his samples. He said: “By the mere fact that he forms a part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization.”

As discerning Nigerians, I know we understand what Le Bon means.

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