APPARENTLY, there are ample intra-African governmental lessons to be learnt by the Nigerian establishment. An example in this regard came recently from Sierra Leone. Its president, Maada Bio, fired Alusine Kanneh, the country’s head of immigration. This came as a result of a viral video which went viral on March 7. The video showed Kanneh in company with Johannes Leijdekkers, a notorious Dutch drug kingpin. Immediately the video became public knowledge, the president removed Kanneh from his position, although the official statement announcing his sack did not specify the reasons for his dismissal.
To escape the long arms of the law, Leijdekkers was believed to have been hiding in Sierra Leone since at least 2022. Investigations suggested that the Dutch had maintained close links with members of the Sierra Leonean elite. The notorious drug kingpin is said to be wanted across Europe for drug trafficking and murder. In absentia, Leijdekkers, famously known as “Bolle Jos,” got sentenced by courts in both the Netherlands and Belgium respectively. His prison terms were 24 and 13 years in jail respectively on charges of involvement in large-scale cocaine smuggling and other violent crimes.
Footage of the viral video that turned the tables on Kanneh showed him receiving a birthday gift from Leijdekkers. To compound issues, there were further allegations that Leijdekkers was in a romantic relationship with Agnes Bio, daughter of the president. The investigation was credited to the efforts of an investigative outlet named Follow the Money, in alliance with the Dutch newspaper, Algemeen Dagblad. The two had opened a can of worms signifying a potential corruption roulette in the Sierra Leonean government. The Kanneh sack was the culmination of a growing list of controversies that had enveloped Leijdekkers’ secret stay in Sierra Leone. While the Dutch authorities, upon discovering that he was holing up in the country, requested his extradition, the absence of a formal extradition treaty with the Netherlands made the extradition request difficult.
Leijdekkers’ stay in Sierra Leone has introduced a new dimension to broader issues of concerns about criminal networks exploiting the absence of extradition treaties between their home countries and West Africa. This has enabled them to turn the sub-region into a transit point for drugs bound for Europe. While this extradition treaty impasse is an issue that has to be sorted out with Europe by West African governments, Nigeria needs to learn some lessons from the Alusine Kanneh case. First is the speed with which the Sierra Leonean president fired him. As perception is said to be reality, further stay of the immigration chief in office would have dragged the image of government through the mud. Secondly, as a token of its disconnect from the alleged evil that Leijdekkers epitomized, ending his linkage to the government was the most sensible thing to do.
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Nigerian government officials have sometimes been linked with certain criminals within the country, yet they suffer no sanction. In this regard, Nigeria needs to take a cue from Sierra Leone. Most importantly, the Sierra Leonean government’s decision will, on the surface, signpost it as being opposed to all that the wanted drug lord stands for and thus, even if only momentarily, highlight its transparency. It is therein that Nigeria stands to learn some very symbolic lessons. The first is that a government official is not supposed to take any form of gratification, either in the closet or openly. The second is that any public official who does it has already compromised the office. Allied to this is that those who occupy high office must be above board. They must not violate the laws governing their agencies. Lastly, associating with bad elements in the closet has a potential damage on the image of the government official because bad character is like a blot.
Governments must rise to their duty of wielding the big stick when such scenarios come to their attention. Wielding the big stick on such officials is a symbol of moral authority. Again, there have been so many reported cases of corruption against public officials which the government glossed over. What this does is to lend official credence to corruption, thereby allowing crime to flourish. Society is imperiled when a government loses its moral power to sanction evil in the society because of cronyism, intra-systemic corruption or weakness. Nigeria has a significant lesson to learn from this Sierra Leone story.
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