THE POLICE EQUIPMENT FUND SCANDAL

IT has been a season of scandals. Before one is disposed of, another has broken. Each scandal is being pushed to the back burner by a fresh discovery. While pressure was being mounted on the Federal Government to institute a probe into the alleged financial misdeeds of the former speaker of the House of Representatives, Mrs. Olubunmi Etteh, other scandalous deeds began to surface. And it has been in rapid succession.

IN the last few months, the Wilbros and Siemens cases enjoyed prominence in the Nigerian media. Before commentators could fully examine the various dimensions of the issues involved, the Schnelder scandal had taken the centre stage. The allegation of mind-boggling depravity made by Dr. Gbenga Obasanjo against his own father and father-in-law falls into a totally-different category.

ANOTHER sordid deed that has just been dug up reveals how the whole or part of the fund raised to re-quip the police went on veritable frivolities. The Obasanjo administration set up the Presidential Committee on Police Equipment Fund in February 2006. The declared objective of the fund was to supplement the efforts of the Federal Government by raising money to acquire a helicopter, body armour, communication equipment and other requirements to enhance the capacity of the Nigeria Police in preventing and detecting crime. The committee is reported to have collected more than N50 billion after which it metamorphosed into a Non-Governmental Organisation with a new name — Police Equipment Foundation (PEF). With the change in status, the committee, it was alleged, arrogated to itself the authority to disburse the funds whichever way it deemed fit.

THE committee’s record, according to reports, shows that it spent more than five billion naira on purchase of vehicles which it shared out as gifts to government establishments, security agencies and individuals. Listed among the beneficiaries are the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the State Security Service (SSS), the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA), the Committees on Police Affairs of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Yar’Adua Campaign Organisation, the Nigeria Police, the Sultan of Sokoto and the former Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr. Sunday Ehindero. Among the 325 vehicles procured for the police were 250 luxury BMW cars and four-wheel drives which Ehindero is reported to have rejected because they were not suitable for the statutory functions of the Nigeria Police. The record also shows that the committee spent a whopping N202.5 million on a pre-launch dinner. The dinner is reported to have been costed initially at N2.6 million.

THERE have been a flood of petitions addressed to the presidency, the National Assembly, the police, the EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), calling for a probe of the management of the fund. One of the petitioners’ allegations is that part of the PEF was spent to sponsor a boxing tournament and finance the wedding ceremony of the fund coordinator’s son. Also included is that the lodgement of the fund in various banks has generated substantial interest which have not been accounted for.

IN spite of the fact that the petitions were addressed to vital organs and relevant agencies of government, nothing is known to have been done about it. Every dimension of this scandal is, like those before it, sordid and amazing. First, the government stands indicted by the fact that a fund had to be launched to generate money for the police to acquire basic equipment. The primary responsibility of the state as an organised political entity is the maintenance of order. It is the effective performance of this function that makes the difference between a modern state and the Hobesian state of nature.

IT is inconceivable that the Obasanjo-government which was collecting an assortment of taxes from sundry sources and earning about two hundred million dollars from crude oil sale everyday had to go into collaboration with certain private individuals to raise money to equip its own police. Police personnel are undertrained, underpaid and under-equipped and are, more often than not, outgunned during encounters with armed robbers. In the Nigeria Police, morale is low, performance is poor and integrity is non-existent. Successive governments have failed to lift the police to the desired pedestal. Yet a fund that was raised to solve some of its catalogue of problems has been blatantly mismanaged and the government appears to be looking the other way.

IT is obvious that the Federal Government was the magnetic force that pulled the major donors to make contributions to the fund. A private initiative by a group of nondescript individuals could not have attracted the three tiers of government, banks and foreign interests to make such hefty inputs into the fund. How was it possible for the committee set up by the government and on which government was eminently represented to transform itself into an NGO? What was the government’s reaction when the committee started expending the money on purposes that were at variance with the intendment of the fund?

IT was only the Senate that acted rather tepidly on the petition sent to it by urging the then Minister of Police Affairs, Chief Broderick Bozimo, to look into the matter. The other organs and agencies pretended to see or hear no evil because they had been compromised with car gifts.

IT is, however, gratifying that the ICPC, whose name does not feature on the list of beneficiaries, has commenced investigations into the case. It is our hope that this case, like the ones before it, will not be relegated to the background by the discovery of another scandal in no distant date.

EFCC, WETIN DARIYE DROP?

FOR many months now, former Governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye, has been the target of intense prosecutorial interest by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFFC). He was pursued from Nigeria to the United Kingdom. His impeachment was induced, while he was arrested and kept behind bars. His alleged criminal venality was a daily fare in the press. There was nothing the EFCC failed to do to ensure that Dariye was pronounced by a competent court as a rogue governor who deserved to spend the better part of his remaining years on earth in a penitentiary.

THE man did not leave the initiative to the anti-corruption agency. He fought hard to ensure that whatever he had done in office, he remained outside the measured walls of one of the slow killing-houses that Nigeria calls reform-castles. Now the man can savour his freedom with all the complements of one free of unrelenting prosecutorial “harassments”. Recently, the EFCC dropped the 14-count charges against the former Plateau governor at the Federal High Court, Abuja. Justice Babs Kuewumi consequently struck out the charges. Dariye’s lawyers did not object, the newspapers reported. Which lawyer would?

BUT is Dariye walking free or was there an agreement struck between him and the EFCC? No word from either side. Is this the sort of deals that will mark the post-Ribadu EFCC? No one can say for sure. But something definitely has happened.

ONE cheeky question that workers, even some of them in uniform, are fond of asking one another when a potential victim seeks any undue assistance from them is, E don drop something? (Has s/he offered any bribe?). In this case, there can be no offers of a bribe. The EFCC had been so offered such in the past, as newspapers reported, but the Commission stoutly rejected such. Also, Dariye would never, repeat, never be found offering a bribe to his tormentors. So what could he have offered that would make the EFCC back up? What was the settlement?

SOME Nigerians were not too persuaded by EFCC’s explanation that it dropped the charges because of a more comprehensive case it filed against Dariye. Trust the cynics who would never see good in anything, they are saying the action could be a tactical signal to the end of the Dariye case. It is the same cynical Nigerians that are daring the EFCC to answer this question: Wetin Dariye drop?