The famous body language of President Muhammadu Buhari is still actively turning things around. The improvement in electricity supply is attributed to that body language. So, too, are fuel supply and other economic indicators, except of course economic growth, which is reportedly regressing. Responsively, also, a few other agencies, particularly the anti-graft bodies, are expertly reading the president’s body language, adjusting appropriately, and ramping up their activities. The Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) has found the courage to take the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, to the Code of Conduct Tribunal where he is expected to answer to false declaration of assets charges. The CCB will do more in the coming weeks in order not to be outdone by other agencies.
But no agency in recent times has found its bark and bite so dramatically as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). For the agency, there is no cold case anywhere. Files and books are being opened with alacrity, and both the high and low look set to be dragged before the courts. The famous Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment fiasco of 2014 is a typical example. In that exercise, some 6.5m people chasing 5,000 vacancies were reported to have paid N1000 to participate in a recruitment test. The NIS and its consultants made about N650m from the fees charged the applicants, but 15 people died in the stampede that accompanied the test shoddily administered at various centres nationwide.
Suddenly the EFCC, which ignored public outcry over the fiasco last year, has exhumed the case files and swooped on the former NIS boss. The former minister under whose ministry the NIS carried out the exercise is expected to be hauled in for questioning too. The minister was not so much as frowned at when the recruitment debacle occurred because he had been taken under the wing of powerful legislative forces at the time. Now, President Buhari’s body language has seemed to prove too strong for any malfeasant official to ignore.
But what is really evident all over Nigeria is not that agencies are finding their bark and bite, or have become adept at reading the president’s body language. The plain, deeper truth is that the nation boasts of few men of character anywhere. Their rediscovered form is not a true form; it is simply caviar to the general.
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