Former Kogi state governor, Yahaya Bello, made an appearance at the FCT High Court on Wednesday, November 27. Aside putting a lie to insinuations that he is a fugitive from the law, his appearance in court before Justice Maryann Anenih turned into a carnival as many admirers, supporters and fans from across diverse divides thronged the courtroom.
Many lawyers inside and outside the courtroom were stunned by the organic love displayed by these Nigerians. While some persons were quick to conclude that it was a rented crowd of emergency admirers, what this writer and many other persons noticed was a crowd of genuine fans standing in solidarity with Bello. The surge of humanity on the court premises and even inside the courtroom could not have been rented. They cut across gender, demography, party affiliations, ethnic divides and religion. To any discerning mind, the presence of such huge crowd, described by AIT reporter in the station’s prime time news at 8pm on that day as “unprecedented” more than justified the popularity and the love Nigerians have for Bello. The crowd was an indictment on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Without prejudice to the outcome of the case, the messages on the lips of many of those who thronged the court was that EFCC was not prosecuting Bello, but persecuting the former Kogi governor whom many claimed was paying for his political principle of standing and supporting former President Muhammadu Buhari and refusing to step down or step aside for anybody in his party, the APC, during the political hustings leading up to the 2023 election.
Some made allusions to the pile of cases before the EFCC which the Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, has effectively ignored. Some of those with open fraud cases at the EFCC are now ministers, senators, chairmen of political parties and major actors in the Tinubu government. They wonder why the EFCC has turned a blind eye to these cases knowing full well that the suspects have no immunity hence should be prosecuted.
The Bello sympathisers accuse the EFCC of bias, insisting that despite the posturing of Olukoyede that the EFCC under him has been reformed from persecutorial to prosecutorial anti-crime agency, nothing has changed. Some even claim that rather than reforming the agency to adhere to basic principles of law and due process in dealing with economic crimes, Olukoyede has deformed the agency, turning it into an attack terrier in the hands of the powers that be.
And there is enough ground to believe this school of thought. In the case of Bello, it appears that the EFCC has been breaching the law in the manner it has acted in its wild attempts to arrest a man who has a validly procured court order restraining the agency from arresting, harassing and intimidating him. In some cases, the EFCC tried, gestapo-style, to arrest Bello even when there was a pendency in court of the case of violation of his fundamental human rights, a constitutional right and privilege bestowed on him as a citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. If there had been any party in this ongoing saga behaving in the most undemocratic and uncivilised manner, it’s the EFCC, not Bello.
This is the sense in which the public should see the various attempts by EFCC to paint Bello as a fugitive from the law as a ruse, a perfect alibi to deflect public scrutiny of the agency’s pernicious actions. As one lawyer said during the court appearance of Bello and the show of malicious enthusiasm by the operatives of the anti-graft agency, if the passion being exhibited by EFCC on the Bello case is deployed in cases of former governors who had been investigated and fingered in multi-billion naira scams including those who stuffed dollars into the pockets of their overflowing ‘agbada’ and those who are now in the senate making laws for the ‘good governance’ of the nation, Nigeria would have become corruption free.
But it has to be emphasised: Bello was and is not running away from the law. Just as his legal team said, Bello embraces the law, respects and believes in the sanctity of the judiciary. All the rights by way of court orders that restrained the EFCC from trampling on him without fair hearing were given to him by the courts. Such a leader who believes in the judiciary cannot be said to be running away from the same judiciary. Bello showed up in court on November 27th after exhausting his legal rights up to the Supreme Court. It is therefore malicious and infantile to attempt to tag him a ‘fugitive from the law.’ He is not.
On the issue of the huge crowd that thronged the court, this cannot be tagged ‘rented crowd’ or a show of disrespect for the court. Huge crowd in courtrooms or on court premises is as old as legal proceedings. Socrates, the Greek philosopher was in 399BC charged with sacrilegious corruption of the youths because of his teachings. Whereas there was no TV to record proceedings at that time, history has it that huge crowd of followers and supporters thronged the open arena where he was tried.
Have we forgotten the September 6, 2004 trial of Indonesian journalist, Tempo editor, Bambang Harymurti who faced charges of defamation and spreading false news that provoked social discontent? A crowd of journalists, civil liberty organisations, lawyers and others besieged the court calling for the acquittal of Harymurti and forcing the judge to shift the judgment day by a few days. Court cases involving US celebrities, O.J Simpson, Michael Jackson, the undisputed King of Pop, and many others have been known to attract huge crowds. These are usually cases of popular people, sometimes made popular by the media, their social equity or by their sheer courage to remain defiant and refusal to capitulate to state capture or institutional oppression. Bello, as Nigerians now know, is a victim of his own act of courage and defiant disposition to tyranny of the majority and institutional bullying.
Whatever may be the prognosis of the legal dogfight, it must be noted that Bello is not being prosecuted on account of corruption, otherwise how can EFCC in self-righteousness explain to Nigerians why many former governors with proven cases of corruption, some with living and walking evidences, not being prosecuted but are allowed easy transmutation as senators, ministers and free men and women.
Knowing what Yahaya Bello stood for ahead of the 2023 elections, it is understandable why EFCC has cherry-picked his case to show to the world how efficient it has become in the war against corruption. But it’s all too clear, now, that it’s nothing but inverted efficiency. Only time will tell.
- Odumosu writes from Abuja
