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In 2003, a relatively unknown assistant
commissioner of police, armed with little more than a letter of
appointment, and an Act of the National Assembly, set out to battle an
enemy that had gone unchallenged for as long as anyone could remember.
The mission to wage war on corruption appeared to be yet another case
of wishful thinking tainted with misguided zeal; a fool rushing in
where angels had refrained from treading.

But Nuhu Ribadu was a serious man. Within three
months of his appointment as head of the newly established Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), no less than four of Nigeria’s
biggest advance fee fraudsters had been arrested.

In no time the heat was turned on where it
mattered the most – the highest reaches of government. One of the most
prominent persons to fall was the nation’s top cop and Mr. Ribadu’s
boss, Inspector General of Police Tafa Balogun, who had spent his
tenure looting police funds and leaving tens of thousands of police
officers penniless and unpaid.

There were several other investigations and
convictions, touching every level of government – local government
chairpersons, state governors, ministers. All of these cases that were
constantly being uncovered and investigated were evidence of the extent
to which Nigeria had succumbed to institutional corruption.

What made matters worse was the absence of any
political will on the part of the country’s law enforcement agencies.
In 2001, Nigeria’s name was included on a list of “Non-Cooperating
Countries or Territories”, issued by the Financial Action Task Force, a
global anti-money laundering organisation.

The EFCC under Mr. Ribadu fought the battle
impressively. In 2006, three years after the commission’s creation,
Nigeria was taken off the blacklist. It was clear to all that, even
though corruption still existed, things had changed, and a culture of
impunity was no longer to be tolerated.

But whatever high hopes Nigerians had were not to
last for much longer. Under the Yar’Adua administration, the
anti-corruption battle took a bizarre turn, so that Mr. Ribadu and the
EFCC now seemed to be the hunted. Today, with the benefit of hindsight,
and with assistance from Wikileaks, we know what happened. Michael
Aondoakaa, the man in charge of the justice ministry, was more adept at
subverting the law than at protecting and enforcing it.

While not trying to argue that Mr. Ribadu was a
flawless man, or that his EFCC always operated above board, we can
still safely argue that the commission’s days of glory belonged to the
Ribadu era.

Farida Waziri, Mr. Ribadu’s successor, has in our
opinion, failed to live up to expectations. A recently released
Wikileaks cable (dated May 2009) hints at the frustration with the EFCC
of the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA.) In the cable there
is a reference to SOCA’s determination to “continue its working-level
coordination with Nigeria’s Economic and Finance Crimes Commission
(EFCC) in spite of the EFCC’s refusal to move on high-level political
cases…”

Every now and then there is a show of strength on
the part of the EFCC, as though to remind us that it still exists. In
the past week we have seen another outburst of activity. Lucky
Igbinedion, Governor of Edo State between 1999 and 2007, already
previously convicted of corruption, is now in court again, over fresh
allegations involving N25 billion. Oyuiki Obaseki, the former boss of
the Nigerian Premier League, is also being investigated in a case
involving N3 billion made to magically disappear.

But if the past is anything to go by, it is easy
to predict that all of these exertions will lead nowhere; that we are
merely on the road to yet another dead-end.

Meanwhile, everywhere one turns there is evidence
that corruption is still very much alive and well in our fair land.
Only a few weeks ago a deputy director in the Federal civil service was
arrested by the EFCC, after N800 million was reportedly discovered in
her account. Billions of dollars of oil windfall earnings from the
Excess Crude Account have vanished in the past year.

This is not the time for the EFCC to give anyone doubts about its
commitment to its mandate. Farida Waziri needs to sit up and get her
job done – or resign immediately if she’s not capable. (Oh well. We
admit it; we are eternal optimists.) Mrs Waziri is a product of the
Aondoakaa era. That should ordinarily be enough for realistic people to
conclude that she is a lost case. But hope springs eternal. The
alternative is to regard the fight against corruption as dead, and
awaiting burial.