With Nnamdi Elekwachi
When President Goodluck Jonathan, GCFR inaugurated, as part of his sectoral reforms in the pension system, the now-defunct Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT), the main goal of that initiative, among others, was to ensure that what was due the retired population in Nigeria – especially those who had served that nation in their prime and active years – get to them in a country with no or down-broken social welfare system for its old and inactive population. I still recall the fanfare that followed the appointment of one Abdulrasheed Maina as the PRTT boss and later all his “laudable” records, especially when some persons, supposedly of pensionable age, would, before the entire world on national television, thank Maina for the successes recorded then in the pension sector, narrating how they were getting pensioned as and when due.
Following that TV advertisement, I saluted Maina. His pension regime I lauded also. So, this is to say that I knew Maina from the get-go of his PRTT days even before he was recently brought to reckoning.
Sadly, it was not long before Maina was in the news again for all the wrong reasons. As with many Nigerian elected and public officials, Maina had not only looted the nation’s (pension) fund in his keeping, but had feathered his nest with proceeds therefrom. He later fell from grace; from a reformer to a persona non grata, and was soon on the run having been declared wanted by the EFCC. Summons were served on him by the National Assembly but Maina who did not make any single appearance for interrogation in any of our hallowed chambers – green or red – fled Nigeria instead and proceeded to United Arab Emirates, UAE to enjoy in peace his largesse!
As a person of interest, the EFCC inserted Maina’s name in Interpol’s watchlist as Maina soon began making headline stories with polemicists, essayists and commentators having a field day.
The coming to office of President Muhammadu Buhari by 2015 gave many Nigerians some hope that Maina and his other cousins still at large would soon be brought to book. But that hope suffered a reverse when, under our nose, in the current dispensation, Maina was nearly reinstated for promotion – with an explicit order that “all his salaries” be paid to him – in the ministry of interior, from the position of a Deputy Director on salary grade level 16 (SGL 16) to a Director on salary grade level 17 (SGL 17)! It was later denied by the authorities themselves that Maina, said to be receiving his salaries even as an exile, was being reabsorbed into the civil service cadre. Part of that refutation also claimed that Maina had never received any salary since 2013. Vertically, memos were flying top-down; from the presidency to the head of the nation’s civil service commission and down to the ministries, and back again, bottom-up, from ministries to the presidency. It was not long before it was alleged that the Attorney General, Abubakar Malami, working hand in glove with the former interior minister, Abdulrahman Danbazau, had orchestrated the return and reintegration of Maina, similar to the same way “repentant” terrorists are reintegrated in Nigeria. This too was denied by both ministers!
As soon as he established that the coast was not clear, Maina, who was facing trial was to jump bail whereupon he went to Niger Republic. In 2020 when trailing of him got heightened with EFCC alerting the DSS to join and intensify their own tracking, Maina’s son, in an encounter Maina had with the DSS operatives, pulled a gun on the operatives but was later overpowered by the custodian of arms! Faisal Abdulrasheed Maina, Jr., 20, the chief obstructor of justice and enabler of crime later got sentenced to a term of 14 years in correctional centre – thanks to Justice Okon Abang!
On Tuesday, November 9, 2021, Maina’s case was decided by Justice Okon Abang of Abuja High Court. A 12-count charge preferred against him, all of which he was found guilty of, had him bag a sixty-one-year prison term to run concurrently for 8 years. That judgement handed down by Abang, in his wisdom, was seen as “not justice enough” by this writer (permit me to assume that noble title for the purpose of this piece).
With the sixty-one years prison term to run concurrently for eight years beginning from October 26, 2019, though the law assumes and establishes that Maina was supposed to have been jailed two years before now, the same law also gives him just a “paltry” term of five years and eleven months prison term in a country where someone could serve out same or even more term with a fine option to boot, just for stealing foodstuffs or an item, like say, a tuber of yam! As a layman who can argue a point of law, this is my contention and why I maintain that the judgement, though in a sense appreciable and commendable, was “not justice enough.” I still commend Okong Abang, nevertheless.
I would have preferred a judgement that read a term upwards of ten to fifteen years and which, to deter other would-be “Mainas” in our public and political offices, stops Maina from holding any position of trust after serving those years. This is the kind of justice I would say is commensurate with Maina’s crime, else how do we administer and dispense justice to those retirees most of whom having waited in vain for their pensions retired unsuccessfully to their graves without enjoying the fruits of their labour because a Maina sat on their pay and rights? Leaders are expected to possess a high degree of moral capital and character, and should not have the latitude to perpetrate and perpetuate crime, but Nigeria is afflicted with numerous “Mainas” across all sectors, it does not get better!
Maina teaches us the need to strengthen our institutions through laws. If punishments for certain crimes, I believe, often come with commensurate consequences as provisions of our laws, not many here would get involved in corruption so brazenly since sanction outweighs action. But yet there was also a treatment accorded Maina which left many, including my good self, wondering and doubting if the former pension boss was indeed being taken to any correctional centre (as we now call our prisons).
That the court had pronounced an accused a criminal, as happened in Maina’s case, should beget limitation to his rights and certain privileges to which he is entitled as a citizen and should also ensure that the correctional service operatives, as is the norm, cuffed his hands like we saw in the Orji Uzor Kalu’s “convinction”, yet Maina found a hand with the use of which he was waving at his cheering supporters at the court premises.
That Maina, now a criminal before the law, was chauffeured in an air-conditioned private vehicle away from the court represents everything about the Nigerian proverbial “sacred cows”! That was the sickening point at which I recalled how for only winning election and insisting on reclaiming his stolen mandate, Chief M.K.O Abiola made court or tribunal appearance(s) conveyed in Black Maria as later did Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and others so numerous to mention here. I still think that such a VIP treatment given to a full-fledged criminal nearly rendered the entire proceeding and pronouncement a travesty of justice!
And before I go, let me ask a few questions. Were the EFCC agents themselves not really convinced that Maina was being whisked away to jail to have made for him, wanting to bring him under their own custody instead, thereby creating a scene with operatives of correctional service which reminded one of “Sowore versus the DSS” at an Abuja court? In the first place, why was Maina nearly reinstated in the ministry of interior which the Nigerian Correctional Service (what used to be Prisons heretofore) falls under? Could it be because he is an “ally” of some insiders and higher-ups of that ministry and the agencies it supervises? What, by the way, happens to his loot beyond impoundment? Will the federal government liquidate same and pay the proceeds into the nation’s pension fund whence came Maina’s plunder, or will it just end like other episodes in the never-ending Nigerian drama?
Indeed, Maina raised a litany of questions in our national conversation.
