WE WILL PUT JONATHAN IN DETENSION

As a lawyer, John Bayeshea, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and clergy, is well known for his dogged interventions in public affairs and human rights issues. He was at the head of the legal team that prosecuted the popular court action by the UNILORIN 49 teachers which saw the Supreme Court reversing their sack and reinstating them after nearly 10 years. In this chat with BIODUN OYELEYE, Bayeshea, expressed disdain for the way investigators are treating ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, with kid gloves over the arms purchase scandal. To the legal luminary, in saner climes, Jonathan should be answering questions from detention by now. Besides, he took a swipe at some stakeholders in the judiciary alleging that they have become tools in the hands of ‘corruption’ to fight the ongoing efforts by the Buhari administration to cleanse the system

How do you react to the issue of the missing budget?
Well, this is Nigeria; anything and everything ugly is possible. Otherwise it is unimaginable that the budget that was presented to the joint session of the National Assembly will be missing, you know it is in this country that all scandalous things happen. So it is missing, so what are they going to do?
But I think Ali Ndume the Senate Majority Leader, has said there is nothing like that. I think people are just playing some games. I don’t believe it is missing.
But you see, the problem of the National Assembly is a moral issue. If you look at how the leadership of the national assembly came to be in place, it has been raising a lot of moral questions and it is this moral question that is still haunting the national assembly; issues of integrity, issues of probity, issues of sincerity and righteousness. People don’t even believe in what they are doing. So that is part of the whole package of the moral problem.
That is what I can say about that and I think we should just leave it at that.
Last year, former President Goodluck Jonathan presented supplementary budget to the National Assembly to spend more on arms purchase and it was approved. That money is part of what has now become the Dasukigate. What is your reaction to the whole scenario?
I don’t know….personally I am so frustrated about the affairs of this country that sometimes I feel I should not talk about anything because in some other countries, in some other more serious countries, even the former president cannot be in his house by now. He should be in detention answering questions.
Look at Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and his sons; they have been in prison for over five years now. The man is over 80 years old. He and his sons were given jail terms of four years on some charges. They appealed to the highest court in the land; the appeal was rejected last week.
The man is in detention in a military hospital; from there they bring him to court. Look, you cannot injure the collective wellbeing and welfare of the citizenry and be walking free on our roads as if nothing has happened. When people are dying, imagine graduates of five, ten years roaming the streets without jobs.
It not as if we don’t have money. This money is in few hands. I don’t know the type of human rights that people are propagating in this county which allows you to steal, loot the treasury, keep the loot and you will even be intimidating the state and you will be fighting the system with the loot and you will tell the system you will not even return the loot and some courts will be lending you support.
It’s a big concern for everybody. We cannot fight corruption in this way. The President has good intentions but he cannot do it alone. He is not getting cooperation.
If the National Assembly gave the former President approval, that was even a good thing. It means that that was one step towards good process. You presented to them that you were going to buy arms because our soldiers were being slaughtered by a rag tag army of Boko Haram and these soldiers were complaining they had no arms; that the rag tag army of Boko Haram were better equipped.
Because of these complaint, about 100 of the soldiers were court-marshaled and sentenced to death. And you said you wanted to use the money to buy arms and the money now ended being used for campaign for PDP.
In some other countries they will be stoning them right left and centre. Such huge money? In America, if a penny or what is called slush fund is found in any person’s account, such a person will pay dearly for it. Even if it is the President of the country, he will pay dearly for it. These people are well prepared to fight anything that will destroy the very foundation of righteousness, probity and good governance.
They will fight it to high heavens. So they gave you approval, and you now gave the money to one man. What type of country is this? This is a banana republic.
You now bring it in Ghana Must Go bags. Are there no accountants, are there no vouchers, are there no cheques again? You know, sometimes I think there are more dollars in Nigeria than even in the USA?
In USA you cannot make a withdrawal of more than 10,000 dollars from any bank at a time. If you want to withdraw 10,000 dollars alarm will sound because the unthinkable is happening. Their transactions are basically a cashless system because they want to monitor everyone. But here, we are talking about huge money, $2.1 billion.
From that Raymond Dokpesi alone got N2.1 billion. No wonder he was making so much noise during the election. So it means he (Jonathan) deceived the National Assembly to give him approval. At least as bad as Nigeria was under him, those National Assembly if they had known he was going to distribute the money anyhow like that I believe that National Assembly, as terrible as things were then, they would not have approved that money.

So he should be invited and interrogated?
Nobody should be above the law – whether they are going to arrest or invite or by whatever name because the bulk stops on his table. He cannot tell anybody that he did not know anything about these things. After all, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told us she got his approval to give the money to Col. Sambo Dasuki, (rtd) for him to spend.
They knew they were going to use it for campaign. Our money! The most painful aspect of this thing is that even the money they recovered from looters, where did they keep the money?
They didn’t tie it to any project for us to see. The money they recovered from Abacha is enough to do all the roads in Nigeria. Even if they take the money whole and use it to build the Third Niger Bridge at least people will see and be saying oh, the huge money we recovered from Abacha this is the project we used it for. And imagine how many people have stolen our money like that.
So I have asked questions about this, that it is like a case among the Yoruba that says a thief steals and another takes it over from him. They gave you cooperation, America gave you cooperation to recover the money but see how they have related it. If we now want to recover funds from the new looters. Will any country cooperate with us now? Are we serious as a nation?

How can we stop these abuses?
The only thing we can do is that anybody and everybody who is involved in these dirty deals must be tried and if found guilty let them go to jail first and foremost, so that people will know that crime does not pay. In Nigeria, crime and criminals are celebrated. In fact, the legal system seems to make them heroes of some sort.
Because when they manage to arraign them in court after the hue and cry, after the media hype, then they make a caricature of them with shouting headlines as judge remands them in prison, but after that what happens? The judge comes to grant them bail. Haven’t you seen the trend?
No matter how stiff the bail condition is, these people are able to meet the terms. They will say N200 million, N500 million and the surety must be a current director in the civil service. Where do those directors get that huge amount?
How are they able to become surety? Because the courts are even thinking that no civil servant will be able to get that type of money because what the courts are doing by that bail condition is that if the accused should jump bail, the guarantor will forfeit the amount of money.
And imagine the number of directors who are ready to forfeit that amount of money by signing for those people to be released on bail. So you can see that this country is stinking to high heavens. And immediately these people are given bail, that is the end of the hype.
The trial doesn’t get up to anywhere again. They will begin to frustrate it. We have cases in court that have lasted for seven years and so on, that are languishing in the courts, in fact some of them cannot be heard again because the witnesses are no more, the cases have been badly already frustrated by time lag. So we must first of all deal with this current situation. Punish severely those in court.
That is when we can now sit down and ask, what regulations we can make about campaign funds? Until we deal with the basic criminals now, the foundation is ugly, terrible and bad and the bible says if the foundation is bad what can the righteous do. So you cannot do anything if you don’t deal with the foundation. That is why the developed nations are far ahead of us. Every day they are dealing with situations that want to truncate their system.
Do you support the idea of plea bargain for these looters?
Those who proposed plea bargaining under the Administration of Criminal Justice Act have looked at the peculiar situation of Nigeria and found that our legal system is too porous.
No matter whatever effort you make, we don’t know what is wrong with some judges or some of the courts, we don’t know where they get their powers from, we don’t know where they get their courage from, and we don’t know what is happening. If you take these people to court, they will just say they have been discharged and acquitted.
Even some of these courts will even make some orders that they should never be arrested again; they should never be prosecuted again, etc.
What sort of country is this? That is why those who proposed plea bargain thought that if God helps us and we are able to collect our money from these people, let’s collect the money first then we can now talk about the type of sentence we can give that person.
The idea of plea bargain is not that you should run away completely from liability. No. That was how it was before. It was badly and terribly abused before.
I can give you the case of former governor Lucky Igbinedon who was taken to court on charges of taking billions from the state and he just went to court casually after they had done plea bargain and they were shouting they had done plea bargain. He was convicted and give an option of N3 million.
Nothing was said about the money he was accused to have stolen again. The N3mliion even his cook can pay it and then he went home. So the ACJA has looked at the pros and cons; there are very stiff conditions that people don’t know about this plea bargain. When people recently were castigating the AGF for saying that for cases that have caused serious damages to our lives and economy that he is not prepared to enter into plea bargaining with anybody, he was right because plea bargain cannot succeed unless the prosecution who are under the AGF agree. And it is at his discretion, it is not compulsory.
The Act did not make it compelling that Nawhen plea bargain is proposed then it must be accepted. So cases will be looked at in their own circumstance and merits before plea bargain would be accepted. So it is not as if once it is mooted then it must be accepted. No. It is his prerogative as AGF.
Al I know is that plea bargain, if properly followed will not be abused. Parties may even agree to plea bargain, that is both the prosecutor and defence teams, but the court may still reject. So it is not as if it’s sacrosanct. It was even never like that. It was meant to ease prosecution and recovery because nobody makes plea bargain without first admitting the charge.
Plea bargain is not mean to help the person keep the loot, no, you will return the loot. But you will still be punished only that the punishment will be very light.

Recently, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), expressed concern about apparent refusal of FG to obey court orders as regards the detention of some suspects. 

How do you see the development?
I read it myself and I will rather say that I have reservations about his statement. I have told you before that I don’t even understand some of our courts. We have reached a stage in Nigeria where the system, made up of the executive, judiciary, legislature and the citizenry as a whole should stop celebrating people who have caused and are still causing pain and tragedy for Nigeria, either economic tragedy or human tragedy in any form whatsoever or anyone who threatens the peace, security, stability and continued existence of Nigeria.
In this, why will criminals not be rejoicing and celebrating thinking that they are smarter than everybody when the system is over-protecting them?
Even the citizens are over protecting them. You could imagine that people are writing all sort of rubbish in the papers saying that this man, his human rights are being destroyed, the rule of law this and that. Rule of law is not a fraudulent concept. Rule of law is all encompassing. If you want to enjoy the benefit of the rule of law, you must conduct yourself properly within the legal system of the country. Obey the laws of the land properly. Don’t take the laws of the country for granted. Don’t take the country for granted.
Because it may get to a stage that you may not find it easy anymore. It may be easy at some point but along the line the challenges may be big that you will have to face the rigours of the law in a very raw and very drastic form.
We seem to be in that era now. Excuse me, what right does a man have under rule of law or fundamental whatever you call it whereby you create economic adversity for the whole nation, for the citizenry, you bring misery, you bring diseases, poverty and hunger and death to people in the country and then you go to court?
People don’t even know what human rights are anymore because human rights without economic emancipation, without good economic standing does not make sense. People think that human rights refers to locking people up and freeing them. It’s all encompassing.
There is economic rights which cannot be fulfilled because some people have also taken even your basic right to life, to enjoyment, and then he comes back and tells you that they should give him human rights. It is an abuse of the total concept of human rights.
As at today, even in USA and Britain, nobody takes the system for a ride and goes scot free. In fact, they will not let you go home until they finish your case.
The only difference is that they will fast track it. If the President or Prime Minister steals their money today they will take them to jail to go and wait until they finish their case. The Common Law system we are practising in Nigeria is from Britain. Do we claim to know it more than those people? Today, if you cause this type of damage of monumental proportion that we are seeing here, in Britain, they will not let you go home.
Let me tell you, even their lawyers have already studied their system, they know the body language of the system that they will not even ask for your bail. They will only press for speedy trial and you know your fate. After granting them bail, no case succeeds in Nigeria again. Go and look at the list. Unless we have a paradigm shift under this administration, the dangers to our system is unimaginable.
So Falana is entitled to his opinion but the system must stand firm and strong in pursuit of the objective that it is enough, things cannot continue the same way in Nigeria again.
What of the issue of immunity for some public office holders?
I don’t believe in immunity from day-one. Where we borrowed the concept from let me say again that they will hardly abuse that immunity. Let me cite an example; when (former) President, Bill Clinton, had the problem of Lewinski, which almost cost him his presidency, they didn’t spare him.
His impeachment was almost perfected. If they grant you immunity, it means so much confidence has been reposed in you that they put you in government; that you are able to get to the position you got to.
At the tail end, when Clinton was to end his tenure, you remember thy said he committed perjury. On the eve of his leaving office, his legal team, not even government lawyers and that is why plea bargain is good sometimes if properly used, they went and met him at the White House and told him his immunity would cease.
They reminded him of the case of perjury and that they had studied it and could not see any reasonable defence that could help him; that they had been talking to the prosecution and raised the option of plea bargain on his behalf.
That if he could just confess, which was what the whole country was looking for, that the president would just own up and say I am sorry because that means no one is bigger or higher than the system. They told him if he agreed, the prosecution would let him go home but there would be sanctions which include conviction and ban from practising in Arkansas for 10 years.
They said if he refused plea bargain, he would march straight to prison from the White House immediately he finished handing over. He agreed and embraced the plea bargain. The system now punished him, but they did not allow him to go to prison because confession on its own was a very big matter. But do you know that some of these people carry this thing too far? After leaving office security people are hardly able to touch them. Look at (former) president Jonathan now. Nobody is even talking about inviting him.
Why should the system be afraid of anybody? Look at Olisa Metuh, in some other countries, it’s not that they are asking you to release the money in your account, once security people are able to prove that he didn’t work to get that money, he cannot keep that money.
They will get court order to forfeit the money. Although I am also beginning to have problems with our courts though not all of them are bad. A lot of them will stand for what is right.

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