Today the level of confidence in Nigeria is
remarkably high, and President-Elect General
Muhammadu Buhari has been described by many as
embodying ‘the promise of change’. Hardly surprising
given that one of the reasons he became President-
Elect is because of his apparent zero-tolerance for corruption. Nigerians have indeed continued to offer
increasingly passionate support to the President-
Elect, and have been very busy setting agenda for
the incoming government on how it can bring about
real change. Expectedly, high on the list is the need
to prosecute and punish corrupt high-ranking government officials. But one useful complementary legal remedy against
corruption has been largely ignored: the use of
human rights law to empower the citizens and
provide effective remedies for victims of corruption. Corruption is anathema to effective enjoyment of
human rights but it is often considered an ‘ordinary
and victimless crime.’ It isn’t. Yet, the myth that corruption is a victimless crime
has prevailed for many years, in part because of the
narrow conception of corruption, and the perceived
legal and practical challenges, such as causation,
legal standing, and evidence-gathering. However, it
is not that those who characterise corruption as victimless completely disagree that it causes harms,
especially to the economically and socially vulnerable
(that is, any individual or determinate class of
persons, who by reason of poverty, or disability or
socially or economically disadvantaged and vul­
nerable position, suffer most the immediate effects of violations of human rights caused by corruption). On the contrary, the argument often put forward is
that since no one victim suffers more harm than
others, and that there may be no direct victim, it is
probably pointless to labour in search of ‘invisible
victims’. This line of reasoning would appear weak
and difficult to sustain, for the following reasons. First, apart from causing both direct and indirect
economic and other harms to citizens and the public
in the form of the loss of the common wealth and
public revenue, corruption also causes non-monetary
loss in the form of widespread and consistent denial
of impartial application of the rule of law. While it may be difficult to quantify the harms that
corruption causes, this doesn’t make the harms less
real, less destructive, or less corrosive. In fact, the
manifestations and indicators of these harms can be
easily recognised in the form of poverty and the
systematic, gross human rights violations that millions of economically and socially vulnerable
Nigerians have suffered for many years. As former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stated
during the 2003 adoption by the General Assembly of
the United Nations Convention against Corruption
(UNCAC) corruption that it, ‘[H]as a wide range of
corrosive effects on societies; undermines democracy
and the rule of law; leads to violations of human rights; erodes the quality of life… hurts the poor dis­
proportionately by diverting funds intended for
development, and undermines a state’s ability to
provide basic services.’ While it is true that the causes of poverty and
underdevelopment in Nigeria are complex (and no
single factor causes poverty), the longstanding
problem of corruption is unquestionably one
explanation for deficits in the rule of law, a drain on
public treasury, and exacerbation of existing vulnerabilities and inequalities. The Buhari government therefore can’t afford to
treat grand corruption as an isolated incident if it
doesn’t want to be accused in four years’ time of
leaving both communities and individual victims of
corruption powerless and without effective remedies. At the moment, the legal frameworks against
corruption in Nigeria do not reflect elements of the
accountability of the government for the human
rights violations faced by victims of grand corruption.
The victims are largely neutralised (and virtually
anonymous) in the criminal process, with no access to human rights remedies. The overriding priority for the Buhari government
starting on May 29 is, therefore, first, to provide a
strong leadership by proposing and facilitating the
passage of a bill by the National Assembly that
would characterise grand corruption as a breach of
national trust and grant citizens enforceable human right to ensure the eradication of corruption and
abuse of power; and, second, to establish a Trust
Fund for Victims of Corruption in the country. With respect to the first point, the Buhari
government can take a clue from the abandoned
1995 draft Constitution of Nigeria (proposed,
ironically, while Abacha, regarded as one of the most
corrupt leaders of Nigeria, was in power), which
explicitly grants legal standing to the citizens to sue for violations of their human rights occasioned by
corruption. The draft constitution provided in section
35 that ‘Every person shall have the right to: (a)
ensure the eradication of corrupt practices, and
abuse of power; (b) protect and preserve public
property; (c) fight against misappropriation and squandering of public funds.’ The proposed legislation can also contain provision
to characterise the failure of national and foreign
banks to prevent stolen funds from being cached in
their system and to aid in their recapture as
complicity, after the fact, and itself, a delict. Second, the Buhari government should establish a
Trust Fund for Victims of Corruption, drawn mostly
from recovered stolen wealth and other interests
that might be generated from this. Given the limited
resources available, fines should be imposed on
corrupt officials, and such fines should be set aside as endowment for the trust funds. The proposed
trust funds can also be augmented by support from
international development agencies and other
relevant institutions and the private sector. Part of the funds should be used to establish victims’
assistance programmes to ensure the victims’
perspective is fully integrated into the fight against
corruption. The notion of trust funds for victims of human rights
violations is a well-established mechanism in
international law and relations, such as under Article
75 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court (which creates a fund for the benefit of victims
of international crimes and their families, the assets of which may originate from money or property col­
lected through fines or forfeiture imposed by the ICC
on the individual perpetrator). The idea of a trust fund is also frequently adopted in
mass claims programmes (such as the Iran-United
States Claims Tribunal of 1981) to provide ‘effective
remedies for numerous individuals who suffered
losses, damage or injuries as a result of an armed
conflict or a similar event causing widespread damage’. The existence of armed conflict is not a
requirement for mass claims: similar types of claims
would arise from environmental disasters, causing
widespread damage or injury, or from systematic
human rights violations in peacetime caused by
corruption. The goal is presumably to achieve ‘practical justice:
that is a justice that would be swift and efficient, yet
not rough’. Mass claims cases are clearly similar in
kind to the adverse effects of corruption on human
rights. Therefore, the Buhari government should
replicate the mass claims principles, and work towards establishing trust funds (as an essential
element of remedial justice) for victims of
corruption. By establishing such trust funds, the Buhari
government will also be signalling that victims will
no longer be marginalised in the fight against
corruption. Indeed, the UN Basic Principles of Justice for Victims
of Crime and Abuse of Power provides some
guarantees for victims (including family members of
direct victims), such as those that suffer ‘substantial
impairment of their fundamental rights’ through acts
or omissions, including abuse of power. Corruption is implied here as the ultimate abuse of power. Victims
of human rights violations would be entitled to
effective remedies, regardless of whether they bring
their claims against the state in an individual or
collective capacity. On the one hand, the institutions of governance and
the society as a whole are the victims. On the other
hand, corruption disproportionately inflicts grave
harms on the economically and socially vulnerable,
who, in addition to violations of their specific human
rights, are also denied access to effective operation of the rule of law and institutions of government. In his ‘Covenant with Nigerians’ the President-Elect
stated, ‘I believe if Nigeria does not kill corruption,
corruption will kill Nigeria.’ He is spot-on. But if any
significant and sustainable success is to be recorded
in the fight against corruption, the Buhari
government will need to avoid more of the same. Nigerians want to see General Buhari taking creative,
radical, evolutionary, and bold initiatives to fight
corruption and thereby working to create a state that
serves its people’s interests. Make no mistake, the road to ‘change’ will be filled
with ‘potholes and blind curves.’ But four years from
now, Nigeria can be ‘a new country’ where corruption
is no longer considered ‘normal’ if the Buhari
government can show strong leadership, political
will, and the courage to do something dramatically different. As John Maynard Keynes said in his famous speech in
Manchester in 1926, “The political problem of
mankind is to combine three things: economic
efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.”
Buhari’s primary task in the next four years is to
produce a country that will come closest to passing Keynes’s triple test.



http://blogs.premiumtimesng.com/?p=167540

BUHARI my HERO!
AMEACHI my ROLE MODEL!!
FASHOLA my GUY!!!

God bless Nairaland.

Just hang any motherfucker dat chop our money!

Will the crooked laws be applicable to thieftinubu thief obasanjo thiefatiku thiefsaraki et al? If no then it is dead on arrival.

WAI!!!