Wonders shall never end

efcc: The arrest of Manira
6th February


Have you heard that Manira Haruna Dariye has been arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission? This, I shamefully confess, is not the first time the EFCC has arrested anyone and therefore it ought not to be news. But, quite unfortunately, it is news all the same because Manira is a newborn baby who, if you were to put the money allegedly laundered by her Uncle Joshua Dariye in her tiny hands, she would try to chew it thinking it were food. But whether she could tell the difference between money and bread is immaterial as little Manira is as much under arrest as if she could tell the difference between her right hand and her left.
It is Manira’s enviable fortune to get arrested so early in life so that she would learn later in her formative years that justice does not roll down the high plateaus of Jos like a mighty stream, nor does it cover the heightening rocks of Abuja like a harmattan fog. It should do her a lot of good because suffering breeds patience and patience breeds character and character breeds honesty. And honesty, according to conventional wisdom, pays – though it does not seem to pay enough to satisfy the Alamesieyeghas, Baloguns, Dariyes, Wabaras and Osujis of this world.
According to media reports, the EFCC had gone to arrest the younger brother of the embattled Governor Joshua Dariye of Plateau State, Mr Haruna Dariye. Not finding the man they decided to arrest his wife? Which action, I figure, the EFCC could justify by sanctimoniously quoting the fact that the Good Book and conventional wisdom declare that the two (the man and his wife) shall become one. And since little Manira had just been born she had to be arrested alongside her mother to also prove to Nigerians at home and abroad that the sins of fathers shall be visited on their children (even to the third generation) by the all powerful EFCC.
Press accounts of the incident of the arrest of Manira have left the facts a little murky. There clearly was a fight and some men (including EFCC officials) were injured. One account even has it that an EFCC man was abducted. Manira could not have joined in the fight and she could not have cared a wee little bit about it. She would have been crying in her cot over all the noise, and desirous of being breast-fed. But she, poor child born at the "wrong" time to the "wrong" couple, deserved to be arrested because the daughter of a lion would eventually become a lioness, and the daughter of a Dariye would ultimately become a Dariye – that is if EFCC does nothing about it in the national interest. So they picked her up to keep her under their watchful eyes and see how by careful genetics engineering they can kill the Dariye genes and turn her into a Ribadu or better still, Obasanjo, and thereby make the world a better and safer place for you and me.
Uninformed people could argue that in civilised societies you do not arrest a woman or a baby for the sins (or if you prefer, the crimes) of her husband or father. You could even refer to the Good Book which posits that no more shall it be said in Israel that the fathers’ have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge. But this is not Israel, so if a father eats sour grapes his children should begin to worry about their teeth being set on edge. Though the whole problem here is that Manira has no teeth to be set on edge, and as such should have been given time to grow something which could be set on edge before her arrest.
You could argue that babies ought to be spared arrest in the macrabre drama of money laundering and sundry financial crimes committed by the high and mighty in our land. That, I suppose, is a position informed by the fact that you were once a baby. I sympathise with you. Well, if you must know, folks like us (EFCC officials and me) were born as adults. We were never babies and we do not know why a baby should be innocent of the father’s misdemeanor. Ribadu, I have it on good authority, was solving mathematical puzzles before he was born and the day he was born he looked the doctor straight in the face and said "Decent conduct demands that you do not look at a naked man who has just come out of the womb. You can leave now Mr Man, I can take care of myself from here." You who were once babies hold babies in high esteem, eh? That is okay, but not folks like us (Ribadu and me) who missed this metamorphic stage of mankind’s existence.
So… this is partly why EFCC does not have compunctions about the moral imperatives of right and wrong in arresting a baby. To them Nigeria is made up of two kinds of people – thieves and the President’s men and women. And they know for a certain that the son or daughter of a thief is either a thief or a thief in the making. They are not concerned with civil liberties and civil rights – they would rather leave such distracting matters to the Ganis of this world and focus on catching thieves through using avowedly McCarthyist methods.
Of course lately the EFCC’s operational methods have reminded one of McCarthyism. The word McCarthyism is derived from the activities of United States Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908-1957). During the cold war, Senator McCarthy - one of the most patriotic Americans who ever lived and a man who left his office as a circuit judge to fight for his country during World War 11 - headed the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He waged an obsessed and paranoid campaign against communists and members of the American Communist Party. His methods left a lot to be desired but he capitalised on the paranoia of Americans for communism and got away with his unorthodox methods for a time. Much later moderates put paid to his unwholesome hounding methods and his only ignominious legacy is the contribution of the word McCarthysm to the English language. This word according to Encarta Dictionary means the practice of using unsubstantiated accusations or unfair methods of investigation to discredit people. One may not accuse the EFCC of using unsubstantiated accusations to hound its quarries, but you can sure accuse them of using unfair methods in their investigations.
The same mistake Joseph McCarthy made is being made by EFCC. It is a mistake captured perfectly a couple of millenniums ago by the Roman orator and statesman, Cicero (106 - 43 BC) when he said "extreme justice is extreme injustice." But these are not the best of times to pontificate on the need for the respect of citizenship rights by the commission in its fight against endemic corruption in high places in the nation. As a matter of fact, you lose your citizenship right at the moment the EFCC’s torch swings in your direction.
As a point of fact, forceful arrest in the kind of case involving Governor Dariye is supposed to be effected in a situation where a citizen ignores a summon or an invitation to appear before a competent investigative body or judicial panel. We have not been told that Manira had such an invitation extended to her, nor did her mother receive such an invitation. Newspaper reports have not also said whether Haruna, Manira’s father received his invitation before the swoop on his house while he was (by his own account) in Gombe. EFCC believes in shooting first and estimating the damage after.
But let’s not digress further, let us consider the question of what should be done to Manira. I suggest she should be found guilty immediately of being born at the wrong time, to the wrong man, who married the wrong woman, and lived in the wrong house and had a wrong brother, who became the wrong governor of a wrong mountainous state named after a plateau. And do note that a plateau is defined in one of its entries as "a phase of stagnation: a phase in mental or physical development during which little headway is made." Let us convict her of not having the common sense and moral rectitude to decline to suck breasts assisted with laundered and embezzled funds. Since the father used laundered money to marry her mother and nurtured her with this same money when she was pregnant, the baby should have known better than to be born to such a couple and would have elected to be born to my wife who is interested in a ‘third’ child. As a matter of fact she is an accomplice after the fact of crime and a potential key prosecution witness. Meanwhile, I suggest her name be changed from Manira to Ma-Naira or better still, Ma-Nigeria.
But if this is not all right by Ribadu, I would simply suggest that he should keep the baby and throw away the bath water.