'Corruption War: Should We Shoot Lawyers and Accountants?' By Shola Oshunkeye

To say that Ishola Williams, a retired Major General and top-notch of Transparency International, is an unsual General would amount to stating the obvious. He is, perhaps, the only known General who is not obscenely rich and who could not be accused of being a treasury looter. He has been forthright both in public and in private life, which is why he could stand shoulder to shoulder above his corrupt peers and tell them, ‘You are a thief!’ without fear of possible backlash. He calls a spade by its name and offers no apology for his brutal frankness. He cares less if you hate his guts and would not mind if you take a frog jump into the lagoon if you detest the truth he knows and tells.

He was in his most uncompromising mood on Monday as he proffered a desperate solution to the virulent cancer of corruption raging the land. The occasion was the annual Gani Fawehinmi lecture. And some of the nation’s brightest and best lawyers and jurists, including the retired Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Mohammed Uwais, chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, Justice Olayinka Ayoola, and Nuhu Ribadu, the youthful but no-nonsense chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, had gathered at the Ikeja Airport Hotel, Lagos, to extol the virtues and principles of ‘Fawehinmism.’

In his usual devil-may-perish style, Williams sent the hall metaphorically on fire, as he demanded, in the speech he delivered ex-tempore, that lawyers and accountants should be bundled in a bus, driven to the Third Mainland Bridge and turned overboard. At first, the hall reverberated with the roaring applause that greeted the unusual suggestion, notwithstanding the fact that over three quarters of the audience members were lawyers. Later I began to hear loud murmurings at the west wing of the Oranmiyan Hall where I sat.

Justifying his hard-line suggestion, he said while accountants help officers to tinker with the books and manipulate figures to facilitate treasury looting, lawyers help sustain and nurture the cancer by taking briefs from the looters and helping them cover their tracks. And as long as that vicious cycle continues, the festering cancer of corruption will continue to flourish. A desperate situation needing a desperate solution you would say?

Maybe. But the Williams prescription, to my mind, appears extremist and highly impracticable, even in a Hobbesian state. Even if we hypothetically agree to its practicability, who would help agencies like the ICPC and EFCC prosecute official thieves and fraudsters whenever they are caught if we herd them all into the lagoon? Who would defend people like Williams is he is suddenly ensnared by a Gestapo and rogue regime like Abacha’s?

And the accountants? Williams seems to have forgotten that accountants, auditors, both noble members of the accounting fraternity detected all the monumental frauds that we have heard or read about.

While agreeing perfectly that there are, indeed, several rotten eggs in both professions, as in all professions, including journalism, we should not forget the good deeds of the principled and courageous practitioners who subordinate personal aggrandizement for the good of all and swot day and night so that we can have a better society.

I think we should let the lawyers and accountants be.


CULLED FROM ‘DAILY SUN’ FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 2006.

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