By Reno Omokri

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was founded by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003, as an agency to fight financial crimes and work with the international Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering to ensure that Nigeria was not blacklisted by the international community, due to the weakness of previous efforts to fight money laundering and other financial crimes in Nigeria.

This is because Nigeria had developed an evil reputation during the Abacha administration as an international haven for money launderers, most of whom were Northern military officers directly connected to the Abacha military junta.

That was the main reason for setting up the EFCC.

With this historical background to help you put things into perspective, try to answer this question: How many times have you read of mass EFCC arrests in Northern Nigeria? Never. It had never happened. Such mass arrests only occur down South.

Under Buhari, the EFCC is reduced to a body for indiscriminately harassing Southerners, including legitimate people in business. You go to the EFCC offices, and you overwhelmingly encounter mostly Northerners.

All the EFCC Chairmen have come from the North, which is understandable under a Southern President, for balance, but not under a Northern President. The currency Black market in almost every Nigerian town is run by Northerners or citizens of the Niger Republic.

But the EFCC turns a blind eye. But they stereotype every successful, young Southerner as a fraudster. The North will not take this from a Southerner. For example, see how Buhari is protecting DCP Abba Kyari from the FBI. Would that be the case if it were DCP Okonkwo or Balogun?

Every young Southerner in a decent car, well dressed and well-groomed, is automatically an EFCC suspect. This is psychologically affecting the mentality of young Southerners. It is making them feel inferior to Northerners on the one hand and dampening the zeal to succeed on the other hand because of the default criminalisation of success by the EFCC.

If he happens to have dreadlocks and tattoos, then he moves from being a suspect to being guilty until proven innocent.

Let us face it. There is a vast cultural difference between the North and the South. Southerners are more materialistic than Northerners, who tend to be fatalistic. Southerners tend to be more aggressive in pursuing Western education and upward mobility than the average Northerner, whose approach is more conservative.

We cannot say that one approach to life is better than the other or that one is more prone to criminality.

Our law enforcement and criminal justice must be evidence-led, not sentiment-driven. And under Buhari, it has been driven by sentiments.

For example, Sani Abacha is provably the world’s biggest thief. This is a fact that I acquired while studying for my Masters in Law in the UK. He and his sons have been convicted and at least $5 billion seized from them.

Yet, despite the multiplicity of evidence proving that Abacha was a blood-thirsty buffoon of a rogue (if that offends you, go and hug a transformer on behalf of the many Nigerians he killed), Buhari declared Abacha a saint, saying ‘Abacha never stole’. Why? Because Abacha was his benefactor and a Northerner.

Yet, this same Buhari has called former leaders of Southern origin, who have not been convicted by a court “thieves”.

And when the Abacha loot was repatriated back to Nigeria under Buhari’s tribal and corrupt government, the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami refused to refer to them as loot, instead he called them the Abacha “assets”.

And on April 17, 2016, when Switzerland repatriated another batch of Abacha loot totalling $320 million, the hypocritical Buhari refused to describe the money as stolen and described the funds thus:

“Nigeria is awaiting receipt from the Swiss Govt. of $320 million, identified as illegally taken from Nigeria under Abacha”.

This will give my readers a background into the bias against the South that exists under Buhari’s administration.

And with EVERY law enforcement body in Nigeria being led by Northerners, the bias is too obvious not to be seen.

The heads of all three arms of government in Nigeria are Northern Muslim males, as are the heads of the Army, Air force, Ministry of Defence, Police, Department of State Services, Directorate of Military Intelligence, Defence Intelligence Agency, Nigerian Intelligence Agency, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Nigerian Customs Service, Nigerian Prison Service, and the Nigerian Immigration Service.

And if nothing is done to address this imbalance, the psyche of the average Southern youth will be so damaged for at least a generation. That is why we must speak out.

To show you how biased the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission under Buhari is, consider that they have not arrested Nasir Danu, a member of Buhari’s kitchen cabinet, who was arrested with a fake passport and huge sums of money at London’s Heathrow Airport, and sent back to Nigeria. They have not tried Babachir Lawal, who was caught with his hands in the cookie jar, in the grass-cutting scandal. They have not arrested Aisha Buhari’s ADC, who was implicated in an alleged multibillion naira scam. They have not prosecuted Usman Yusuf, previously Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, until he was suspended by Vice President Osinbajo for alleged financial impropriety (the man even has the guts to appear on TV passing himself off as an activist nowadays). They have not arrested and exposed those behind the Ikoyi Apartment billions.

The biggest smuggling hub in Nigeria is Katsina state. Snuggling is by far the biggest economic crime against the Nigerian state. Yet, the EFCC has a minimal presence there, with little or no arrest.

The EFCC has not also investigated the then Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachukwu’s memo, which alleged that the then Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Maikanti Baru, a prominent Northern member of Buhari’s cabal, had awarded $25 billion worth of contracts without due process.

I wonder why? Perhaps that $25 billion was also “illegally taken from Nigeria”?

I am a Nigerian because I come from one of the two regions that were forcefully amalgamated by Lord Frederick Lugard to come up with the country now known as Nigeria. I will not deny my Southern heritage, nor would I want the people of Southern Nigeria to lord it over Northern Nigeria. And I definitely will not sit idly by why the reverse is the case.

I have my own business. I do not have any political ambitions. My future is not tied to bootlicking the North. I will speak if no one else has the guts to speak. This nonsense has gone on for too long, and an end must be put to it.

The imbalance in the leadership and operation of the EFCC in favour of the North and against the South is one of the issues that have led to the popularity and rise of secessionist movements in Southern Nigeria.

For instance, why is the EFCC after Obi Cubana and not Bola Tinubu? We provided evidence of Tinubu’s corruption to the EFCC, including photos of bullion vans going into his house on Election Day, contrary to The Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2011. Why Obi and not Tinubu? Is it because Obi is Igbo and Tinubu is linked to prominent Northern politicians?

And what is true for the EFCC is also true for the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency. While the North is being ravaged by drug addiction, From hard drugs, to cough mixture, to even something as base as sniffing human excrement, Buba Marwa and his NDLEA agents have focused almost all of their activity in the South. How many mass NDLEA arrests have you read about in the North?

Meanwhile, Tramadol is more easily available than Panadol in Northern Nigeria.

It is precisely these types of injustices that make organisations like Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s Indigenous People of Biafra and other secessionist groups popular in certain parts of Nigeria.

And as long as this imbalance continues, then those agitations will continue. Not only that, they will grow in tempo and intensity. Because, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Originally published at Thisday