Institutions rarely fail in dramatic fashion. They unravel quietly—through hesitation, contradiction, and the gradual loss of moral discipline. That process is now visibly underway at Nigeria’s flagship anti-corruption body, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Between 2023 and 2024, the Commission briefly appeared to rediscover its mandate. Its Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, spoke with a clarity uncommon in Nigerian public life. He narrated evidence, described conduct, explained investigative steps, and attached consequences. He spoke publicly of advance foreign-currency payments of school fees—about $720,000—made in anticipation of leaving public office. He presented this not as rumour but as a finding from a case file he had personally reviewed. He framed the context plainly: this was occurring in one of Nigeria’s poorest states; public resources were being converted into private benefit. These were factual assertions, not rhetorical flourishes.
More significantly, he detailed extraordinary efforts at restraint. Out of respect for the office once held by the suspect, Yahaya Bello, the Chairman said he placed a personal call—an act he acknowledged he was under no obligation to undertake. He invited the former governor to appear quietly. He offered access through the Chairman’s gate. He proposed questioning in his own office to avoid media spectacle and preserve dignity.
The response, by the Chairman’s own account, was evasion, followed by refusal, and ultimately by flight.
At that point, Olukoyede did what any serious law-enforcement head should do: he asserted the authority of the state. He made it clear that investigation does not depend on a suspect’s convenience, that arrest is not optional, and that prosecution can proceed without a statement if the evidence is sufficient. He also made a critical institutional distinction: prosecutors investigate and prosecute; courts convict.
Then he went further than most public officials ever do. He publicly tied his own moral authority to the outcome of the case.
“If we don’t see this case through,” he said, “I will have no moral right to accuse anybody of corruption in Nigeria. I resign.”
That sentence mattered because it was precise. It converted resolve into obligation. In a political culture saturated with broken promises, it sounded like a binding moral contract. Nigerians understood it as such.
What followed should have been routine.
After prolonged non-cooperation, the suspect wrote to the Commission indicating his intention to surrender. Charges were filed. The matter entered the judicial process. At that stage, the role of the Commission was straightforward: execute arrest where necessary, prosecute diligently, and allow the courts to do their work. Silence would have been a virtue.
Instead, the Commission chose to speak again—but in a different register.
In January 2026, after the surrender letter and after charges had been filed, the Commission issued public statements reminding Nigerians that the suspect is “not guilty until proven guilty.” The proposition is legally correct. The timing is institutionally incoherent.
Presumption of innocence is a principle of adjudication. It governs how courts determine guilt; it is not a communication strategy for prosecutors. It restrains judges, not investigators. It requires no public amplification once a matter is already before a court. When a law-enforcement agency foregrounds a suspect’s innocence in the media at this stage, it signals not fidelity to the rule of law but uncertainty about its own posture.
Language matters in institutional life. How an agency speaks reveals what it believes about itself. When the Commission spoke with confidence in 2023–2024, it projected authority. When it retreated into constitutional platitudes in 2026, it projected caution.
An institution that publicly brands a suspect a fugitive, narrates evidence in detail, receives a surrender letter, files charges, and then pivots to emphasising presumption of innocence is not clarifying the law. It is managing expectations. And expectation management is rarely a sign of institutional strength.
The credibility problem deepens further in light of a recent development: the suspect has publicly indicated his intention to seek election to the Nigerian Senate from Kogi Central. This declaration is not, in itself, unlawful. But in any serious constitutional democracy, unresolved criminal prosecution is treated as a threshold issue for public office, not a footnote to be managed while electoral ambition proceeds.
The danger here is not ambition; it is normalisation. When a person facing serious criminal charges can plausibly plan a return to elective office while the prosecuting authority softens its public language, the message to society is corrosive: accountability is optional, and legal process is negotiable. Electoral aspiration does not extinguish criminal jurisdiction, nor does it confer moral insulation. Yet the optics created by an unresolved prosecution, combined with the Commission’s sudden emphasis on presumption of innocence, risk converting a live corruption case into a background administrative detail—something to be managed rather than concluded. This is how anti-corruption institutions lose authority: not through defeat in court, but through accommodation of political momentum.
There are only two plausible explanations for the Commission’s tonal reversal, and neither inspires confidence. Either the evidentiary foundation of the case has weakened and the agency is preparing the public for a diminished outcome, or the political and institutional costs of sustained prosecution have proved heavier than anticipated. In both scenarios, the earlier certainty now looks unsustainable.
This is not an argument for conviction by publicity. No serious observer of the rule of law demands that. What is at issue is coherence. Enforcement agencies derive credibility not from noise but from consistency. You cannot speak like a prosecutor one year and like a defence brief the next without accounting for the change. “Seeing a case through” does not mean guaranteeing conviction; it means pursuing arrest, arraignment, and prosecution to their lawful conclusion without rhetorical retreat or political accommodation.
Once a public official voluntarily ties his legitimacy to a specific outcome, failure is no longer a technical matter. It becomes ethical. Olukoyede set that standard himself. Nigerians did not impose it.
Today, the suspect is not in custody. The case remains unresolved. And the Commission speaks in registers that are difficult to reconcile with its earlier certainties.
This is not the rule of law asserting itself. It is institutional resolve thinning under pressure. Anti-corruption efforts do not usually collapse in courtrooms. They erode when agencies forget that their authority lies not in explaining the law, but in enforcing it—calmly, consistently, and without fear or favour.
When law-enforcement agencies abandon enforcement for narrative management, corruption does not require protection; it merely requires patience. And patience—enabled by delay, indulgence, and institutional hesitation—has always been corruption’s most dependable ally.
What is theatrically presented as the prosecution of Yahaya Bello has mutated into a ritual of public relations without prosecutorial resolve. Urgency has been replaced by choreography; seriousness by spectacle. The tragedy is not simply inertia, but the studied maintenance of inertia. An institution created to vindicate the public interest now conducts itself as though its overriding duty is to preserve the convenience of the accused.
Prosecutorial credibility does not collapse suddenly; it erodes incrementally—through indulgent adjournments, procedural evasions, and a pattern of conduct that consistently advantages one defendant. When delay becomes systematic and indulgence habitual, neutrality is no longer presumed; it is forfeited.
At that point, intellectual honesty permits only one question, however uncomfortable: is the EFCC still prosecuting Yahaya Bello—or has it, by conduct rather than declaration, quietly crossed the bar to become his defence counsel?
– Yusuf M.A.
For: Kogi Equity Alliance
