There is mass hysteria in the land. Sentiments are being whipped up into a maddening frenzy where outright lies are hyped as gospel truth. The unrelenting media trial is made to pass as fight against cor­ruption.

As far as such propagandists are concerned, the gullible minds must be made to accept it. After all, were the same Nigerians not forced, again through propaganda, to accept that Dr. Goodluck Jona­than was utterly clueless and the PDP achieved nothing but corrup­tion in their 16 years of misrule? In the same manner, Senator Bu­kola Saraki is being heckled to step aside. And of cause, Senator Ike Ekweremadu has to also go with him. The two must go. In propa­ganda, facts hardly count. The lies repeated long enough become facts and even when the truth is eventu­ally learned, the victim is already done away with and his/her reputa­tion left irreparably in tatters.

Otherwise what do you make of some recent fake news reports on the Senate, syndicated in some national daily and online, claiming that Senator Ike Ekweremadu is standing trial at Code of Conduct Tribunal? In case you missed it, the syndicated callous write-up states in part; “It is further feared that Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekwer­emadu, may be removed if they are found guilty by the CCT...” Yet, as far as facts go, Senator Ike Ekwer­emadu is not even standing trial at CCT or standing criminal trial anywhere in Nigeria or outside Ni­geria for that matter. So, where are these newspapers getting the Ekw­eremadu guilty fear from?

Also syndicated is a piece list­ing Ekweremadu as one of the 9 Senators standing criminal trial, stating; “Ekweremadu, who has been at the Senate since the era of Senator David Mark in 2007, is facing a forgery case at the Fed­eral High Court. Shortly after the inauguration of the 8th Assembly, he was grilled alongside the Clerk to the National Assembly, Salisu Maikasau and others by operatives of the Nigerian Police over the for­gery case.”

This is so dumb. But do propa­gandists care? Everybody knows criminal matters are brought to court by the State (Police, Ministry of Justice, etc.) and not by individu­als. The case in question should be a civil matter brought against the National Assembly management by 5 Senators over alleged forgery of the Senate standing orders, the document used for the conduct of the Senate elections. In this suit from which the presiding judge, Justice A. Ademola, just withdrew himself as demanded by Ekwer­emadu to avoid bias, only had Sa­raki and Ekweremadu joined and both were not the ones primarily sued. It is sad that such newspa­pers, which should be setting the records straight and educating the public, are the ones deliberately falsifying facts and pushing them on as truths. It is so misleading feeding Nigerians that some ag­grieved Senators or anybody for that matter can now initiate crimi­nal proceedings in Nigerian courts without permission from the At­torney-General of the Federation.

What is even more baffling is that these newspapers still repeat­edly claimed Ekweremadu was quizzed by the Police, which the Police said never happened. Our politics can be sustained only by the rule of law and ethos of de­mocracy, and not by the rule of the jungle.

The fight against corruption has to be divorced from Politics if it has to succeed. What is more, the APC Government has to move away from campaign and get into governance mode in which propa­ganda has no room. A farmer dis­covered $600,000,000 buried in his farm by Pablo Emilio Escobar Ga­viria, a notorious Colombian drug lord. The same pictures were used, unedited, to push the propaganda that a former Air Chief in Nigeria buried a million dollars in his soak-away.

The obsession to get rid of Saraki and Ekweremadu despite their pro­tection by the Constitution is being sustained with this propaganda. Ni­geria is a nation of laws, not of men and their whims and ego-tripping.

President Muhammadu Buhari strikes me as a lone wolf; a good man; the right man in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He had referred to himself as ‘a sitting duck’ at his maiden media chat. Whatever this means, it is his way of heaving a sigh and saying, “this is democracy”. And as himself also observed at the said media chat, when he came around the first time in 1983 as a military dictator, like Louis XIV of France would say, Buhari too could say, “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the state”).

In the military dictatorships and monarchies, the nation all begins and ends with the head of state. There is no procedure; there is no judiciary or legislature, no deliberations. The military dictator can write a letter and declare any­one he wants arrested for whatever reason. He can decide to go to war. He can make laws and repeal them on a whim. Buhari himself said that in his fight against corruption then, he ordered people who held political offices arrested and pre­sumed them all guilty of corrup­tion until they proved their inno­cence. This was possible because in a military dictatorship the three arms of Government are practi­cally fused in the head of state.

In a democracy – government of the people, for the people and by the people – the three arms, namely, legislature, executive and judiciary, are separated in the quintessence of separation of powers and each headed by sepa­rate individuals who are checking and balancing each other.

Democracy is necessarily slow and cumbersome, even more ex­pensive than a dictatorship. Yet, it is adjudged the best form of Government and for good reasons accepted as better than the most be­nevolent dictatorship, which some Nigerians are now baying for.

After the overthrow of the civil­ian regime of Second Republic, all the Governors and ministers were badgered into detention on the or­ders of the military head of state, including the Vice President Alex Ekwueme, who was held down at Kirikiri Prisons for months while the investigations that eventually found nothing against him lasted. Many of them did not survive the experience even when they were eventually released and died soon after. Governor of old Benue Aper Aku, Clement Isong and Ambose Ali who was Governor of the Old Bendle State are examples.

Such examples are an ample proof that the accused is better pre­sumed innocent until the accuser proves the guilt and the criminal responsibility to be meted as a con­sequence. Yet, some Nigerians be­lieve that those accused of corrup­tion should be arbitrarily arrested and summarily tried and jailed.

Justice follows a process of judgment, which when circum­vented can spell disaster when the innocent ones suffer and there is no way of telling who is actually guilty without following the pro­cess. Evidence of the fact that it is all allegations is contained in the fact that investigations are still on­going in most of cases being pros­ecuted by the EFCC, ICPC and the Code of Conduct Tribunal, which means that by the time the inves­tigations are completed and fresh facts considered, the individual may well not be guilty. What happens to the injuries suffered by the ac­cused, including health complica­tions arising from such arbitrary arrest and detention, like the cases of Aper Aku, Clement Isong and Ambrose Ali and more recently, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha?

Back to Saraki’s CCT trial; here is a Bureau, which sat on Saraki’s assets verification for 13 years now rushing through trial even without giving the accused the benefit of responding to the observed dis­crepancies as required by the Code of Conduct Act 2001, Article 3 (b). Here is a Bureau, which may be doing this as a monkeyshine to clear its decade of lethargic non­performance and negligence of duty.

Here is a Bureau whose chair­man is accused by a certain Rasheed Owolabi, who is standing trial before the tribunal over asset declaration of paying money into his PA’s account. Of cause EFCC ignored that fact and charged the man’s Personal Assistant Ali Gambo Abdullahi instead on false information about the N1.8m he is believed to have collected from the former official of the Nigerian Cus­toms Service.

And just when you think you have heard it all about corruption in Nigeria, another earsplitting figure pops up and involving those you think are the consciences of the nation. Days ago, the Manager of a Chinese civil engineering and construction company handling the Abuja Rail Project, Etim Abak, told the Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory that for­mer President Olusegun Obasanjo awarded the Abuja Rail Project in 2007 without an engineering de­sign or a MoU. Also, the Minister of FCT and current governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir el-Ru­fai, allegedly signed the $841.645, 898m contract based on an un­calculated estimate. The commit­tee was also told that the contract, which was for 60.67-kilometre rail project, was inflated by $10m per km and that the length was later re­duced to 45km without refund of the cost for the 15.67 km that was dropped off from the project.

El Rufai would be a star State witness in the Saraki CCT trial and Obasanjo just this January wrote a stinker to the National Assembly accusing it of unbridled corrup­tion.

In the face of this, should the Buhari Government give up the fight against corruption? Hell no. But three things must be done; re­move politics from it and deal with everybody equally regardless of party affiliation, leave propaganda out of it and let the fight not divert attention to core governance is­sues. Also, if Saraki’s political trial must continue despite its inexpedi­ency, let him not resign since they chose to bring it up now after de­laying it for 13 years.