 many instances of corruption actually happen because we really don't have a choice and being ruled following in these sorts of situations really don't help. Then there's the other case where much larger organizations of which there are very few in developing countries whether in Nigeria or indeed in India where I am currently though I'm pretty much based in the UK and do my research in Nigeria. In many cases, these kind of large organizations of which there are few as I said are politically extremely powerful and therefore too powerful to be subject to any kind of formal rule of enforcement. They will not enforce laws because it's not in their interest. They can distort laws. They can make laws as and how they wish in many cases. So as you can see when we set it up rule following actually really doesn't happen in the way that standard anti-corruption thinks it should happen that everybody really follows only a marginal few really break the rules. So any anti-corruption intervention has to treat those people at the margin but we said that's not true. Most of us whether we want to follow rules or not have to infringe rules at some point or the other that makes anti-corruption extremely difficult. So we've actually set ourselves up a very, very challenging task of researching evidence that anti-corruption can work in such a context where actually rule following doesn't happen across the board where it's rule following is actually not the norm. So effective rule following will only emerge in a majority of society will want to enforce rules in their own interest. And most developing countries are really not there yet. Now that doesn't mean developed countries don't have a similar problem but the scale and magnitude and the outcome is much lower on a relative scale than with the average developing country. So the program takes this insights and operates on one common principle that top-down technical approaches to corruption have often produced very discouraging results. It also moves from a sort of standard paradigm of anti-corruption research that rests simply on unearthing corruption in the hope that the information about that corruption will somehow make the problem disappear. But most of us whether on the panel or sitting in the audience really know the corruption that's taking place but have very little levers in terms of how to tackle it and how to enforce rules. So information is really not the problem. So again, that's a significant difference that we see in our approach to corruption from the standard sort of anti-corruption approach. So driving our research is this understanding that to be effective in such adverse contexts we need to identify anti-corruption interventions that have a developmental effect that actually raise productive outcomes that actually provides better service delivery. So absenteeism in the healthcare sector should go down or electricity should be increased, electricity supply should be increased at optimum and affordable tariff rates. For us that's a developmental outcome and that's when anti-corruption has succeeded. So when anti-corruption interventions have a developmental effect and when enforcement is in my interest and your interest and the community's interest and that's when all of us come together to actually uphold the laws. And we are also monitoring others now at the margins who are not upholding the law in that particular sector. That's when anti-corruption interventions are possible and that's the kind of research that we actually do. That's why I say something you might think it's difficult that we actually find evidence of many such possibilities across important sectors like our work that we are doing with CDD now on the past sector on which we had a very robust and animated discussion really just last week on corruption in and electricity sector reforms in Nigeria. But we also identify important areas where the evidence suggests that there is no feasible anti-corruption solution at the moment, but the social costs in terms of health or environment are also very high. And therefore, anti-corruption should focus on mitigating those human and environmental costs. And indeed the work that SOAS is doing in the Niger Delta currently reflects this kind of an approach. So to put it another way, our framework states that anti-corruption is more likely when actors are interested in upholding the law, have the power to monitor the peers and can take them to task if they're violating rules. That's really the kind of, sounds simple. It's not always very easy to find it. We have to drill down very deep. We have to have intensive understanding of our sectors of how the corruption works and what anti-corruption will work in terms of the evidence that we provide. Because one of the most common causes for corruption is the enforcement deficit, as we call it, because even where robustly defined rules exist, their enforcement can leave much to be desired. So what happens when this adverse context is being discussed with reference to one of Africa's and perhaps even the developing world's most well-recognized, one of most well-recognized anti-corruption agencies, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of Nigeria. After all, water is an anti-corruption agency, but one that's meant to enforce and effectively reduce corruption. Now, the FCC has been an activist anti-corruption agency. It's also been controversial. In this context, how effective has the FCC been in its fight against corruption? What can we use as determinants of the FCC's effectiveness, volume of prosecutions? Volume of prosecutions culminating in convictions, value of assets or the amount of money recovered, the implementation of the BVN bank verification number and the treasury single account, these have all been known as successes, considered successes for the EFCC. It has made some high-profile prosecutions and convictions too, but there seems to be consensus across a broad spectrum that political interference and procedure and equity have blunted its operational effectiveness in recent times. Now, some of our research on the agency led by one of our panelists, Savilea Onyama, actually asks if Mission CREEP has led to the agency becoming a tool of recovery for civil debt. This is a somewhat questionable use of the EFCC's capabilities. Fourth coming work by Idhayat Hassan, who's the director of CDD interrogates what the parallel existence of both the EFCC and ICPC means for anti-corruptions efforts in Nigeria. So you can see we've done some thought as gone into this in constructing the seminar and also in researching the EFCC and taking further the anti-corruption agenda in Nigeria. The other reasons of course, that we won't focus on today in terms of what holds the EFCC back and we completely understand that include operational inefficiency caused by inefficient funding or lack of technical capacity, but we also do understand that the unique political economy of the EFCC because it's so ingrained within the state and governance capacities makes it a difficult organization to study. There is a question of political interference and that's what we hope are absolutely wonderful panelists when we'll be able to unpack today. So I'm going to begin with introducing Juliet Ibekaku and Waghu. Her career has had a focus on international asset recovery and management and I'm gonna read this very carefully because I don't want to get my details wrong on the panelists. Judith's career has had a focus on international asset recovery and management as well as the news of recovered assets for sustainable development. She has worked extensively in the anti-corruption sector in Nigeria and internationally currently. She's a special assistant to the president on justice sector reform, international relations in the office of the attorney general of the Federation and the Ministry of Justice. So you can see why she set up to be such a relevant panelist. She's previously been the pioneer national coordinator for the open government partnership support unit. She's been the immediate past director of the Nigerian financial intelligence unit, a unit which really came out of the FCC in one sense. She's also been assistant director international corporation of the FCC. So she's going to bring her very relevant experience to the panel under discussion today. Our second panelist is Alvan Musa Rafsanjani. He is the executive director of the civil society legislative advocacy center, advocacy center SISLAC in most of us in Nigeria and even in Africa know how important a civil society body SISLAC is. He is also the head of transparency international Nigeria and he's on the board of trustees and chairman of Amnesty International. Alvan Musa is one of the foremost voices in Nigerian civil society championing the process of freedom of expression and citizens rights which actually adoptives well with some of the aims and agendas of the FCC. So again, his experience is going to be very, very worthwhile. Professor Emilia Onyema is a colleague because I also work at the University of London. Professor Emilia Onyema is a professor in international commercial law at SOAS. She's a fellow of the chartered institute of arbitrators qualified to practice law in Nigeria and as a solicitor in England and Wales. She sits as an independent arbitrator and has experiences soul presiding in co arbitrator. She is a member of the court of the labor's chamber of commerce international arbitration center. She therefore has deep knowledge of the judicial system in Nigeria and has brought these rich insight to the ESCC research project of SOASAs as a principal investigator. Two very quick words about myself. My name is Pallavi Roy. I head up the research of the Nigeria aspect of SOASAs and I teach international economics at SOAS University of London. But I'm going to keep quiet here because I think our panelists have a lot to add to this conversation. Julia, if I may welcome you to... Sorry, Emilia. Julia, if we will get you in the second round. Emilia, if I may, if you could open with your thoughts and comments on this. Pallavi, thank you so very much. And good morning everybody. Good day wherever if you're not within the West Africa time or the British summertime. So thank you very much everybody for joining us for this discussion. Pallavi's asked me to set out what the SOASAs research on the ESCC and its effectiveness, the way we've gone about it and what we've done so far. I thought that I should have put in the chat the web link to where you will find the working papers that we've published. Everything on the Ace is online, it's available. I would highly recommend I'm going to speak to just quickly summarize this, but if you're looking for something to lie on the beach in Lagos or somewhere and read, please look at our working paper. We've written two working papers. One was in November, 2018, where we examined the ESCC what it is, its remit, its wide mandate and its effectiveness. And then in 2019 November, we published the second working paper on which we then examined the so Pallavi has talked about political capture which we looked at in the first paper. But in the second working paper, we focused more on the use by the private sector and high net worth individuals of the ESCC, Ascended Recovery Agency. And we sort of looked and tried to unpack that to answer the question if that is the ESCC going outside of its remit and then using its class resources for a bit of the project that is really not its core mandate. So what I wanted to pick up on is I think it's important to remind us that at the end of the day, it's a research project, a funded research project. That's what the ESCC, the Anti Corruption Evidence Research Project is about. And it's based on, it has a theory of change which was devised by one of our professors here, the main guy who works on ESCC, and one of the things he says, and all of this again you'd find on the website. But I think it's important and I'll try to unpack. I'll just read something to you that he says which sounds really, really academic and then I'll try to sort of break it down so that we can have a good discussion. He says that anti-corruption policies can be feasible if enforcement rules enable actors to use sustainable business models and operate productively. Sustainable business models, everybody within that sector is doing that and to operate productively because of course businesses are in business to make profit. That's one of the major theories and we know that they have bills to pay. And so if I want to just sort of really break all of that down one of the things we all know and we have found out empirically by research is that what you have in the vast majority of developing countries as it relates to corruption and we have Juliet who would unpack some of this for us is the idea of abiding by rules. But it is not a question of abiding by rule of law but rule by law. And so we have various legislations, we have the decisions of the courts, we have loads on paper but then we circumvent all of that and we just sort of check things off. So we are not led by, we're not a rules abiding community of persons. I think that is the starting point and that is critical and this is not only in Nigeria but Mushtaq's research is shown that the vast majority of developing countries that's where they are because of the informality, informalities of various sectors that we have. And so in addition to the informalities of the sectors I would want to also suggest that we need to think of our cultural background and the fluidities of relationships. And the fact that we're quite a number of so-called businesses are not very well educated. Let me put it that way for want of a better expression, very well educated. And so what I mean by that is ensuring that the law is effective and if it is effective we all abide by it. The essence of the theory of change that Mushtaq talks about is let's just take the legal profession for example and let's take the billing of clients. If I as Amelia do some work and the Nigerian Bar Association or whoever deals with billing has said, okay, you bill 10 Naira per hour for your year of call and the nature of work that you're doing. And Juliet has done the same work and then Juliet is billing 1000 Naira per hour because she knows all the high net worth individuals who are happy to pay that that would distort the market. And if we don't have enough people, enough pool of people who are willing to obey what the Nigerian Bar Association or whoever has said that is the way we should bill, then you can see that it would aid, if you like, corruption or lack of obedience. And so what you would find is that we would have, yes, we do have a rules-based system because it says you need to charge one 10 Naira per hour for this type of work and for your year of call. But are we rules obeying? No, we're not. And so one of the things that ACE is done is ACE is looking at different sectors. And the primary idea is that if we have enough people obeying the rules and have enough clout, the system itself would force the orders to become rules obeying or rules abiding or following because transactional costs will be higher for them when they do not obey the rules. And it's a little bit technical, but if you just sort of step back and think about it and think of the example I have given, then you might begin to understand the theory behind the work we're doing with ACE. And so to quickly come down to EFCC, what we did with EFCC, what we did with EFCC is we've gone into the basics and all of that. And then we said, how do we measure the effectiveness of the EFCC recognizing that a complete removal of corruption is near impossible in any community, in any community, including where Palavya and myself work. It is near impossible. All you need to do is read what's going on with the contracts they gave thanks to COVID. And then you will realize that corruption is not a Black thing or a Nigerian thing. And so that would be too high and that's not what the EFCC is being set up to do. But how can the EFCC reduce the incidents of high level corruption? And that's one of the things, that's primarily what we looked at. We recognized that the mandate of the EFCC is really wide, but we decided to focus only on, where am I now? We decided to focus only on how many successful prosecutions the EFCC has managed to have that we can focus on. One of the difficulties we've had with the research is of course data, finding data and that goes to part of our recommendations in the paper. And the best source of data ideally should be the EFCC itself and the EFCC website. We did some interviews with some judges and some lawyers who work in this field. Yesterday in preparation for this, I looked at the EFCC website and they've sort of updated their operational statistics is on their website, you can easily find that. So we looked at 2010 to 2015 the data that we used but they've updated it to 2019. And so I'm just going to take only 2019. So in 2019, the EFCC had 12,644 petitions that they received and they investigated 8,729. We don't know why they did not investigate the others. Out of that, they filed 1,901 in court and they secured 1,280 convictions of the 1,901 matters that they had in court. And so now this 1,280 started from 12,644. I think we need to bear that in mind. And so one of the things for us after doing the research with the constraints that they identified three major constraints to the effectiveness of the EFCC and Calave, I would stop after this. And that's political capture. And under political capture, we talked about whichever government is in power using the EFCC to do their bidding, to fight their political battles and things like that. And then the inability of the EFCC to prosecute politically exposed persons. And then we talked about organizational deficiencies, the difficulties EFCC has they themselves recognize things like training. But we must also recognize the type of people that are appointed in the EFCC. Quite a number of them, over 50% are for our police officers. And we all know when endurance, we know that, and this we also found out there's research to this effect that the Nigerian police force is one of the most corrupt institutions in Nigeria. And then you take people from the Nigerian police force to staff the EFCC. And then the other thing with their organizational deficiencies, the normal thing that any institution we talk about is funding, but training and collaboration with international other international agencies like Interpol and all of that. Then the third thing we picked up on is the judicial process, which in my personal opinion is outside of the control of the EFCC. So we all know that our judicial system, not just the process is no longer fit for purpose. It is very colonial. It is absolutely not fit for purpose no matter how you look at it. And so things like there are various ways the lawyers can manipulate the litigation process and the judicial process. The Nigerian judiciary is the third most corrupt institution in the country. I mean, this is not from our own research. This is from an independent research of the UNDP and the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics. And so you have those and the delays and the cost of the process itself feeds into the the the the frustration of the EFCC. And the lack of qualified personnel that bring actions on behalf of the EFCC goes again towards all of these no case submissions and inability to prove their case. And the data that I've just read to you, 12,644 petitions received and you secure convictions of 1,280, the vast majority of which are small and medium sized disputes that really should not be taken up by the EFCC. The last thing I would leave you with and hand over to Pallavi, she's already staring at me with her big eyes. So I know that I'm running out of time is that on the EFCC website, they also have a list of high profile oil prosecutions by the EFCC where they've listed a total of 43 what they consider to be high profile cases without to just put your notice quite a number of the governors and former ministers are not on the list. But anyway, they have those listed and where those matters are. So I will stop that because I'll come back and pick up on some of this and we'll pick up on some of these during the Q&A. Pallavi. Thank you. Thank you so much, Amelia, for setting that up for us. Julia, over to you. You have the enviable job and I think we'll really enjoy listening to how you react to whatever has been set out here and bring in your vast experience in this field. Over to you, Julia. Thank you, Pallavi. Thank you, Professor. That was a very, I would say very insight and discussion. Let me also say that I've just taken my time to read through the research, the ACE research actually now to 2018, 2019 as well as the recent writer by Hassan Idiat. And I think from where I see it, I can see a lot of progress from when EFCC was set up in 2004. We demanded to investigate economic and financial crimes to prosecute economic and financial crime, to ensure prevention as well. And then of course to ensure that the public becomes aware of the negative effect of economic and financial crime. So where I want to start from is from the legal framework establishing the EFCC which sets out the powers. And the powers are quite extensive. When you look at section six of EFCC gives you a rundown of all the powers that the EFCC has as well as special powers under section seven. And so when I look at these, I just want to first of all I'm sure we are coming through this process. I want to just look at what have we implemented within the framework that exists today? What do we need to implement? And then of course when we come back we can talk about challenges and then what the reforms we want to talk about. So that's the way I'm going to unpack my own introduction to this discussion. So first of all, the legal mandate gives EFCC all the powers. In fact sometimes we talk about extensive powers as you know EFCC used to be the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit as well. We meant that it has powers to investigate, to prosecute, to gather intelligence, to undertake prevention measures, to coordinate, to collaborate with other agencies but locally and internationally it also has powers to then seek for future of assets. And so within this mandate one can rightly say even compared to with so many other anti-corruption agencies in Africa and beyond that even within the US the United States Department of Justice may not even have as much power as the EFCC has. And so the thing is that there is a legal mandate to do those things that have been set out. Now when we look at that mandate within the framework of the Nigerian anti-corruption system something that you also alluded to you find that EFCC is just one of the anti-corruption agencies today in Nigeria working side by side with the independent choral practices and other related offenses commission. And what that means is that there is of course always the rivalry, the tough war about who should do what. But when I look at the mandate I find that there are very clear framework established for economic and financial crime. Now some of those economic crimes could then cut into public sector corruption depending on how you define it. And you can really again when you look at the powers you can see that you can define broadly the mandates or the powers given to EFCC. Now when you look at the powers of ICPC relation to the EFCC in fact it's limited and therefore one would then expect that more is expected of EFCC because of this wide range in powers. I think that when we begin to look at the issues when I look at the informal rules and the formal rules mentioned by Professor Melia we then begin to look at institutional mechanisms. So we have the law. What about the institutional mechanisms are there formal rules, are there formal rules and how do we apply those rules? So the law itself has also given the EFCC the mandate to set out regulation first of all policies and staff regulations. The staff regulations that would guide how EFCC's operations are conducted on a day-to-day basis. So this is different from the appointment and the removal procedure which is entirely something, if you like exogenous from EFCC because that is not their mandate is to ensure that the staff comply with the rules set within the mandate of the EFCC and I would like to make that distinction the appointment process of the chairman of the secretary and the other board members are certainly different something that the president can only comply with based on when the Senate actually confirms those appointments and the issue of removal of those top people. Now, when we look at the number of the though people at the top level we're just talking about the chairman, the secretary and probably three or four other persons who are appointed but then we have almost 4,000 staff that we need to make sure they understand what they are doing in EFCC and I think when we focus on this we may be able to begin to say, okay what do we need to do to make sure that all these people understand what their rules are and again, the act gives the power for training training continuous training so that those continuous training can guide what staff are supposed to do and going back to 2004 when EFCC was set up the EFCC training institute was set up for this particular purpose which is to ensure that EFCC begins to develop internal skills to make sure that its mandates are taken care of so that talks about the issue of the internet procedure something that is again for me is indigenous and need to be addressed internally and so we must make this distinction between the sooner mandate something that has to be done internally and something that is required externally and that takes me to the issue of prosecution so what should be prosecuted and what should not be prosecuted? The EFCC act also gives the EFCC the power to prosecute of course this is subject to the power of the attorney general but there's already a, if you like I can't blush there is this open mandate to prosecute and nobody is actually restricting that power to prosecute and what that means is that EFCC can prosecute cases that come before it after investigation so the question is have the investigation been done properly? Do you have enough evidence to proceed to the next level or are you going to prosecute just for the sake of it? These questions are fundamental when we want to look at the mandate of the courts because the court can only rule on what is before it so when we look at the number of prosecution number of conviction, investigated cases I will move into the court system the court cannot that give decision based on the facts before it and this is really very critical because we've had this debate in Nigeria about why the delay, the issue of delay actually we've tried to deal with the issue of delay under the administration of criminal justice act going back to 2015 and then the act has also indicated that the court can move faster when it comes to these types of cases but then what if the courts cannot move faster because the fact before it and the presentation of those cases are not moving in the direction that the court would want it to move of course I'm not saying that there are not issues that we need to deal with at the judicial level I'm just saying that there are also factors that we need to look at beyond what the judiciary should do and can do within its own powers so today the courts have practice directions requiring it to make sure that corruption cases move faster and within a certain timeline I think for me today the question is the courts sticking to those rules and there is this why and I hope people can come into this discussion and there is this why we still think that the courts or the judicial process is not working the way it should work is that something that has to do with the court or is it something that has to do with the agency that is prosecuting those cases and this is something that has to do with the bar what about the lawyers that go before the court and they want several adjournments over and over again and actually go all the way to protect their clients to make sure that the cases do not move forward and so those are factors that we need to look at then the other element now goes back to the issue of communication with the public how do we make sure that we prevent these crimes before they happen I've had the discussion about the treasury single account the BVN all this was set up as part of the prevention mechanisms to prevent economic crimes within the public sector to prevent financial crime within the financial institutions so they're supposed these are tools that can help but beyond these tools are they helping because it seems to me we are still every day we report cases of huge economic crimes occurring every day in Nigeria are we able to use these tools to prevent them so what are the problems why are we still struggling to prevent financial crimes the occurrence of exorbitant amount of money that still get lost in the financial system so what again is the problem so we can discuss a lot of this when we get to challenges but one thing I've found is that sometimes the public do not understand what the role of EFCC is which is where we begin to see the submission of petitions that may not necessarily go to EFCC when we talk about debt recovery using EFCC as debt recovery and so when we lose sight of what the core responsibilities are it becomes the role of the institution to make sure those petitions do not come to ES and when it does come it should be channeled to where it should go to and that's where collaboration and coordination comes in I know we talked a little bit about the role of the police in EFCC I know that today that that particular issue is being dealt with through the appointment of somebody who is a core staff of EFCC and let me explain this a little bit something that coming from where I'm working today and the attorney general has tried to push this particular instrument or if you like an administrative procedure when EFCC was set up because EFCC needed the police to establish the institution it became necessary to bring in the police at that time and the law said that you can send people on circumvent for the first two years and maybe another two years however what we saw was that from four years we now have a situation where the police were there up till 2019 I believe that is going to almost six years now the law has also given the mandate for people who have investigative security background to become the chairman of EFCC so what we did was to look at section 126 to see as okay if somebody no not section 122 if somebody who has been in EFCC for 15 years has the capacity to investigate and prosecute why shouldn't that person who is who was hired as a staff of EFCC lead EFCC by the way going back to 2005 when Rebecca was there there was already an understanding that the police will exist at some point in time and there was also an understanding that the staff who were hired as investigators from 2005 these were young men and women who were hired as core investigators to take over the leadership of EFCC over time so that has now been implemented with the recent appointment of a co-staff of EFCC we now have to wait and see how that unfolds because we need to then over time see whether the co-staff are able to take that mandate and move it forward so we need to give them some time and see how things proceed but that's one of the innovations that have been put forward recently the other thing I could touch on very quickly is on the issue of asset recovery and management and for future proceedings the law is very clear that the court's procedure should be the framework for for future of assets so there is an entering process and the final process again I'm sure people would allude to challenges in terms of actually where those assets sit once the court has given an interim order we do know that there are challenges which we could talk about but what has then happened in the past since 2019 is that we now also have a regulation on asset management which is essentially being managed by the office of the attorney general of the federation so there is an asset management unit and the essence of this asset management unit is that there should be a procedure where once the final order is given those assets are identified and there is a process to manage them and of course the court could also be requested under the administrator and criminal justice act to give an order for the sale of those assets instead of allowing it to waste away to give an order so that those assets can be sold then in order to put the required checks in place the office of attorney general is now also required under the regulation to work with EFCC and other anti-corruption agencies to ensure that those assets are disposed of pending a final for future and in the absence of a final for future if it's taking too long and you cannot sell because the court has not given an order then there has to be a procedure for management unfortunately like pointed out by Rosemilia and all the researchers in the report of 2018 and I believe 2019 we have also seen that the process of cranbill which is of course still in the National Assembly is something that is required in order to advance Nigeria's particular what I would call the peculiarity of the Nigerian system when it comes to moving from interim assets orders to final for future orders and ensuring the accountability of these assets and so what the government has done going back to 2017 is to include in the national budget an item for recovered assets so that when there is a revenue generated from recovered assets that revenue becomes an item under the budgetary framework from year to year and so we can say okay if 200 billion is recovered today it has to go into the budgetary allocation as part of that is a domestic asset by the way it goes straight into the domestic into the budgetary allocation or annual budgetary allocation and what this has done is that people can see the line item clearly and know where that money is going into for the international assets this is dealt differently because then because we're working with other countries and we have to work within the UN convention against corruption procedures it means that countries can determine working closely with Nigeria where those assets can go to but of course that is also subject to the approver by the Nigeria Federal Executive Council so what we have done in recent time with recovered internationally recovered assets is that we have begun to invest it in social welfare we are now investing in infrastructure and those things are on the website of the Federal Ministry of Justice justice.gov.ng where we are trying to make sure that people know where the funds are going into civil societies are invited to monitor where those assets are going to but I think this is where we have been we've succeeded in doing this is in the international that we need to look at it from the angle of the why can we do this with the domestic assets recovery and so it's critical that those issues come out maybe during this discussion now what we do with the outcome of these discussions I think let me stop here briefly and then I'll come back to the issue of challenges I know somebody is saying we need to talk about the challenges definitely so we will discuss it but I think I can stop here and allow others to speak thank you very much Palavi. Thank you so much Juliet fascinating and you know we can see why we're going to have a really good conversation I'm looking forward to the exchange between Emilia and you and Mr. Rufson-Janu when he comes unfortunately he's been having a few technical issues so I think what we will do is you know bring up some very interesting points that you made Juliet the fact is you know the EFCC has the framework it's given a wide range of powers I think what we are discussing is how effectively have those been used and more fundamentally are they being allowed to use those powers I think that is a very fundamental question that we need to answer it's that you know developing country phenomenon as Emilia said it's a colonial phenomenon all of us have been led with a sort of left with certain Anglo-Saxon frameworks of law and rule of law which are really not the correct framework to be used in political contexts like ours across developing countries so then we have a normative benchmark that we all want to aim towards our rules are set up to being implementable within what can actually be implemented so we do have this implementation deficit and the EFCC also suffers from it like do anti-corruption agencies across developing economies how do we match that gap and be within that problem that mismatch that we have how do we make it more effective I think that is at the heart of what we are trying to research then you talked about you know the judiciary can only rule on the evidence that they have that's absolutely true and you know some of the it's been raised I think the earlier working paper right Emilia the 2018 one yeah the delays yes exactly that these delays are a very good way of kicking it in the long grass it's just gone there and well we don't have this now what do we do nothing gets happened nothing happens no prosecutions prevention that is something that when Mr. Rafsanjani joins it's something that we would love to talk about prevention requires changing of incentives if I don't have the incentive to use the EFCC correctly and that's I think the second paper that perhaps Emilia will also talk about if I don't have the incentive to not use the EFCC as a debt recovery mechanism if I don't have fast track ports if my ports take too long to even you know educate on a civil financial sort of problem then I will use the EFCC so there are these little bottlenecks that we also need to get around prevention will happen when I want to prevent it or all of us want to prevent it so and then of course your final point about the assets how is asset repatriation taking place what and you said you know there is budgetary allocation and it is under a budget line how do I know where it's been spent do I have that live transparency and I know there are lots of civil society organizations you know budget etc you know OJP has done work on it we're trying to look at and because this is very important for Nigeria asset recovery and the use of that asset for sustainable development so you touched on some really really sort of relevant false points there and Emilia I don't know whether you wanted to come in here or maybe I think there have been quite a few questions here Can I come in while you're picking which question for us to deal with and to thank Juliet we didn't expect anything less and thank you for the way you have you have set that out as Palavi has summarized I think one of the things we need to think about as a community is this whole question of actually two questions are we fighting corruption the right way are we using the right tool because we as we said in our first paper there are different ways different countries have tried to fight corruption so again is it possible for us to organically knowing our context knowing where we are at can we organically figure out whether we're using the right tool and then the second thing that we do need to really really unpack is and something that Juliet had talked about and I'm going to say something funny there's something there's an agency of government called National Orientation Agency and I keep asking everybody I know what does National Orientation Agency what exactly do they do nobody knows but my suggestion is that ideally they should be the ones picking up on cultural sensitivities social sensitivities education on civics and civility and all of that which should help with with prevention I think one of the other angles of prevention would then be a question of how do we claw back so somebody had said something in the chat and the passing talked about how you know ethics and expectations of the society in my view the society itself is corrupt the society itself is corrupt but the irony of the corruption is that the vast majority of the citizenry do not think that they are corrupt so if I give you an example of let's take the probate division and this happened to somebody I know very recently you take the probate division and you're going to get sort of sort out your probate so you can access funds to pay your children's school fees and all of that and it is ridiculous the deliberate obstacles that the law itself has put in place in the guise of trying to ensure that it is the right person who should apply for probate and who should gain access that actually gains access to those funds and then the time it takes and so the person all those staff, the typists in that probate office doesn't think that they're being corrupt when they insist that you need to show up you need to stand there you need to bring money for this you need to bring money for that you need to say thank you and that is a huge problem and so how does the society itself define corruption and is the society itself willing as a society to move away from from their own way of conducting transactions move away from the present system and actually do things the right way so those are two major points Palavia, I think you're ready I indeed am OK, excellent excellent points made by Emilia in terms of responding to what Juliet says I think we've got some very interesting audience engagement going here so what I will do is I'll pick up a question and Emilia and or Juliet feel free to answer them Lukman, he says is it time to give urgent sufficient attention to anti-corruption prevention strategy this is something that Juliet was talking about as well as Emilia also picked up no anti-corruption can work effectively in societies where values and ethics are presently low CSOs must therefore up the game that's one question that Lukman has would any of you who would like to take this question at this point this is a huge question prevention we've all talked about it but really how feasible is prevention or let me flip it to both of you I'm just going to reframe Lukman's question a little bit it's not just about how feasible is prevention what kind of prevention can we feasibly do it's not about prevention being a hold-all umbrella term but there are bits and pieces of prevention that we could possibly feasibly do a kind of triaging if you wish that we do in medical terms whether we could do it in legal terms what would that be? what could that look like? what either of you can go ahead and pick up from that because the thing is that prevention measures already influence within the system and I am aware that one of the ICPC has been criticized for doing more of prevention work than enforcement and if you go back to all the work they have been done it's essentially trying to work with the young people work with the media work with civil society organizations work in the schools and the rest of them and Nigerians and I'm sure most of the people in this particular session would allude to the fact that people have criticized ICPC for too much work and prevention so that is not to say that there are no prevention mechanisms or what's going on because there are attempts to just get the young people to begin to understand what Corruption is all about we have today a national police on ethics which in my view has not been widely disseminated so it's one thing to have these ethical procedures in place and another thing to make it work as a matter of fact in one of the work that ICPC has done is what we call the anti-corruption unity all the federal ministries Units and Parastatars and the whole idea is that there will be a desk of itself whose responsibility is to report back to ICPC on anything that is happening it's one of the tools that were set out to make sure that people understand what the arose in ICPC is but the problem is the way that people are actually implementing that so moving from what the law or the practice is and what people are ready to impact as part of the culture of reform and part of a way to admit okay yeah we've gone wrong here we need to begin to do the right thing is completely missing and so that is just an ecosystem in which we operate and I agree with Professor Melia that there's something needs to be done about it we need to talk to ourselves we need to begin to say where have things gone wrong and it will require a systemic review of the processes of both the public and private sector from what the way we engage not just in the public sector because it's always wrong to think that corruption is just a public sector thing it is not without collusion with the private sector some of the things we are seeing today will not happen so take for example the banks where monies are moving from day to day and there are measures within our anti-money laundering framework that says if you see some amount of money you need to report it quickly to the FIU I saw that somebody asked the question about the relationship between the two so the FIU would get those reports as suspicious transaction reports and should they immediately send it to law enforcement? The PACs can also automatically report to the EFCC who should then do a quick check and stop the money from moving so that relationship exists but in a country of 200 million people how we assess the effectiveness of these measures and whether we have adequate manpower to deal with this the level at which it happens is something that we also need to look at so from day to day the amount of money that is moving around in Nigeria is so huge that you begin to wonder can we actually monitor that that's the essence of data and that's the essence of machine tools and so maybe we need to begin to look at innovative ways of doing what is our dealing with the problems we have today because I do not think that one agency is enough to deal with this but at the same time we're not talking about creating new agencies we're talking about enabling these institutions to use innovative tools to look at what is happening and begin to stop them so as part of that prevention measures we talked about the TSA the Treasury Single Account if the enforcement agencies with the FIU just monitor on a daily basis where public funds are going to and are able to say okay yeah these funds are not going where to go it should go to the other place that maybe it can narrow down the amount of money that gets to where it should not go to so these are again things that we need to look at the issue of monitoring because sometimes we look at these things as soft tools and then we need to use both the soft and the hard tools the enforcement measures because just looking at prosecution and from seriously personally I think prosecution has not worked in Nigeria so why don't we look at other ways to deal with this problem? Thank you Can I come in there thank you very very much Juliet for Amelia, two to three minutes and then we'll take another question absolutely please but I just wanted to quickly I agree with everything Juliet has said and I think that we need a spectrum of interventions and starting from what you talked about ICPC working with young people I just have one concern and something for you to maybe come back upon later that is how has the ICPC monitored the effectiveness of the work that they've been doing with the young people who are these young people we have Hosh Poppy I mean I never knew there was something called Hosh Poppy until the person was picked up and my nieces and nephews were like you don't know I don't do social media so I have no clue what that is but then if we have Hosh Poppy and ICPC comes up and says oh we have all of these interventions we're doing with young people how are they monitoring the effectiveness of their interventions it's something I would if there's anything out there and the second thing to quickly drop is that and you mentioned it as well Juliet which is the use of technology one of the difficulties the one of the greatest enablers of corruption in Nigeria is human interfaces with the different processes and so we talk about the different agencies in the Apapa port for example and you have loads of congestion there and custom this one that one everybody and yet there's a major port in China that there is no human interface it is everything is based on technology oh okay RAF is ready sorry I can't pronounce your full name RAF so we need to think about that and so how can we then take out the human interfaces to these processes Halavi please absolutely thank you Mr. Rafsunjani and it is absolutely fantastic to have you on board I think you've come in at just the right point of intervention I'm just going to do a quick introduction of your of you to the audience just so that we everybody's on the same page Mr. Rafsunjani as I began with is executive director of the civil society legislative advocacy center SISLINE which all of us recognize as one of the four most civil society bodies working on freedom of expression citizens rights that's you know these are all causes that Mr. Rafsunjani actually champions he is head of transparency international Nigeria so we do a lot of work with transparency international in Bangladesh so it's absolutely a pleasure to have somebody from transparency international Nigeria talking to us here and he's also board of trustees chairman MSD international so I will leave the floor to you now Mr. Rafsunjani I think since we've talked so much about prevention and a lot of the questions here are on prevention and getting the right messaging out and whether we have the right kind of ethics your insight on how civil society can actually help create a more robust and effective EFCC would be absolutely fantastic here over to you sir can you hear us because we know that he's been he's been waiting to come on for a bit I just hope that his technical issues have been sorted if there's a problem if there's a problem Mr. Rafsunjani will you just drop us a chat a chat message and then then we'll know or if you can get in touch with our colleague Yerimi at CDD we'll know one way or the other sorry Emilia you were saying is it okay for Juliet to deal with those two issues that I had raised and so one is how how does ICPC measure so how do they measure the effectiveness of the work they're doing with citizens to know whether it is effective with young people and if it is not to you know to restrategize and then yeah sorry second and then the second one is on the use of technology and taking out the human interfaces through the processes yes thank you Emilia first of all I'm not able to speak about ICPC's measurements framework or monitoring and evaluation from work and I hope that some of the social society organizations in this webinar can speak to that certainly whether they've been able to reach out to the at least would say the number of youth that could make a difference is something that is very critical is very important and it's important that they measure effectiveness secondly is the question about technology the technology framework that has been established today lies I mean the FIU has been giving quite what I was extensive mandate in that regard which is to ensure that at the back end they have enough capability to trace funds that could become considered illicit because they are linked to public sector funds or because they are linked to corruption or because they are linked to terrorist financing any type of crime you can imagine and so but the ability to move this information out very quickly to the people that we use it is also very important so how do we make sure that when the intelligence is already there that law enforcement gets this intelligence very quickly I do not think that we lack the technology tools I just think that we need to make sure it becomes efficient and that is effectively and that is effectively utilized in a manner that becomes effective and prevents the exactly the crime because by the time the crime is committed it's difficult to trace maybe because those assets are already left the country or they are too hidden and we cannot find them so the most important thing is to use those tools to identify those assets before they live or before they become too hidden for anybody to trace them so the tools the effective tool the most effective one for so far is the FIU being able to use its capacity to bring together all those financial intelligence and move it to law enforcement at different levels yeah I think we have Ms. Sara Rafsan we do have Mr. Rafsanjani absolutely there are two questions from Martha and Sangeeta for Juliet and Amelia but we'll come back to them after Mr. Rafsanjani has made an intervention Mr. Rafsanjani over to you thank you yeah thank you very much actually I was getting agitated that I've been on this for one hour and I'm not yet being able to join you know but thank you for this opportunity to actually share my perspective and also to see how we can sustain this kind of conversation because if we want to make the EFCC and anti-corruption generally effective and efficient and also take away all the concern that some Nigerians are having on the operation of the various anti-corruption in Nigeria we need this kind of dialogue we need this kind of conversation as we all know before the establishment of the EFCC Nigeria was one country that was seen like outcast you know in the world our image and our reputation was really terrible until one EFCC came on board to deal with you know fundamental issues of corruption like dealing with the before nine which is one of the major issue at the time you know before the EFCC come on board and since the EFCC came on board we have seen how politically exposed persons you know have also been cases also been addressed and we have also seen how high-profile cases of corruption grant corruption has also been addressed I think you know recently the cybercrime has been one prominent corruption that has been going on which EFCC has been really dealing with so all I'm trying to say is that when you look back before the coming of EFCC and what you will see today you will see there's a lot of tremendous improvement however we need to do more and from the civil society perspective there are a number of issues that we you know think that EFCC need to do in order to you know sustain the success that it has actually recorded one of it is to continue to engage in public you know engagement with both the civil society and the media to also move so many you know misperception and perception that's probably the agency is doing the bidding of you know somebody I think with such kind of robust engagement a lot of Nigerians will change their mindset about what they perceive EFCC to be of course the corrupt people they will always do everything possible to make sure that they undermine the effectiveness of the EFCC I think it is also important that you know EFCC strive to ensure that they say balance the investigation and prosecution of cases so that we don't always you know go without thorough investigation of cases at the end of the day the case will be thrown out you know I think it is also very fundamental that the EFCC continue to ensure that it improves its synergy between the other anti-corruption agency so that there will not be too much duplication of effort and energy and resources I think it is very important that as we are trying to see how EFCC can be more effective and more efficient the commission should actually increase its international cooperation with you know external partners I know that at the level of Transparency International you know we have always you know try to support the work of EFCC at international level especially with regard to the assets recovery which Julia talks about I think you know SISLA which is the Transparency International in Nigeria has been very very supportive in terms of providing credible information and data to Nigerian government in terms of the assets recovery and even the illicit partnership you know our bloc the molly land grain that has been going on you know what Nigeria continue to lose and estimated over 18 billion US dollars annually civil society are actually supporting government with credible information both at home and abroad and I think it is important that anti-corruption agencies like the EFCC begin to intensify that partnership and collaboration with the civil society especially at the international level where assets you know recovery is going on you are very much aware about the case this PR and ID case where Nigeria is this window with a lot of you know possible money that would have been used to development you know in Nigeria SISLA had published extensive report about that you know through Transparency International to aid Nigerian government to ensure that that kind of probe of siphoning public taxpayers money you know does not happen so all I'm trying to say that international cooperation and collaboration is very key for the success of the EFCC as well as also even domestic you know collaboration with the partners with different civil society organization that are focusing on the fight against corruption I think it is important that the EFCC you know also do everything possible to stay away from anything that will give impression that it is in political later guiding because if you do that you may lose the credibility and the public confidence but so far so good you know especially you know with the recent intervention that the new chair of the EFCC is doing which we are solely supporting him cracking on the financial corruption within the financial within the banking sector is a very key important development that we are seeing but more importantly let me also state that the issues of the assets recovery especially domestic you know asset I think we need to be more you know transparent in the way a manner in which it is also been handled the absent of you know well legal framework you know that will manage and coordinate the recovered asset is still very you know a very very very concerned for us because you cannot be recovering and there's no any tangible evidence on how it has been you know properly utilized the domestic asset that have been recovered is more than even the you know external asset that we have had so I think it is important while I appreciate the policy that all the guideline that you let talk about in terms of the asset recovery that is demosal within the ministry of justice but I think we need to have more public engagement so that the Nigerian know what has been recovered and what has been utilized for that will give more confidence on Nigerians you know on the effort that the ministry is doing as well as the other anti-corruption agencies I think it is important that this competitive you know you know thing that we see with some anti-corruption agencies we should turn it into a positive scene rather than just trying to be you know seen as the one that you have been X, Y, Z we need to have coordination we need to have cooperation within among them that I mentioned you know if we do that we can have very effective and efficient you know part against corruption what EFCC actually has you know over the years helped even restore some dignity for Nigeria because like I said in the past really once your passport is showing Nigeria you are already a suspect you know in various international borders whether it is airport whether it is seaport or even land border but with the coming of EFCC coming to sanitize you know various high-propyl you know for online cases I think it has dramatically helped restore our dignity and I think we must support EFCC to continue with that so we are determined as civil society to support the sincere effort of the anti-corruption agencies to ensure that you know Nigeria actually you know deals squarely on the issues of corruption but more importantly sanction we cannot just you know allow some uncomfortable people to be doing what they are doing and then you know you know you are you know so quick to deal with those poor you know people that are doing civil crime they are equally criminals and those other ones that are doing grand corruption they must also be brought to work we don't need to waste too much time but to be able to do that EFCC also required more resources to deal with you know many of the cases that it has before it if you don't have enabling resources you cannot be able to compute with this high level you know politically exposed person who have stolen public money and using it to hire the best lawyer EFCC must have you know good teams of lawyers that before they even got caught they must thoroughly you know interrogate case before they even go to file and sort of they then go and file and then these high-profile criminals will now use experts lawyers to go and squat you know the case in the court I think it is very very important that to the legend is done before you go to file case in the court lastly before you know I allow other people to you know to talk or to ask question is to say that look we have been talking this over time and time that's the way a manna would even the selection or the recruitment of the you know staff in other EFCC ICPC police and all the you know security agencies you know the way it is done it is not going to help fight against corruption and also it will not help fight the insecurity in the country because when you do not do the legend of a name somebody that you are recruiting and probably the person actually paid because the truth is that to get a job in Nigeria now is for sale if you don't have money to buy job you cannot get any job if your father is not a minister or a you know a senator or house of rape or a director or connected but you know power that be you can never get job until you buy so they are selling this and I'm holding on EFCC and ICPC to begin to start on those people who are actually selling job offer in various ministries and you know a prestata as well as also possibly in the anti-corruption agency because like I said everything now is for sale and everybody knows and people are pretending that everything is well it's not well so we need to also you know bring our satellite you know on those people that are actually doing this kind of criminality and the process they end up recruiting power nine agents of criminals you know to perpetuate themselves inside the anti-corruption agencies or inside the security sector that is why we are failing in some instances in terms of even dealing with the criminalities and insecurity in the country because the people you are recruiting some of them you have not done background check to ensure that they are not connected with those criminals outside that likewise to if you are recruiting within the anti-corruption agency let it be transparent let it be that you have done a thorough investigation on anybody that is going to be recruited in the anti-corruption agency because it requires people with high level of integrity and moral you know students otherwise you go just because somebody is connected and not was given to you know employ him or her I am telling you you will be frustrating even the effort that you are supposed to be making so I want to appeal to the EFCC and ICTC to begin to deal squarely with those you know irresponsible people within the government that are selling job offer would end up you know in the hands of criminals and pollinators to come and serve in very sensitive agencies like you know anti-corruption agencies or even the security agency you know agency with this I want to say that civil society is solely behind an effective and efficient transparent open patriotic anti-corruption agency like EFCC and we also want to you know request that EFCC try every possible every single possible to politicize its activities so that people will have faith and confidence in the operation that they are doing I think I will stop here thank you thank you very much thank you very much Mr Raphzajani I think you've you've touched on some of the points that that both Juliet and Emilia were talking to in terms of what prevention means and therefore you brought to the civil society perspective of what that what that how civil society can actually prevent a lot of the distortions that we see in the EFCC I think what I'm going to do we had till or we have till one o'clock we are running out of sometimes so what I will do and because this is a discussion on corruption in Nigeria the chat box has just exploded with some of the most fantastic questions I have to say and I won't unfortunately have the time but what I will do I've picked up the essence of most of the few sort of trends or we've lost Mr Raphzajani again but he can come back the trends that that seem to be appearing through the chat box and I'll quickly go through them prevention everybody's very worried about it whether information sharing and transparency can prove one way of preventing and ensuring accountability how do we reduce political interference I think all of us it's something that I began with in the beginning we know that there is political interference we know that the rules don't match up but how do we reduce political interference and then finally to this because we are a very practical research program and we'd like some practical takeaways from this within this whole set of so-called adverse context so difficult context what are feasible reforms what really could be feasible reforms when we know that this is how the FCC is working and this is how the FCC is working is constrained so those are the four things prevention information sharing and transparency how do you reduce political interference and what feasible reforms might be in this context and I'm going to throw this one last question is wearing a moderator's hat and because this is also a personal matter of curiosity and would be useful for all others listening and not just for the FCC technology has recently become this magic bullet you use digitization you digitize data you make everything open and open access and on a platform ergo corruption disappears without forgetting that there are there is corruption at the very structural level before you can even digitize the platform the corruption has happened so where does the where do the panelists see this as as interacting with we can actually reduce corruption with data transparency and more digitization so maybe juliet you can begin begin here and I'm conscious of time maybe we can each have just you can each have five to six minutes to round up juliet thank you okay thank you very much and thank you Rafs and Janie I think one of the things I said earlier is that we also need civil society organizations to do a lot more work in terms of sharing as much as you can but also in terms of making sure those information actually get when you have it that it goes to the public more of the public because the anti-corruption agencies are also limited in the ability to share information but information sharing is very critical and that's why we started the open government partnership where civil society are co-equal partners in that process and part of that process is that there is a co-chair who is a civil society person or private sector person and there is also a government person and within the Nigerian National Action Plan on open government there is I think emphasis on data data, open budget data open contracting data as well as even within the asset recovery remit there is an emphasis on making sure that there is asset transparency in asset recovery information I can almost say yes we need more information especially from the domestic side and when I say domestic I mean all the assets recovered in country which is maybe recovered from EFCC by EFCC ICPC the police the SS when we did the mapping of all the agencies that have the power to recover assets about six agencies have their responsibility and so what the regulation on asset management has done asset recovery and management has done is to get all these agencies to try to begin to put this information into the newly created unit under the federal ministry of justice and I saw a comment there that people are not able to assess the link I think that link has the public interface and the private interface I think I mean I'm going to speak to the IT in the federal ministry of justice and find out why the public is interface is not accessible because it should be accessible I've also said that when you go to the justice.gov.ng website you will see everything about the internationally recovered assets and I really call on civil society to interrogate that as well in fact civil society organizations that have been involved in monitoring the Ange and now Clean Foundation I know that Ange has a website where they also provide information on their you know how they are monitoring assets they also know that Clean Foundation is now about to set up their website on how they are monitoring the 311 million dollars recovered assets around which is currently being used on projects infrastructure working closely with the Nigerian sovereign investment authority so these are the two pillars but domestic we have a lot of work to do and I agree with Rafsinjani and I think there is a need for more engagement on that aspect and that is why we also the process of crime bill which is again supposed to help in ensuring greater transparency around those recovered assets political interference is something that is so you know we have political will and political interference is very a mouth for us and you know you and I know that we've talked about African countries but even within countries in the North we know that it is almost impossible to have an institution live outside its political creation the creation of all of these agencies are a function of political discourse and so what we need to then do is to say does the law enable what I would say protection and what does the law do how does the law function but what about the people who are within this organization are they able to insulate themselves once they have the capacity to do so because there are two elements to political discourse when it comes to creation of institution once an institution is created and there is an appointment the next level is for you to be able to move on with the the capacity established within the law and then to move within the political discourse I can almost tell you that it's impossible to insulate completely but you can try to insulate your operations and insulate the outcome it is very challenging even in the U.S. where you have the FBI and the Department of Justice even where you in the U.K. where you have the national crime agency and all of that but one thing that can be insulated is the operational capacity of those agencies when an agency establish its capacity operationally I can almost tell you that the insulation becomes more easy but it's not for me to say okay there will not be political interference because like I said every institution is a creation of a political discourse institutions are created either under the constitution or created by the law through a political discussion of the national assembly but certainly the mandates once there is a mandate if we can just focus on those mandates and try to work within that mandate I think we can have a successful story to tell and I think we need to interrogate whether the operational capacity has been as established under the law have been fully utilized when we interrogate it because we are looking at investigation numbers we are talking about prosecution numbers we are talking about the outcome of asset recovery we need to go through that process and maybe have in yearly an annual evaluation and Ralph I'm talking to you here because you see there's one thing about so the agency can do its own report that we used to do shadow reports right let's the CSM begin to look at shadow reports for the institutions where they can see okay you told us you did an investigation of 100 cases but now you have an outcome of 1000 sorry maybe one case that has managed to go to court why is that the case so there's a lot of interrogation that needs to happen but also there's a lot of internal discourse that needs to be heard in terms of the operational capacity so I think I'll leave it here for now thank you very much thank you Julia that wasn't you know easy for you I'm sure to keep to six minutes Mr. Raphson Danny if I might invite you now to respond to what Juliet says and and those four points especially in terms of I you know I couldn't agree with you more political influence whether it's interference or influence is right in any national agency whether it's in the global north or the global south being set up so then how does civil society come in whether to act as a pressure point whether to mobilize and make it feasible for that particular agency to reform within that context within that particular political context that would be absolutely fantastic if you could offer us your views Mr. Raphson Danny could you get that yeah sorry can you repeat the question I just but I didn't hear you no worries I'm very happy to repeat it I think that there was just a bit of a technical glitch there so I you did get most of what Juliet said and I think she reached out to you in terms of how civil society organizations can act as pressure points and can act as accountability mechanisms and I said I completely agree with Juliet because wherever whether it's the global north or the south any institution and agency especially anti-corruption and prime agencies are set up with a political narrative and a political will behind it what matters is the outcome at the end of it so in our context in developing country context how does civil society ensure that within this particularly difficult context civil society can actually act as that accountability mechanism feasibly all right thank you very much I think the one of the ways in which you can actually guarantee the non-political interference of EFCC or an anti-corruption agent is of course from even the very law that you know it created the operation and the activities of that commission one of the things that we have observed is that there's a launa even in the setting up of the board that will oversight the EFCC itself for example you have various government agencies that are supposed to actually even be themselves monitored populated as part of the board in the EFCC which I think they need to bring in non-state actors from from as a member in that in that commission so that at least the non-state actors will be able to point out certain abnormalities or certain irregularities or certain things that will make the commission lose its credibility or its independence I see that there's absence of that what we have now secondly I think there's too much over dramatization of the anti-corruption and its leadership generally in Nigeria I've been to many countries when you see the head of anti-corruption agency it's not being seen like a president of the country but in the case of Nigeria the copies and the leadership of that place is as good as a president of a country I think we need to politicize and expose the commission to look as if it is one agency that is above anything I think it is important that we do something that has to do with amending the acts itself again I think it is important that there are certain comments there are certain statements that should not be coming from the anti-corruption agency like EFCC let them stay away from anything that is political we have a minister of information in Nigeria you have a spoke person of the president if I think that are political the EFCC or ICPC should not be seen to be engaging in that why I am saying this is important because the EFCC is supposed to be a technical commission not a political commission so any statement that will create some political turning EFCC should actually as I have said itself let them do the work more and stop anti-corruption should not be seen talking they should be seen doing the work actually if they do that I think many agents would have seen that they are actually doing a lot without them talking like maybe as if one propaganda agent they should be technical they should emphasize about anything that will make their statement or their utterances to look too political let the government spoke person talk on issues that has to do or the government policies but there should not be anything that will create a feeling that even the opposition political party will be thinking that the anti-corruption agencies is meant to was want them no I think we should encourage EFCC to operate in an equal manner whether you are PDP or APC whatever party you belong to whatever region whatever religion whatever ethnic or tribal group you come from if you commit crime let EFCC investigate and take decisive action so that it will serve as a deterrent but if because you are close to power you are close to ruling party you will commit X, Y, Z and there will be after all there will be silent on that that we also continue to give people impression that there is a politics behind the scene again it is important that EFCC like I mentioned interspersed in public engagement with the civil society with the media and the general public I think EFCC should spend some time doing public education because a lot of Nigerians there is so much ignorance about certain things they commit what they actually they may not know the gravity of the at which they are committing crime but if there is a political education you know as a co-activities of the EFCC we will have prevented so many cases and EFCC will not be wasting is so much time on you know pursuing so many cases so many things because already you know public education and enlightenment have reached a state that if you do the same thing it means that you are actually a criminal or you are interested in engaging you know in the crime so you can actually be dealt with but I think there's need to emphasize more in public education I can tell you that once you are able to do that so many efforts and energy that is being put by EFCC in pursuing cases legal cases and whatever will have been dramatically reduced again let EFCC also any National Assembly member any minister anybody that is related to a governor if your wife is involving anything that is against the law because you are a minister wife because you are a governor wife because you are a president or vice president or deputy governor anybody that does anything EFCC should not share away from you know current out mandate nothing will happen to them civil society and Nigerian people if they see that they are actually doing this genuinely they will support them and no powerful minister or governor or any political class will do anything against them we will support them we will continue to provide all the necessary contacts even abroad to be able to do their work we are doing this and we will continue to do that and we will continue to propagate the effort that anti-corruption agencies are making in order to reduce crime and in order to reduce financial crime in Nigeria we need EFCC to continue to do the good work that is doing it but we need to do it in a manner that is also within the complying of law in Nigeria thank you for sure for sure thank you so much Mr Rafsanjani Emilia you have the next five six minutes floor is yours what does feasible and effective look like in this context thank you very much Palavi I think I would like to just sort of take us back to where we started and go back to our working paper and the constraints that we recognize and we found from our research on the effectiveness of the EFCC so we talked about political capture and Juliet and Raf is it okay for me to call you Raf and Raf have really focused on that and they've said a lot we talked about organizational deficiencies they've also engaged with that I want to pick up on that and the judicial process on organizational deficiencies I'd just like to add a few things to what we have already heard or again substantiate some of those for me I think that there is a great need for qualitative staffing qualitative staffing we have so many very well educated endurance across the world I sort of say to myself that I'm sure you'd have a colony of Nigerians in North Korea also or Siberia or somewhere you know we have capacity human capacity especially with our young people who at least have not sort of acquired certain tastes that need and have relevant knowledge I think that we need to think of qualitative staffing and personnel for the EFCC I think that the EFCC itself as I mentioned had identified in their annual reports the need for continuous training for in any area of life in any sphere of life continuous training is important we've already engaged with various ideas on how the EFCC can become independent from the political class I hear all that Raj has said and the passion with which he has spoken but let's recognize that somebody had said something in the chat about the polity the citizens themselves and so if my own senator or my own minister in the sense the minister comes from my part of the country is caught with their hands in the cookie jar and I stand up and say why should my minister be persecuted is it only my minister that has been caught with her hand his or her hand before I give away who I'm talking about his or her hand in the cookie jar there is a huge problem there is a massive problem because that narrative is also saying something to the politically exposed persons to the politicians we're saying we the rude are saying something to them so I think that that's something that we need to pick up maybe Palavi with some more work from what Raj has said and somebody else said something in the chat about when you move to a political the ruling political party or your past sense I think that's the way Nigerians say it all your past sense are forgotten maybe by the APC but not necessarily by God or the community or the people whose monies have been stolen or the woman whose child has died from diarrhea or some some or polio or some health condition that can easily be dealt with and I think that is hugely important because if a political party is the ruling political party and is saying that we accept and people flock to that political party to evade or avoid persecution there is a huge problem I think that that has already been picked up upon in the paper we talk about the tenure of the the chairman of the EFCC I think I'd like to add the tenure of the chairman and secretary of the EFCC so whoever is the top power-based people within the EFCC in the paper we talk about their tenure struggling to election periods or two presidential periods but again the way Nigeria operates I think we had the PDP for 16 or so years looks like we might end up with the APC for another 16 or so years so maybe that's something to think about but maybe the tenure maybe a single six-year term with that is properly remunerated and it's not renewable and so that's something that we talk about the need for security of tenure is massively important and adequate remuneration for staff and training and all of that and we also picked up on better coordination we've already talked a lot about within among the ACAs and their international counterpart that there's the need for clarity of the scope of the mandate of each of these because there's a lot of overlap and there's been some questions on agencies not wanting to share space agencies not wanting to share information because they're trying to protect their own turf what it therefore means is that the various agencies have not brought into that primary goal and that primary end point where we are the objective that we want to achieve and so there's need for that and then there is all information and data I think what we need is qualitative and Palave will be grateful if you can put that in your list the provision of qualitative not rubbish data not just saying oh you had this and then you prosecuted and we don't know why did you not pursue this and those sorts of things I hear what Juliet says which is that the people like Mr. Raj should be the ones producing shadow reports to query and question I'm sorry but one of the things we I think we are all very much conversant is that the average Nigerian does not read much they can they will read their newspapers they would read their social media and all of that but to pick up a working paper or to pick up a report and read it and unpack it and actually publish something around it it's just those who are particularly interested and professionals in those areas that deal with that and so I think we need to think about it and how we can work with that and what needs to be on the pages of newspapers and that would lead to what all the panelists have already said about verifiable data verify because we found it really difficult to find a data that we can't actually rely upon I think those are the things I would like to add on to what has already been said Palavi Thank you for those excellent interventions and you know this is Nigeria we're talking about the FCC the conversation has been animated has been passionate has been committed obviously the FCC still means a lot to citizens in Nigeria I think studying an anti-corruption agency like the FCC can also be helpful for other anti-corruption agencies across the African continent and indeed in Asian developing context so it's been wonderful to see some of the points that have come up and you know at the risk of even contradicting myself in some of the earlier work that I have done where I've said information or data does not always solve problems I think the issue here in Nigeria and with the FCC essentially data on what anti-corruption means when the baseline is low and you're actually creating a baseline and I think that's where we are in Nigeria right now we're in the process of creating that information and data baseline anything that we can add and here civil society has a huge role to play anything that we can add to creating that baseline will be extremely helpful beyond that it becomes a more difficult issue but I think we need to even create that baseline in Nigeria which hasn't been happening but Nigeria has an extremely active and vibrant civil society space where that can happen extremely committed civil servants also so things that came up information sharing and education for prevention coordination among the anti-corruption agencies I mean Tugar took off nothing much happened nothing much came out of it but is it worth resurrecting a version of Tugar at least thinking about it in policy spaces to bring the 27 ACS together in some shape or form financial independence and upgrading of capabilities across the anti-corruption agencies that's extremely important behavioral dimensions and culture that came up recruitment into civil services being a problem so we do have a sort of smorgasbord of issues and concerns here and I think some of the conversations in the chat obviously your interventions show that there are feasible interventions possible incremental interventions I think we should be mindful of the fact that political big bang reforms won't happen we can't destroy the system and move forward and we don't want that that's not feasible we have a structure we have a system and that system and structure provides us the space with which to change it nothing's it's not lost and it's sort of given that nothing can change we need to create the pressure points we need to create the opportunities Juliet, Emilia and Awal have spoken passionately about what that could be all of you have had ideas there we will keep this engagement going I want to thank the panelists for their time it's been a long two hours but it's been a very interesting two hours sorry for the ten minute delay to all of you who've been waiting patiently but I think it's been well worth it I have a lovely evening or afternoon or morning wherever you are and wherever you're signed in we will keep the conversation going thank you again