Cost Of Delayed Justice: The Betta Edu example, by Abu Shekara
It is seven clear months now since the youthful Minister Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Dr Betta Edu, was suspended from office following allegations of her involvement in acts of financial impropriety. Followers of the issue have begun to feel the charges are spurious because, from details available to the public, the allegations are proving to lack the basic substance to hinge a prima facie case of misdemeanor against her.
Ab initio, there was a deafening cacophony of demands from all directions that she should straight away be sent to the guillotine. She had been found guilty and condemned even before trial. The youthful and vibrant Minister was dazed and seemed to be lost.
Her principal, President Bola Tinubu, embarrassed and shocked, succumbed to the sensation induced by the outcry from a scandal craving public and suspended Dr Edu. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, swooped in to unearth the facts of the matter but, after seven months, not much has been heard about this thrilling plot from the anti-graft agency. Obviously, Nigeria’s commitment to unraveling the truth about national issues is no match for their thirst for cliff hangers.
The trajectory of this case, accords the Edu saga all the trappings of contrivance, the type that can only be ascribed to a fifth column within an establishment. It is obvious that her humiliation and displacement serves the interest of certain elements in the corridors of power, particularly around and in the inner reaches of the Presidential Villa. It is eventually unraveling to be a hype that was served to the court of public opinion, an arena that feeds on scandal and thrust on a President, who was hypersensitive to the mob psyche of the Nigerian public.
READ ALSO: EFCC quizzes Betta Edu over alleged N585 million fraud
President Tinubu bought the dummy and acted on the strength of a case that has, owing to its lack of progress seven months after, clearly been bugged down, with high a possibility that the process has been abandoned altogether. And since no substantive charges have been made, it will at the end of the day, most probably emerge as a storm out of a tea cup, a case of much ado about nothing.
As it is, the only beneficiaries of this classic case of delay in justice, seem to be the cabal that initiated this rollercoaster that appears to be more of a charade than a genuine investigation of a financial crime. As for the rest of Nigeria, nothing has been gained besides the satiation of their voracious appetite and craving for sensation.
Meanwhile, the losses resulting from the matter are monumental and ever mounting. The human face of President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda has all but disappeared with the disruption of the operations of the Ministry that Beta Edu used to supervise.
Perhaps, if the activities of the Ministry, which Edu had pursued with amazing energy and uncommon commitment, had not been rudely halted by the crisis, they would have gone a long way in soothing the harsh effects of the other policies of the Tinubu administration. The beneficiaries of the Ministry’s programmes, especially of the empowerment initiatives have since realised that they are the worse affected.
For example, one of those disrupted strategies, the brilliant market women support programme, “Iya Loja”, would certainly have by now, engendered a far reaching advance in the fortunes of thousands of women traders across the nation. Thus, at the end of the day, it is the public and not Dr Edu that is the worse victim of what is clearly, a contrived scandal.
President Bola Tinubu will need to focus on the issue of Dr Betta Edu for a few cogent reasons. Firstly, a substantive Minister in the Ministry will facilitate the administration’s capacity to execute an effective mechanism of mitigating the bruising effects of some of its harsh programmes and policies.
Also, since Dr Edu’s zeal, drive and commitment to discharging the mandate of the Ministry appear to be far stronger than the financial crime allegation against her, a rational option for her principal is not to throw away the baby with the bath water. He ought to stand on the side of fairness to his appointee and let her carry on with her work, in fairness to its teeming beneficiaries across Nigeria.
It is time President Bola Ahmed Tinubu put an end to the saga of Dr Beta Edu and her clearly undeserved psychological and physical trauma of being the subject of lingering but unsubstantiated accusations for unreasonably so long a period. For, as the old saying goes: “Justice delayed is Justice denied.”
Abu Shekara, a former Deputy Editor of the LEADERSHIP newspaper, writes from Arkilla, Sokoto.
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