It has long been established that a
subordinate has no legal obligation to obey
illegal orders from his/her superior.
This point is important as we examine the
recent nauseating revelations about the
huge sums of money that the former
finance minister, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
and Central Bank governor, Godwin
Emefiele, made available to the now
arrested former National Security Adviser,
Sambo Dasuki.
Few days ago, Okonjo-Iweala admitted
giving Sambo Dasuki the sum of $322m on
the orders of former President Goodluck
Jonathan. Before that the same Okonjo-
Iweala admitted spending $2bn from the
Excess Crude Oil account on the orders of
the former President.
The Central Bank of Nigeria under Godwin
Emefiele has admitted giving Sambo Dasuki
billions of Naira and dollars on the orders
of the former president.
A good part of these monies were given to
Sambo Dasuki in cash in clear
contravention of existing anti-money
laundering laws by the country’s chief
banker. Let us put the money laundering
issue to the side for now.
The problem with the orders from the
former President to the then finance
minister and current CBN governor is that
they were illegal.
Neither the President nor any other
government official in Nigeria has the legal
authority to order the spending of funds
that have not been appropriated by the
National Assembly! Both subordinates
knew or ought to know that the orders
they were obeying were illegal and should
have refused to comply.
Resignation was an option. Between these
two subordinates they cost the nation in
excess of $5B by obeying the referenced
illegal orders. That is just what we know so
far and this kind of behavior is going on at
every level of government everyday.
The arrest and prosecution of Okonjo-
Iweala and Godwin Emediefe will send out
the message that “the president ordered the
payment” is not a defense known to the
laws of Nigeria.
Their prosecution is imperative in light of
the fact that a lot of the money being stolen
in the country is not in the custody of the
people stealing them. They rely on a group
of people that I call facilitators in an
upcoming article to get access to public
funds in the custody of the facilittors.
In almost every case of monies made
available to Sambo Dasuki, all those
making the money available were
following illegal orders and they knew it.
The time has come for Buhari to beam the
searchlight on this group of people.
The commercial bankers who allow
government officials to come into their
banks and withdraw millions and billions
in cash in apparent violation of anti-money
laundering laws are facilitators of
corruption because they know the funds
are dirty hence the need to terminate the
paper trail through cash withdrawal. The
bankers ought to be in jail too partly
because they make tracing these funds
more complicated.
To understand the importance of
subordinates not obeying illegal orders,
imagine that Okonjo-Iweala, NNPC and
Godwin Emefiele refused to obey the
former President’s illegal orders and
resigned under pressure and spilled the
beans.
With Nigerians fully aware of the
attempted fraud it would have been
difficult for their replacements to obey the
same illegal orders.
Buhari’s anti-corruption war must involve
establishing a culture that encourages civil
servants, and bank employees to disobey
illegal orders.
This will prevent our money from leaving
the treasury rather than chasing after the
money after it has been stolen.
Before closing I will like to remind people
that a majority of the civilians and military
officers who were tried, executed or jailed
by the post-World War 2 Nuremberg Trials
courts in Germany were obeying orders
from Adolf Hitler.
The problem was that Adolf Hitler had no
legal basis for issuing the orders and those
who ended up being executed for obeying
the orders had no obligation to obey the
orders.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Godwin Emefiele
should be familiar with the Nuremberg
Trials. The lesson is that a superior cannot
order a subordinate to do anything that the
superior has no authority to do himself/
herself.
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