One case, too many agencies, by Stephanie Shaakaa

2026-03-28 - 06:14

There is something quietly destabilising about a state that cannot clearly tell you who is responsible for what. Read Also: OZORO: Not tradition, not culture, just violence, by Stephanie Shaakaa The problem is no longer whether institutions exist. It is whether anyone can clearly say where one ends and another begins. In every serious democracy, power is distributed with intention. Not merely to prevent dictatorship, but also to ensure precision. Intelligence agencies gather information. Anti-corruption bodies investigate financial misconduct. The police enforce criminal law. The military defends territorial integrity. Each institution is defined not only by what it can do, but by what it must not do. Nigeria’s framework reflects this logic. The Department of State Services exists to safeguard national security through intelligence. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was created to combat economic and financial crimes. The Independent Corrupt Practices Commission was mandated to address corruption within public institutions. The Nigeria Police Force carries the constitutional responsibility of general law enforcement. The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps protects critical infrastructure. The armed forces exist to defend sovereignty and respond to extraordinary threats. The design is deliberate. It is a system of boundaries. Yet in recent years, those boundaries appear less like lines and more like suggestions. When high profile figures come under investigation, agencies do not merely coordinate. They assemble. They signal involvement. They announce parallel interest. What should look like structured cooperation begins to resemble institutional convergence. The state appears in clusters. The evolving situations involving Nasir El Rufai and Abubakar Malami have sharpened this concern rather than resolved it. In the El Rufai matter, what initially carried the appearance of a financial or administrative inquiry has, over time, attracted the visible presence and implied interest of multiple institutions. Signals from different agencies have not always clarified leadership of the process. Instead, they have deepened a central question. Who is in charge of the case, and under what statutory authority is it being driven? A similar pattern is visible in the Malami matter. As a former Attorney General of the Federation, his position once sat at the intersection of many of these institutions. Now, as attention turns toward him, that same intersection appears to be re emerging in reverse. Multiple bodies are again linked, directly or indirectly, to the same investigative space. The effect is not clarity. It is density. This is not an argument against investigation. It is an argument about structure. Complex cases often require cooperation. Financial crimes may intersect with national security concerns. Corruption can destabilize institutions. Intelligence must be shared. But cooperation is not the same as duplication. Effective governance demands clarity about who leads and who supports. When leadership of a case is ambiguous, procedure suffers. The United States created agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation with clearly articulated jurisdiction. Mature systems understand that overlap can be dangerous. Turf wars consume energy that should be directed at criminal networks, financial syndicates, and genuine threats. Nigeria cannot afford institutional ego. Every duplicated investigation costs money. Every parallel task force drains manpower. Every public signal of overlapping jurisdiction erodes clarity. Agencies funded by taxpayers should not operate like competing entities seeking visibility in the same case. There is also a constitutional dimension. Most of these bodies were created by enabling Acts that define their powers. When those powers stretch beyond their original intent, we drift toward discretionary enforcement. And discretionary enforcement, history teaches, is fertile ground for abuse. Defence counsel do not ignore jurisdictional overlap. They examine it carefully. Was the proper agency empowered to obtain certain documents? Were interrogations conducted within statutory authority? Did evidence move through lawful channels? In criminal litigation, process is substance. A strong case can weaken not because the facts are insufficient, but because the path taken to gather them was blurred. Beyond the courtroom lies a deeper cost. Public trust. Citizens watch carefully. When they see several agencies associated with a single investigation, they do not necessarily interpret it as strength. They often interpret it as competition, or confusion. They begin to ask whether visibility has become as important as accountability. They wonder whether institutional relevance must now be demonstrated publicly rather than executed quietly and effectively. Democracy rests on predictability. A citizen should know which institution exercises authority in which context. That knowledge is a form of protection. It assures the public that power is not elastic. Elastic power is dangerous because it stretches according to circumstance. There have been previous moments in Nigeria when enforcement bodies appeared to collide. Public standoffs over custody. Parallel investigations into the same procurement matters. Situations in which one agency executed an action only for another to intervene. Each episode may have had its internal explanation, but collectively they send a signal of blurred boundaries. The risk is subtle but real. When mandates expand informally through practice rather than through legislative clarity, authority becomes fluid. Fluid authority may appear efficient in the short term, but it weakens accountability in the long term. If responsibility cannot be clearly assigned, neither can error. It is worth recalling that institutions derive legitimacy from limitation. Even agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation operate within articulated jurisdictional boundaries, however broad. The discipline of mandate is what separates a rules based system from a personality driven one. Nigeria’s challenge is not a lack of agencies. It is the management of their reach. If the Department of State Services is to focus on intelligence and national security threats, then its strength must lie in discretion and depth, not omnipresence. If the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is to prosecute financial misconduct, then its credibility depends on forensic rigor and procedural clarity. If the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission is to cleanse public institutions, then its value lies in systematic reform and disciplined investigation. If the Police are to enforce criminal law, they must be strengthened to do so professionally and transparently. When each body respects its boundary, the whole system becomes stronger. The alternative is quieter but more corrosive. Agencies that drift into one another’s territory in high profile cases create the impression that mandate is negotiable. That authority can expand through repetition. That the definition of national security or financial crime becomes flexible enough to justify broad presence. Flexibility may appear harmless. It is not. The public may not immediately perceive the shift. There may be no dramatic rupture. Instead, there is a gradual normalization of overlap. A quiet acceptance that multiple agencies appearing at the same door is simply how things are done. But systems are not judged by how they function in moments of convenience. They are judged by how they restrain themselves when they can do more than they should. Nigeria does not need louder enforcement. It needs disciplined enforcement. It needs clear protocols for inter agency cooperation. It needs legislative refinement where mandates intersect. It needs leadership within institutions that values precision over presence. Institutions are strongest when they understand where they end. Because once a state loses the discipline of boundaries, it does not become stronger. It becomes louder, heavier, more visible and yet less certain of itself. And when that happens, the most important question is no longer who is under investigation. It is who, within the system, still understands where authority begins and where it must stop. Power without restraint is not strength. It is confusion, wearing the uniform of authority.