Public finance consolidation: Has Koldef lost its momentum?

The Commission for the Fight against Economic, Financial and Fiscal Arrears (Kordev), which started at full speed by announcing its spoils to the media, now seems to have slowed down. The Public Management Control Body, headed by Colonel Abdel Wahid Djibo of the Gendarmerie, will go some way to halting its initial rapid momentum. Today, how to explain the flu that is currently affecting Kordev, which is gradually being submerged in the daily administrative procedures?

Lack of clear political will

After the events of July 26, 2023, which led to the overthrow of the Renaissance regime, many Nigeriens had high hopes for the restoration of social justice, the consolidation of public finances and the moralization of the country’s public life. Because the regime showed a negative side in this regard. Therefore, it was necessary for the National Committee for the Protection of the Fatherland (CNSP) to carry out a major project in this important direction dear to Nigeriens. The creation of Kordev was undoubtedly based on the general need to clean the Augean stable. But unfortunately, the lack of a complete break with the old political order did not allow us to have the necessary perspective to effectively lead this struggle to restore the orthodoxy of management. In fact, we quickly realized that the profound changes we expected after the overthrow of the Renaissance regime had hardly occurred. Generally speaking, after a coup, the counter is reset to zero to respond to a new coup. However, in the case of the events of July 26, 2023, we did not witness this profound upheaval in order to make an exhaustive inventory of the entire management of the fallen regime and what preceded it, but in fact, it was just a continuation of what was not going well. Virtually everything remains as it was, intact, nothing has moved. Worse still, activists of the main party in power, the PPP/Talaya, which was previously the majority, are still in key positions in the country. For example, at the level of the Ministry of Mines, the same people who were the root cause of all this disaster that the country’s mining sector has been through have been retained or reappointed to their positions.

Coldeff was founded in a similar context, and we hope that it will achieve good results. However, by actually maintaining the old administrative and technical system, with executives fully involved in the disastrous management of the Renaissance regime, the CNSP will not really help Coldeff in its mission to restore public finances. This is how old archives of iconic political-financial scandals, such as the Ministry of National Defense (MDN) scandal or the so-called Uraniumgate, just disappear from circulation and disappear into thin air. Even more surprising are the MDN files, which were even processed by Justice at the time. One might reasonably ask why this issue is no longer on Coldeff’s agenda today? The answer is simple, because some of the protagonists of the event are still deeply entrenched in the current political transition. Therefore, the MDN files cannot be included in Coldeff. Obviously, the same is true for other scandalous files of the Renaissance regime.

Thus we can see that without a clean break with the old regime, the work of cleaning up the public finances and moralizing the country’s public life will suffer lasting damage. To this is added Koldefe’s dubious methods.

Has Koldef’s cowboy approach reached its objective limits?

The National Bar of Niger was the first association in Niger to express outrage at Kordev’s practices, which include prohibiting the defendant’s legal counsel from assisting his client during the commission’s interrogation. The Autonomous Union of Magistrates of Niger (SAMAN) is also skeptical of this campaign against Kordev. Thus, caught between these two institutions, in addition to the lack of political will to give it adequate means to carry out its tasks, Kordev today struggles to reach its cruising speed. The legal provisions for waiving its rights in the interests of justice when a case could be criminalized, coupled with the provisions relating to cases where the defendant disputes the facts, do not really facilitate Kordev’s work. Thus, without concerted action with the judiciary, Kordev’s mission today suffers a severe blow. Indeed, the dissuasive approach of making the client pay shows its limitations when the client disputes the facts alleged. In this case, she has no choice but to refer the file to the court, which will be able to decide in full independence on the subsequent course of the case. At first, the dissuasive approach seemed to be relatively effective, as the defendants were impressed and intimidated by the strong-arm tactics used by Kordev to obtain the amount claimed. But perhaps, Coldeff has taken the lead in this regard, since the prosecution of Me Adamou Souna, the former president of the National Independent Electoral Commission (Ceni), for submitting a report to the Court of Audit, and recently, it seems. There is no doubt that there is a lack of complementarity between it and justice. The accused, who may have known about this quarrel, this war between justice and Coldeff, would not hesitate to ask Coldeff to hand over their files to justice, because they are assured that once they fall into the hands of the judge, they can easily escape legal sanctions. Their lawyers quibble in order to convince the magistrate.

Indeed, it is for these reasons that Koldef appears even more dashing today than he did some time ago! The vigorous, energetic, even aggressive proceedings of the first few months have apparently reached their limits in the face of the complexity of the workings of a judicial system that believes that Koldef hunted on its land without its authorization. What a disappointment!

Khalidu Mecca (The World Today)