The independent Review Panel set up by the apex governing body of the African Development Bank (AfDB) to review the process by which the Ethics Committee of the bank and the Bureau of the Board of Governors came to their finding on the whistleblower last week complaints against the bank president, Akinwunmi Adesina, turned in their report.
The findings of the three-member eminent panel were unequivocal. The panel says it “concurs with the (ethics) committee in its findings in respect of all the allegations against the president and finds that they were properly considered and dismissed by the committee.” On the representation made by Adesina to disprove the allegations made against him, the panel stated that “It has considered the president’s submissions on their face and finds them consistent with his innocence and to be persuasive.”
In other words, the 16 allegations of ethical misconduct levelled against Adesina by a group of whistleblowers not only lacked merit as earlier affirmed in the findings and rulings of the ethics committee which initially investigated the matter, the position of the Bureau of the Board of Governors which subsequently cleared Adesina of any wrongdoing in May, was, to the panel, very much in order.
To begin with, we must again state that the so-called review would have been unnecessary had the non-regionals, particularly the United States, not expressed reservations about the process under which the whistleblower complaints against the bank president were dismissed. In this, it bears stating that under the bank’s statutes, the intervention of the Board of Governors, (being the only body with the final authority to decide whether or not to act on any complaint or allegation of a breach by the President of the Bank of the provisions of the Code of Conduct) ought to have ended the matter.
Instead, the US administration, through Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, had rather curiously called for “an independent analysis of the whistleblowers’ recriminations and allegations” even when the ethics committee and the bureau found no substance in the whistleblower complaints and had consequently dismissed them.
In acceding to the US demand which the bank’s Board of Governors had noted became necessary so as to carry everyone along, the board had nonetheless stated that: “the Bureau agrees to authorize an Independent Review of the Report of the Ethics Committee of the Boards of Directors relative to the allegations considered by the ethics committee and the submissions made by the President of the Bank Group thereto in the interest of due process”.
With the findings now out, there is certainly a lot to be said of the panel, which, being guided strictly by the statutes of the bank, was careful not to lend itself to the kind of fishing expedition as demanded by the non-regionals of the bank. Had the panel followed that course, which some sections of the Western media not only picked up but orchestrated, we have no doubt that a situation would have been created in which the institution would have had to violate its own governing statutes, and by so doing, put the integrity of its organs into a needless jeopardy.
This is the context in which the panel’s finding is more than a vindication of Nigeria’s Adesina. It is as much an emphatic vote for due process as it is a repudiation of the attempt by the powerful to scuttle the rule-based system in place under an assumed exigency, when, the real play is to deny the incumbent president, a second term after a continent-wide endorsement.
We commend the panel for a job well done. We also commend both the Ethics Committee and the Board of Governors for standing firm in defence of the rules. With African Union endorsement in the kitty and no other candidate in contention, our expectation is that the non-regionals will finally let things be.
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