EDITORIAL - Challenge for the NBI

As of early last night, there was still no word on whether President Aquino had accepted the resignation of Nonnatus Rojas as director of the National Bureau of Investigation. There were reports that high officials wanted the resignation not of Rojas but of certain other NBI officials suspected of coddling businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, whose department has jurisdiction over the NBI, urged deputy NBI directors to follow the example of Rojas. One deputy director heeded her call.

This flap should lead to a thorough housecleaning in a bureau that has had its own share of scandals in recent years. The NBI is usually called in when the impartiality of other government agencies cannot be guaranteed in investigating their own officials or employees. The NBI also handles special cases involving organized crime. It has its own forensics section and a special unit for cyber crimes.

Considering the importance of the cases assigned to the bureau, competence and integrity are essential to the NBI. In the hunt for Napoles, who was ordered arrested on charges of serious illegal detention, many stories about the NBI manhunt came out, with several key details turning out to be erroneous or, as some quarters suspect, deliberately leaked to mislead the public. When Napoles finally turned up, both her camp and Malacañang expressed mistrust of certain elements in the NBI.

That mistrust prompted the resignation of Rojas. Whether or not the supposedly irrevocable resignation is accepted by the President, the incident should lead to a housecleaning in the bureau. Even if the mistrust was misplaced and there was a serious effort to find Napoles, the NBI appears to have looked at the wrong places and its manhunt was a flop. At the very least, this calls for better training and sleuthing among its agents. Rather than take offense, the NBI should see this as a challenge to improve professionalism within its ranks.