The suspended Acting-Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Magu, must be wondering why all the excitement or commotion surrounding his activities and his person. And he would be right to so wonder.
For me, I have sometimes had to pinch myself to be sure I had not died and gone to a journalist’s heaven. You see, it is not very often that a journalist gets to say I told you so…to a nation that had for over 14 years refused to believe the EFCC house that Ribadu built was disastrous for the nation from the start.
Please come with me to page 339 of Nasir el-Rufai’s book, THE ACCIDENTAL PUBLIC SERVANT, the section about former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Third Term scheme and bribe money. “Nuhu (Ribadu) directed the financial intelligence unit of the EFCC to track the cash movements, mostly from the states to Abuja, which accounts most of the money ended up in and so forth. Most of the money was allegedly going to companies and accounts controlled by Andy Uba, who was the president’s special assistant on domestic matters that handled those things for him”.
Yet, till today that so-called anti-corruption great still talks derisively of the “so-called Third Term” project. No wonder, Andy Uba was among those who graced Ribadu’s sons’ wedding in January this year. He and Ribadu must have laughed Nigeria to scorn.
A second evidence? From page 358 of the same book, “When Yar’ Adua broke the news (that Obasanjo had asked him to contest the presidential election as his chosen candidate) Nuhu’s response could hardly have been less gracious: ‘Well, Obasanjo has not told me, and as far as the presidency is concerned, I have my candidate for President, and that is Nasir el’ Rufai”’. El’Rufai continued: “Nuhu’s instinctive reaction was like that of a typical Policeman – dust off the EFCC files …and launched investigations” on diversion of LGA funds, and even arrested some LGA chairmen. El-Rufai to Ribadu: “Nuhu, what are you doing?” Ribadu: “Yallabai, we can still change this. No, we can’t allow Obasanjo to do this”. El-Rufai now hit the mark: “It is just being selfish. You want me to be president because I am your friend, not because you think I am different or better than Yar’Adua. Anything you do hence forth, will just will just confirm what people say about you – that you target people that threaten certain interests”. Yet, when Yar’Adua, having seen through Ribadu’s duplicity and appointed a new EFCC chairman, he was demonised.
See things Magu’s way; what really has he done that EFCC’s first Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, didn’t do a hundred times over? And who blamed Ribadu? Didn’t the nation lionise him instead? And why would Magu’s refusal to recognise the Ministry of Justice’s supervisory over EFCC surprise us when he witnessed the unfettered access to President Olusegun Obasanjo, Ribadu had?
And after applauding Ribadu who sold off the properties EFCC had recovered, without recourse to the Justice Ministry, are we saying that suddenly the law has changed? Dear reader, please see things from Magu’s point of view, why would anything he has done, which the Justice Minister has quarreled with, now begin to matter? Why, when the fight for turf did not start today? It started in 2007 when President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration incepted. Please remember that Yar’Adua had a Justice minister named Mr. Michael Aondoakaa; the present controversy is another version of that between Aondoakaa and Ribadu. Loading…CHECK THIS OUT
Ribadu and later Ibrahim Lamorde his successor, were so powerful that not even President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was willing to contradict them. That was why Ribadu’s EFCC’s seized the Chelsea Hotel, near The Grand Square, Abuja Business Central District, from Bayelsa and Jonathan, Mr. President, did nothing. Could President Jonathan and his media handlers please state if Alamieyeseighia lied when he said in an interview that Governor Jonathan completed the payment for that hotel. Or was Jonathan part of that plot to taint Alamieyeseighia that terribly? And why was that erstwhile profitable hotel suddenly begin to run at a huge loss when under the EFCC’s control? By Alamieyeseighia, I mean the late Bayelsa state Governor, DSP Alamieyeseigha, the one EFCC’s shameless mouthpieces said had returned from London in 2005 dressed as a woman, yet, no CCTV footage of him was ever shown to anybody.
What name was on the false passport he MUST have used if he was dressed as a woman? Which airline flew him in? Nobody asked the loud-mouthed Ribadu such questions, even though he had spun tall devilish tales about Alamieyeseigha’s supposed escape under disguise. This nonsense has been repeated in thousands of opinions and in over ten books including Obasanjo’s own, yet no single evidence was proffered.
Yet, Obasanjo and Ribadu must have known that Britain, having seen through the machinations Alamieyeseigha faced, simply put him on a small plane and flew him to Ivory Coast, from where a private jet brought him to Port Harcourt. Hey, Ribadu and Obasanjo and the legions of journalists that have kept repeating that devil’s story, tell us the airline that brought in Alamieyeseighia to Nigeria.
