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Atsar Terver
Public Commentator
Port Harcourt
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more articles by Terver

In any case, this demotion affected over 138 other officers whose promotion was deemed inappropriate by the PSC, so I do not understand the clatter about Ribadu. Any attempt to single out Ribadu’s for special treatment would amount to dishonest logic. It was Ribadu himself who made fun of the inapt promotion when he was asked about it in the interview I quoted earlier in this piece. Hear him ‘It’s all politics...you can’t promote someone who does not work for you’.

Bode George: What A Man Could Not Do...
 by Atsar Terver
 

With the arrest and arraignment of Chief Olabode George before an Ikeja High Court over charges of corruption by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC),  the ancient adage that says ‘what a man can do, a woman can do even better’  has been given a new dimension.  Indeed, we are seeing a revolutionary dispensation in which what even a man could not do; a woman has succeeded in doing almost effortlessly.

Olabode George is one of the high-ranking Obasanjo royalists, who were considered untouchable, while his backer held sway as commander-in- Chief of the Armed Forces. As a National Vice Chairman for the South West region of the PDP and core player in the Obasanjo government, Nuhu Ribadu’s EFCC could not touch him even with a long pole. Despite series of petitions against Bode and an indictment by an investigative panel in which Nuhu Ribadu was a member, Nuhu looked the other way while brandishing a list of Obasanjo’s political enemies who he condemned to be unfit to hold public office even without a court conviction.

It was not only Bode that was set apart for special treatment by the then EFCC. As facts emerging from series of probes in the National assembly have revealed, several Ministers serving under that administration were mired in shady deals which could not have possibly gone undetected by the EFCC. Name them: Imoke, Agagu, Borishade, Fani-Kayode, El-Rufai, who were in the clean books of the EFCC,  (with the first two even (s)elected Governors), have now been exposed as the very agents of state fraud, be it through power projects, Aviation Intervention Fund, or sale of land/properties in the FCT or 1004 flats in Lagos. Add this list to that of Fabian Osuji, Grace Esomo, Sunday Afolabi (RIP) and perhaps Tafa Balogun and you could reach the conclusion that Obasanjo excelled in the art of hiring crooks to work for him.

That Nuhu knew about the involvement of Bode in the scandal that has finally caught up with him (George), is evident in the answer he gave in an interview he granted Elendu Reports   sometimes in June 2006. When asked if he was investigating Bode Geoarge, he became evasive and unusually incoherent, attempted to parry the question but eventually stated that his committee found out that things were not done properly under the leadership of Bode George at the NPA....that thereafter the Federal Executive Council asked for criminal investigation in the matter (which for some strange reasons he did not carry out).... and concluded that (as far as Bode George was concerned) it was ‘difficult’ to work in Nigeria! But was it not in the same Nigeria that he prosecuted Alamayiesiagha, and Tafa Balogun? Two years later, we have seen a woman triumph where this gallant officer failed woefully.

Interestingly in that same interview, questioned about the alleged targeting of opposition party members who were accused of sleaze by the EFCC, he suddenly waxed bold again and forgot that it was still the same Nigeria where it is ‘difficult’ to work. He blurted out arrogantly ‘this is war and they don’t know me...I am a suicide bomber...I will fight them’. Note the repeated use of ‘I’; it was not the EFCC as an institution fighting this aspect of the war; it was a personal assignment of Ribadu, targeted at the enemies of his master. It is equally interesting   to note that the EFCC under Ribadu had enough information to frame over 163 charges against Bode (as Farida has done) but lacked the courage to do even one. Not that I fancy these long list of charges anyway, but just to stress the fact that Ribadu had enough information to prosecute Bode George, which he swept under the carpet.

It is this cover-up plot that gave Bode the boldness to dare the EFCC last week on return from holidays abroad where he explained he had gone to regenerate his political catalyst in readiness to ‘launch back on the plough’. Bode was quoted as saying that whoever insinuated that he had run away in fear of EFCC should ‘bring his/her EFCC to come and arrest me’. He went on to brag that he had no questions to answer as far as his six-year career as part-time Chairman of the NPA is concerned. Unknown to Bode, the EFCC had 163 questions waiting for him to answer before a court of law. Unknown to bode, the new EFCC belonged to no godfather of his, who could beckon on it to recoil from him the way he is accustomed to. His bragging was thus akin to the grandstanding of a contemptuous criminal.

In the aftermath of Ribadu’s removal and redeployment to the NIPSS, which was made inevitable by his refusal to wean himself of the milk from Obasanjo’s lawless dispensation and kowtow to the rule of law which is the guiding philosophy of the Yar’Adua administration, and the ensuing lamentations from those who believed he had no substitute, and sought to conscript everyone into a cacophony of Ribadu cheerleaders, as well as assemble a mob of government blackmailers through media half-truths, I wrote in an article titled ‘ Weep not over Ribadu’  that indeed his  removal was one of the boldest and most decisive  actions of the Yar’Adua government . So far nothing has happened in the EFCC that would make me to change that position. Rather I am more and more persuaded that, his removal was in the best interest of Nigeria.

With Ribadu in the saddle, the likes of Adenike Garange, Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, Fani-Kayode, Prof.Borishade, and now Bode George would never have gotten the opportunity to clear their names, which most Nigerians believe are stained with corruption. Those soothsayers who predicted the death of the EFCC after Ribadu’s exit have resorted to cynicism. These critics never gave Waziri a chance right from the onset and it is not surprising that they see nothing good in the same EFCC they claimed to be protecting few months ago in protest of his removal. They downplay and belittle the giant strides so far made by the iron lady within the short period she has been at the head of the anti-graft agency. They maintain that the EFCC is dead or about to be killed by this regime against overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Farida is putting them to shame and I know more shame awaits them in the months to come.

One institution the EFCC must beam its searchlight on is the National Assembly where the opposition to Waziri’s appointment was hatched.  I am encouraged that recent comments from her indicate that she is aware of this obligation. While on a visit to the House speaker Dimeji, Bankole, She was quoted as saying that she has no respect for lawbreakers and as Nuhu Aliu once told us, some of them are in the Senate. I am aware that some people may take this as advocating for a revenge mission. Far from it.  Something is simply not right with the kind of incongruous and almost dubious budgetary allocations, appropriated by the Senate by themselves and for themselves in the 2008 Appropriation Bill and it would be a great disservice to the nation if the EFCC looks the other way while the national coffer is plundered.

I cannot finish this piece without commenting on the demotion of Ribadu by the Police Service Commission. I was shocked by this novel action by the PSC due to the sheer unlikelihood of such a reversal happening in these shores, having not happened before as far as my memory can recollect. The most I expected was for Ribadu to be kept on the rank of AIG until those he jumped over meet up with him. Having said that however, my personal opinion is illustrated by a story of a man who was chased into thick thorns by a lion. But after the lion had left, it became difficult to get the man out of the thorns. While the villagers were contemplating a solution, a mad man who was watching the whole drama with drama with consternation, became furious, took a match and set the bush on fire. The trapped man on seeing the fire tore through the thick thorns and came out within a second with the fury of a man being pursued by a beast. The mad man then laughed hysterically and told the villagers that common sense dictates that what took force to enter the thorns, required force to come out. Ribadu is that man, Obasanjo the lion; The Police Officers who were protesting over the promotion are the villagers while the PSC is the mad man!

In any case, this demotion affected over 138 other officers whose promotion was deemed inappropriate by the PSC, so I do not understand the clatter about Ribadu. Any attempt to single out Ribadu’s for special treatment would amount to dishonest logic. It was Ribadu himself who made fun of the inapt promotion when he was asked about it in the interview I quoted earlier in this piece. Hear him ‘It’s all politics...you can’t promote someone who does not work for you’.

 

 

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