Nigeria’s Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa is once again at his game of thwarting the prosecution of well-connected economic exploiters of Nigerians. This time, Aondoakaa’s antics are stalling the prosecution of bank officials arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for involvement in hundreds of billions of naira in loan fraud.
Apart from a belated and tepid statement of support for the bank reforms initiated by Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Mr. Aondoakaa has disappeared from public view. His disappearance has put wrinkles in the prosecution of high-powered bank executives and employees implicated in numerous loan scams.
By Thursday of last week, EFCC officials realized that the prosecution of bank officials detained by the agency would not be possible without the input of the AGF. Early in the life of the Yar’adua regime, Aondoakaa attempted to strip the EFCC of prosecutorial power. The bank and financial services act provides for an attorney general "fiat" but top lawyers who spoke to Saharareporters said the that the Supreme Court has ruled that the AGF's fiat is illegal. Even so, the EFCC under Mrs. Farida Waziri has leaned heavily on the AGF for approval before proceeding with any prosecution.
Saharareporters had earlier revealed that Aondoakaa was plotting with former Governor James Ibori, disgraced Oceanic Bank CEO Mrs. Cecilia Ibru, and several corrupt federal high court judges to undermine the Central Bank’s decision to fire five CEOs whose banks writhe under the weight of non-performing loans handed to their cronies as well as politically connected rogue businessmen and women. 
The plot was to induce two judges to grant perpetual injunctions reversing the sack of Mrs. Ibru as well as four other CEOs. Aondoakaa would then quickly announce that the government had accepted the ruling on account of a so-called commitment to the “rule of law”.
Aondoakaa wanted to execute the plot before Yar’adua, who was then in a hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, could have a say in the matter. A source close to Aso Rock said that Yar’adua moved to foil Aondoakaa’s plan as soon as Saharareporters detailed the AGF’s plot. Still reeling from the direct criticism by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Yar’adua was determined to send a message to Washington that he had changed tacks in his handling of corruption, even so, most believe it is fake. Our source said Yar’adua instructed that Aondoakaa must allow the EFCC, NDIC, Central Bank and the State Security Services (SSS) to handle the unfolding bank reforms. Yar’adua, our source revealed, was also still smarting from his regime’s embarrassing failure to bring anyone to justice over its much-publicized “Halliburton probe”.
Another source told Saharareporters that Yar’adua’s instructions to Aondoakaa made Ibori to panic. Ibori then decided to help
Mrs. Ibru in her bid to flee from Nigeria. Apart from Ibori, Aondoakaa and shadowy businessman Jimoh Ibrahim played a role in arranging for Mrs. Ibru to escape. She was to fly out in Jimoh Ibrahim’s private jet, a Bombardier CL-600-2B16 with registration number N605TX built in 2008 and registered in the US to a Jamaica, New York–based “Global Fleet 605 Inc.”. Ibrahim's trade name. Alert SSS officers reportedly foiled her escape, but Ibori stepped in and arranged for Mrs. Ibru to leave the country – until her humiliating return last week and surrender to the EFCC.
Once his plot collapsed, Aondoakaa left for New York to attend a United Nation’s boundary conference that lasted for a week. He used his absence to make himself unavailable to the EFCC, even as the agency awaited his legal “fiat” to arraign the bank CEOs and directors in its custody on Monday. As the situation became precarious for the EFCC, whose own incompetence and corruption had compromised some of the top cases and whose head, Mrs. Waziri, kept making incoherent statements (including asking bank debtors to pay debts in EFCC's name), the EFCC had to resort to hardball tactics to keep some of the CEOs in custody. The EFCC set impossible bail conditions for their detainees even as the agency, in the words of one of their staff, “looked frantically for the AGF, who seemed to be playing hide-and-seek, to give his go-ahead to the prosecution plans.”
In the interim, Aondoakaa and Ibori had bought enough time to activate their Plan ‘B’. Some of the biggest debtors earlier named by the CBN, whom the EFCC said would be arrested and tried along with the CEOs, had the opportunity to move in and manipulate bank records. In one instance, Jimoh Ibrahim was able to get Oceanic Bank officials to backdate some of his so-called payments and move their books around.
In another bizarre twist, Ibori’s Notore chemical company was said to have suddenly turned its jumbo loans into “performing loans”. A perpetual loan embezzler in Ibadan, Mr. Azeez Arisekola-Alao turned up to pay some of his bad loans.
What the EFCC started as a desire to prosecute bank robbers soon turned into a loan repayment circus at its headquarters. The plan to prosecute habitual and determined loan delinquents had failed. Some of the embattled former CEOs were able to reach loyal staffers and persuade them to doctor loan documents that could constitute incriminating evidence. In the haste to destroy or change incriminating documents, the banks adopted the same strategies used by the Saraki family – especially Laolu Saraki, now a special Assistant to Yar’adua – to destroy evidence in all the branches of Societe Generale Bank of Nigeria after the Sarakis had looted the bank to buy political offices for their members. A source in Abuja noted that this is not the first time Aondoakaa would pull a delay that proved costly. Last month, as Yar’adua attended the G8 conference in Italy, Aondoakaa took off with controversial businessman, Jimoh Ibrahim, who was on a personal business trip to Sao Tome. As a result of the questionable trip, the attorney general failed to file a nolle prosequi in a timely manner at the Federal High Court in Jos to end the regime’s prosecution of Henry Okah, whom Yar’adua had pardoned in his “amnesty” program. With Aondoakaa no-where to be found to effect Okah’s release, MEND militants sensed that Yar’adua was pulling a fast one on them. As a reprisal, the militants bombed the Atlas Cove jetty in Lagos, leading to the death of naval officers and innocent civilians.
Confronted with his disappearance, Aondoakaa persuaded Ibrahim to deny that he rode in his jet, but he could not provide the ticket of the airline that took him to Sao Tome and Principe. Aondoakaa quickly ran to Jos Monday morning to personally file the discontinuation of the case against Okah, even though he had insisted that the Solicitor general could do it.
Aondoakaa’s closeness to Ibrahim was further cemented when the AGF filed a discontinuation of a forgery case the EFCC had brought against Ibrahim before a Lagos high court. “The forgery case was watertight,” a source within the EFCC familiar with the details told Saharareporters. Even so, Aondoakaa, who has been dubbed the most corrupt AGF in Nigeria’s history, stepped in to end the case in exchange for a huge pay-off. In ending the forgery case, Aondoakaa cleared the path for the regime to return NICON insurance to Ibrahim.
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