From Lord Avebury P0804011
Tel 020-7274 4617
Email [email protected]
Blog ericavebury.blogspot.com
January 4, 2008
Dear Lord Malloch-Brown,
I expect you have noted the sidelining of the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu in Nigeria, and his replacement by Solomon Arase, said to be a close associate of James Ibori, the former governor of Delta State, who was arrested by the EFCC on a number of corruption charges on December following his surreptitious return from abroad.
Ibori had also been under investigation by the Metropolitan Police, see the BBC item of December 12, attached, for alleged corruption offences committed whilst in London, and he is alleged also to be connected with the gangs that are siphoning off oil from pipelines in the Niger delta, causing huge losses of life and economic damage.
But he is said to have been a large contributor to Yar’Adua’s election fund, and it was the President who took the decision to suspend Ribadu.
I hope we will express concern over these developments, and warn the Nigerian authorities that undermining the EFCC or allowing highly placed officials such as Ibori to evade justice would seriously impair Nigeria’s relations with the UK. It might be even more effective if we could agree a joint statement on these lines with the EU.
The Lord Malloch-Brown,
Foreign & Commonwealth Office,
London SW1A 2AH
Ibori's Trial: Fresh Plot against Nuhu Ribadu, to be transferred to NIPSS, Kuru Jos.
Last View on Fri 4th January, 2008
Last Modified on Tue 25th December, 2007 10:59:45 am
Author: Posted by Admin Sahara
Saharareporters, New York
Former governors facing corruption trials in Nigeria have revved up their war against the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu.
According to authoritative sources at Aso Rock Villa, the arrest of James Ibori has brought tremendous pressure on the Yar'adua government to finally remove Nuhu Ribadu as EFCC chairman. Yar'adua may have buckled under pressure and agreed with administration hawks led by Baba Gana Kingibe, the secretary to the Federal government to remove Nuhu Ribadu as the chairman of the EFCC. He is expected to be replaced with another police officer, Solomon Arase known to be a close associate of James Ibori, and a former aide to the disgraced Police Chief, Tafa Balogun. Arese, who recently edited a book on the future of the Nigerian Police, holds an LLM in law like Ribadu. He is expected act in Ribadu's place until the Yar'adua government appoints another substantive chairman.
The planned removal of Nuhu Ribadu was agreed upon in a meeting with Umar Yar'adua, Baba Gana Kingibe, Inspector General of Police Michael Okiro and the Attorney General of the federation, Michael Aondoankaa. The decision that is to be implemented by the Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro was reached after the planned merger of anti-corruption agencies –EFCC, ICPC and the CCB- fell apart on the strength of opposition from the National Assembly and a broad civil society platform last week.
Knowledgeable sources privy to the new plot, say Nuhu Ribadu will be sent on a compulsory officer's course at the Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) Kuru near Jos, Plateau state by the Inspector General of Police. Mike Okiro was asked to prepare a memo to Umar Yar'adua asking for approval from him to send Nuhu Ribadu on the course to Kuru.
Nuhu Ribadu holds the rank of Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG) and the claim that he had not attended the policy college was always advertised as a draw back against his possible elevation to head the police force. The new plot is therefore conceived as a promotion for him.
With Ribadu's planned transfer, the IG will transfer the rest of the operations teams at the EFCC to other sectors within the police force, while newer police operatives will be brought in to run the EFCC. If the plans sail through, the Attorney General of the Federation will then take over all EFCC cases from the lawyers handling them on behalf of the agency.
In particular, the office of the AGF will withdraw all case files involving former governors accused of corruption from the EFCC. The planned removal of the Nuhu Ribadu came on the heels of allegations made against the EFCC chairman at the presidency that he aided former president Obasanjo's daughter, Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello in the N3.5 billion scandal. The Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro is an appointee of James Ibori. He was appointed in May 2007 by-passing a more senior DIG, Onovo to clinch the position.
Saharareporters had reported that shortly before James Ibori returned back to Nigeria from the US in October, three DIGs met with him overnight in Los Angeles where his safe return to Nigeria was planned. James Ibori returned to Nigeria undetected a few days later, members of the top echelon of the Nigerian Police facilitated his return. The EFCC arrested James Ibori two weeks ago and charged him before a Federal High Court in Kaduna for corruption and abuse of office. He was slammed with 129 charges. James Ibori was denied bail last week and remanded in Kaduna Prison.
James Ibori our sources said now runs the Police force from Kaduna Prison. Expectedly, the latest plot has elicited jubilation from James Ibori's camp. They bragged to Saharareporters that the "deed will be done in two days".
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(New York, January 1, 2008) – Recent Nigerian government efforts to remove the country's leading anti-corruption official would undermine anti-corruption efforts and entrench the impunity enjoyed by corrupt and abusive officials, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch said the looming crisis underscores the need for Nigeria's anti-corruption agencies to be more genuinely independent.
On December 27, 2007, Inspector General of Police Mike Okiro announced that he had ordered Nuhu Ribadu, the head of Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to resign his office to attend a one-year course of study at a Nigerian policy institute. Because sole authority to remove Ribadu rests with Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua, the transfer appears intended to prevent political fallout from an outright firing of Ribadu, who is pursuing politically sensitive investigations into the corrupt activities of powerful ruling party officials.
"The moves against the anti-corruption chief are a thinly veiled attempt to gut the only law enforcement agency that has tried to hold prominent ruling party politicians to account for their many crimes," said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The credibility of President Yar'Adua's rhetoric about promoting of the rule of law is at stake."
Corruption lies at the heart of Nigeria's most pressing human rights problems. Since the end of military rule in 1999, many politicians have used stolen government revenues to sponsor political violence in order to rig elections marked by violence and fraud. More than 12,000 Nigerians have died in violent clashes since 1999, and many of those clashes have been incited for political reasons. Corruption has also led to the waste and theft of windfall oil revenues that could have begun to realize Nigerians' rights to health, education and other basic human rights.
Human Rights Watch has documented the links between the corrupt tactics of several leading politicians and some of Nigeria's worst human rights abuses. Former Rivers State Governor Peter Odili presided over the theft and mismanagement of several billion dollars in oil revenues during eight years in office. He used those revenues to arm and hire violent gangs, fueling conflict in the restive Niger Delta. Andy Uba, a powerful advisor to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, deployed massive revenues to hire criminal gangs in an attempt to rig the 2007 gubernatorial elections in his home state of Anambra. Nigeria's compromised police force has consistently turned a blind eye to these and other abuses by well-connected politicians. Only the EFCC has pursued criminal investigations into the activities of Odili, Uba and other tainted ruling-party scions.
Several weeks ago, the EFCC sent shockwaves through the political establishment by arresting powerful former Delta State Governor James Ibori and charging him with 103 counts of corruption. Among myriad charges leveled against Ibori was an attempt to bribe EFCC officials with US$15 million in cash to drop the case against him. Ibori has also consistently been implicated as a central figure in fomenting violence in the strife-torn Niger Delta.
The EFCC's decision to prosecute Ibori was especially dramatic because the former governor was widely seen as politically untouchable. He is reportedly among the wealthiest of all Nigerian politicians and was a major financier of Yar'Adua's election campaign. Yar'Adua's own attorney general, Michael Aondoakaa, sparked a diplomatic protest by UK police officials when he attempted to derail attempts to prosecute Ibori on charges of money laundering in a London court. The attempt to sack Ribadu comes just two weeks after Ibori's arrest.
Under Nigerian law, only the president can remove the EFCC's chairman from office prior to the expiration of his term in office, due to end in 2011. Ribadu is a long-serving officer in the police force, but according to leading Nigerian lawyers the police hierarchy has no authority over him in his current position.
"The government seems to be attempting a crude end-run around the law by casting Ribadu's firing as a routine administrative move by the police," Takirambudde said. "But in effect Ribadu is being sacked, and sole responsibility for that move lies with President Yar'Adua."
Since 2003, the EFCC has scored unprecedented successes including the corruption convictions of former police chief Tafa Balogun and former Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. But the institution's credibility was badly tarnished by its selective prosecution of government opponents ahead of the rigged 2007 polls that brought the current government to power.
In recent months, the EFCC had begun to rebuild its credibility by initiating prosecutions against several former governors. Not least among these was Ayo Fayose of Ekiti state; Fayose is implicated in acts of murder and corruption, and spent Christmas in prison awaiting trial along with Ibori. One high-ranking EFCC official told Human Rights Watch that Ribadu was being fired in order to "dilute the independence of the EFCC" and "halt the investigation and prosecution of former governors."
"The EFCC's important prosecutorial successes were marred by the disgraceful political witch hunts the institution embarked upon ahead of Nigeria's 2007 elections," Takirambudde said. "But rather than repair the agency, the Yar'Adua government has now set about dismantling the challenge to impunity that it represents."
President Yar'Adua came into office pledging to restore integrity to federal anti-corruption efforts by allowing the EFCC to pursue an impartial "zero-tolerance" effort to hold corrupt officials to account. Many Nigerian activists were skeptical of this commitment, arguing that Yar'Adua was too beholden to the corrupt and violent politicians who helped rig him into office to pursue them for their crimes. Yar'Adua's own election, which was rigged by some of the same officials the EFCC is now pursuing, is being challenged before Nigeria's election tribunals.
"The government's efforts against Ribadu show the need for a government agency with the independence and capacity needed to attack the impunity that props up Nigeria's corrupt and unaccountable political system," Takirambudde said. "Politics as usual is precisely the thing that has kept Nigeria's people mired in poverty and violence for 47 years."
Vanguard (Lagos)
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29 December 2007
Posted to the web 31 December 2007
Emmanuel Aziken
Lagos
Civil rights lawyer Bamidele Aturu has condemned the decision to send Mallam Nuhu Ribadu on study leave from his job at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as a contrivance aimed at derailing the war against corruption.
In a statement yesterday, Aturu said the action had exposed President Umaru Yar'Adua's true colour as a friend of corrupt people who is ready to do anything to protect them.He also demanded the immediate resignation of the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Mike Okiro who he claimed lent his office to the perpetuation of the plot against the anti-corruption crusade.
While affirming that Mr. Ribadu was not indispensable, Mr. Aturu submitted that sending the chairman of the EFCC on a study leave was not envisaged in the fixed four year tenure for the head of the anti-graft agency under the law.
Affirming that the action was illegal, he said:
"It is illegal because the law establishing the EFCC is very clear and unambiguous. That law does not admit of an unrequested study leave or of any study leave for that matter. The chairperson of the EFCC has a fixed tenure of four years. Of course he can be removed by the President if he suffers any infirmity of mind or body; if he misconducts himself; or if the President thinks it is in the interest of the public to remove him."
"There is no basis for asking the man to proceed on study leave for any duration under the Act. It is therefore simply mischievous to argue that since he was seconded from the Police his tenure can be tampered with at will."
Nigeria: Transparency International Condemns FG On Ribadu
This Day (Lagos)
3 January 2008
Posted to the web 3 January 2008
Constance Ikokwu
Washington, D.C.
Global coalition against corruption, Transparency International (TI), has condemned the Federal Government's decision to send the Chairman of
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu on course, saying it casts aspersions on the country's anti-corruption stand.
TI said the government should reverse its decision with immediate effect to avoid a dent on the country's already battered image world wide.
According to TI, the removal of Ribadu makes no sense when the country needs more men of his caliber and strength in his capacity as anti-corruption boss. The government's recent step indicates that it lacks thepolitical will to tackle graft, said TI."We are moving into an environment of impunity because it is a demonstration of the lack of political will to fight corruption by the present government.
The lack of political will to fight corruption has been proved beyond doubt through the removal of the EFCC Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, TI's Representative in Nigeria, Mr. Osita Ogbu said.Continuing he stated that Ribadu's removal "lowers Nigeria 's image internationally because Nuhu Ribadu has been acclaimed worldwide. His commitment to fighting corruption is unparalled.
He might have made some mistakes but he is known to be very courageous and passionate about the fight against corruption.
"The tempo of the corruption fight has died down since the advent of this regime. It has diminished seriously and this is being spear-headed by the Attorney General of the Federation, Michael Aondoakaa who is working for indicted ex-governors.
"Ribadu has fought the very powerful governors who have cornered a lot of wealth and who helped to install those people in power now. It is the governors that are being prosecuted that pushed for Ribadu's removal," Ogbu argued.Asked if he believes corruption can be reduced to the barest minimum in Nigeria, Ogbu answered in the positive.
He told THISDAY that one way of achieving this is giving the necessary institutions the independence they need to operate.
They can be strengthened by allowing them to function without interference, he declared. To avoid making Nigeria a laughing stock, the government should wake up to its responsibilities in this regard, he advised.
The creation of EFCC in 2003 helped to bring Nigeria back from the cold, following arrest and prosecution of corrupt persons. The country's integrity, damaged particularly by advanced fee fraud (419) received a boost thereafter.
However, Ribadu's successes have not been without controversy. He is accused of being a tool used by the former President, Olusegun Obasanjo to hunt down political enemies. Attempts by THISDAY to get reactions from the United States government failed.
When contacted last Monday, the Chief Press and Public Affairs Officer, Bureau for African Affairs, State Department, Mr Gregory Garland said he would be ready with a reply yesterday. As at press time, he was unreachable.
Statement by Nobel Prizewinner Wole Soyinka
EXIT RIBADU?
I can only hope that Benazir Bhutto's followers will forgive me for saying this, but the news of Nuhu Ribadu's removal from the anti-corruption Nigerian organisaton known as the EFCC will have, in all likelihood, a far more devastating impact on the psyche of the Nigerian nation than the deadly event that now threatens to further destabilize the tortured nation known as Pakistan, through the assasination of her democratic front runner, Benazir Bhutto. Let me pause here to express my sincere condolences to the people of Pakistan.
What is at stake for us in Nigeria is not much different however: the restoration and consolidation of democracy, not in any sentimental or rhetorical sense, but as a lived reality that restores dignity to the people of any nation and guarantees their day to day security. The precarious socio-political condition into which the Pakistani people have been thrown echoes, in both parallel and divergent directions, the blow dealt to the Nigerian nation by the 'assassination' of the head of an organization that commenced the process of restoring dignity to a people whose nation has become a byword for the most breath-taking scam in high-places, for endemic corruption, a contempt for accountability and transparency and the abuse of national resources in the pursuit of personal and party power consolidation.
At every opportunity, we have stressed the obvious but ignored fact that the liberalization of political space is contingent upon the moral cleansing of such space. Thus the need to identify and contain – including by punitive means - individuals and organisations that operate on the open nexus easily summed up as : power derives from corruption which in turn fuels and guarantees power. The battle against corruption therefore goes beyond the walling out of illegal economnc advantages. Corruption is the very bedrock of political illegitimacy. The tree of democracy cannot thrive on the compost of corruption.
This obvious attempt at crippling one of the two anti-corruption crusade agencies of the nation, unarguably aggressive and result oriented on an unprecedented scale, must therefore be read as an assault on the very bastion of democracy. Again, I refer to my earlier indications: that the riddle of most of the political murders in the nation will be solved when the anti-corruption project has attained its ultimate goal of unearthing the hidden. Let me refer yet again to the notorious case where a presiding judge on a politically motivated murder case threatened early to withdraw from the case. Soon after, he withdrew from the case altogether - the pressure, he openly announced, coming from the most unexpected quarters, had made his task impossible. That judge noted down details of monetary inducements that were offered to make him grant bail to a high-profile suspect. The upward spiral of that political suspect since his 'acquittal' says much about the umbilical cord that trails from material to political corruption.
The ruling party of Nigeria, the PDP has proved yet again that there is no reformist agenda possible within its ranks. The presidential incumbent bears the primary and ultimate responsibility for this grotesque reversal of the nation's frustrated push towards possible redemption, but it is the ruling party itself, the PDP, that continues to suffocate the nation in its folds of corruption, negating every attempt to rid her of this incubus, since that party has exhibited itself, again and again, as the very quagmire of corruption, nurtured on corruption, sustained by corruption and dependent on corruption for its very survival.
Let all sophistry be abandoned - the removal of Nuhu Ribadu is not about the removal of one individual. We are talking about signals, portents for future conduct, about the erosion of credibility, abandonment of principle, all of which of course transcends any individual. The timing, when viewed with the recent call to re-open the case-files of unsolved political murders, will be regarded as a coincidence only by starry-eyed innocents from space – good luck to them. Those of us who have the slightest knowledge of behind-the-scenes manipulations since the trail of detection moved ever closer to the very apex of governance under the past regime, know that the nation was being brought closer and closer to the dismantling of one of the most sinister and corrupt governance machines that this nation has ever confronted – including even the incontinent reign of Sanni Abacha.
Ribadu's removal is therefore not an individual predicament. The situation here does not permit of the familiar cliche of any one individual being less than an institution or agency – no, that is not the issue! The issue is that an effective agency has been tampered with, unnecessarily, but with transparent motivations that constitute an assault on the corporate integrity of the nation. The trust of the nation has been abused - that is the issue. Instead of reinforcing the autonomy of an organization that is clearly dedicated to probity and political integrity, notice has been sent to all four corners of the nation, and to the international community that, at the slightest threat to the hegemony of corrupt rule, the credibility of even the most laudable institutions will be eroded.
Is this the last word? Is Nuhu Ribadu yet another sacrificial lamb on the altar of success and promise of more and more success? If so, the nation has indeed been brought to an abysmal low. Confusion has been deliberately and liberally sown. The reign of vanishing files, denied directives and ambiguous legal advices has begun where dubious Attorney-Generals fill the vacuum created by high level movements of personnel in multiple directions where those in the most sensitive and knowledgable places vanish into the bureaucratic maze, with hardly a trace of the rewards of their long dedicated industry. Technical extensions of cut-and-dried prosecutions will now length en into eternity and of course – oblivion.
What a dismal, contemptuous New Year gift to the nation! Again, I lament with the democratic people of Pakistan but, even in the midst of your grief, spare a moment of pity for that land of eternal missed opportunities and blighted hopes, that clay-footed giant sibling on a continent to your West, known as – Nigeria.
Wole Soyinka
Governor Ibori, Wife, In $360M Oil Deal in London
« on: November 27, 2005, 11:05 PM »
[www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-3331.0.html]
Is this How our governors govern us in Nigeria?
Chief James Onanefe Ibori, the Governor of Delta State and his wife, Theresa Nkoyo have been fingered in a messy - six million barrels of Nigerian Bonny Light- oil deal amounting to 360 million You. S dollars in the United Kingdom.
According to an on-line media outfit, Elendureports.com- based in the United State of American, a few weeks ago, Whitehills Corporation Limited offered in its advertorial in London to sell six million barrel of Nigerian Bonny Light to interested parties, and also promised to supply the amount of oil every month. “One could have dismissed this as another fraudulent scheme by some Nigerians, except that the company listed Tessi Ibori as the Company Secretary, while the Chief Executive Officer {CEO}is Okey Ilo”, added the media outfit.
However, investigations by our source revealed that Tessi Ibori is the same person as Theresa Nkoyo Ibori, wife of the Delta State Governor. Tessi, a British citizen- born in January 1968, was appointed the Company Secretary in November 2001- nearly two years after the husband became the governor of Delta state.
Whitehills Corporation Limited is said to have its registered office at St. Andrew Court, St. Andrew Road, London, E176AX while Tessi's house is located at 7 Westover Hill, North West London. According to our source, the Ibori's wife London address is in a gated community with a host of British guards and gardeners.
Hear our source: “Visitors can only be buzzed into the estate. Closed Circuits' cameras are mounted in strategic places around the premises with collection of expensive cars in the garage including Bentley. The house is owned by Governor Ibori”.
More so, search by the source for the growing rate of houses in the area shows that number 10 Westover Hill was purchased on October 18, 2003 for 0ne million, seven hundred thousand pounds and number 14 was purchased on May 31, 2001 for two million, three hundred thousand pounds. “The complexity of Ibori's story explains the insidious nature of tax haven and sundry Island, which offer career company directors who front for many Nigerians”, our source added.
Newsday gathered that Governor Ibori is one of the governors being investigated by the London Metropolitan Police and the Economic Financial Crimes Commission, {EFCC} for alleged money laundering. Popularly referred to as “Oil Sheik” by his colleagues, security sources said Governor Ibori is one of the richest governors in the country. And since the arrest of Governor D. S. P Alamieyeseigha of Bayelsa State in London, Ibori and others are said not to be in a hurry to travel to Europe.
However, Abel Osheveire, Special Adviser to Ibori on Media Matters told Elendureports.Com that his boss does not own a house in London. When reminded of the house in Westover Hill, Oshevire said: “You know Tessi was born in London; maybe, that is her father's house”.
He however confirmed that Ibori stays in the house whenever he is in London.
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