Highly reliable sources have revealed to SaharaReporters that Umaru Musa Yar’adua has worked out an “understanding” with the Supreme Court to authenticate last year’s “election” that put him in the presidency. Yar’adua has consequently acquired a new pressure group whose mandate is to ensure that the terms of what one lawyer described as “a shocking miscarriage of justice” are kept.
Highly reliable sources have revealed to SaharaReporters that Umaru Musa Yar’adua has worked out an “understanding” with the Supreme Court to authenticate last year’s “election” that put him in the presidency. Yar’adua has consequently acquired a new pressure group whose mandate is to ensure that the terms of what one lawyer described as “a shocking miscarriage of justice” are kept.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
James Onanefe Ibori, the former governor of Delta State, heads the new group of advisers and associates. Ibori currently faces charges of money laundering at the Federal High Court in Kaduna.
The group met recently at Ibori’s house to fine-tune strategies for ensuring that members of the apex court are properly managed and that they keep their part of the bargain.
Yar'adua came into office in a highly flawed general election conducted on April 21, 2007. Local and international observers adjudged the election as the worst in the history of Nigeria. Yar'adua admitted that the elections were marked by serious irregularities. Yet, at his instance and with his blessing, his associates, including his wife, Turai, arranged a massive bribe to justices of the Court of Appeal who heard the first stage of the elections petitions. The panel leader, Justice James Ogebe, was elevated to the Supreme Court days before the ruling was delivered, a move that was widely condemned by lawyers, politicians and democracy activists. As reported earlier by SaharaReporters, the other members of the panel received various sums of bribes that were routed through Dubai and offshore banks in the Cayman Islands. One Abuja-based source told us that the financial inducement to the justices was “a carefully executed judicial plot to cover up the fraudulent nature of the elections.”
SaharaReporters learnt that Mrs. Farida Waziri, controversial chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), also attended the meeting at Ibori’s Abuja residence. Our sources indicated that Mrs. Waziri has been recruited to be the direct contact to Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, the second most powerful judge on the Supreme Court panel. We learnt that the recruitment of Mrs. Waziri has to do with the desire of the group to openly jettison Michael Aondoakaa, the Attorney General of the Federation, whose fate in the yet to be constituted "new cabinet" remains uncertain. One source told our correspondent that Aondoakaa’s "openly corrupt and greedy ways" led to the decision to sideline him and hire Mrs. Waziri as the new arrowhead for clandestine contacts with Justice Katsina-Alu for the duration of the hearing.
Others who attended the Ibori meeting were Orji Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia state, Saminu Turaki, ex-governor of Jigawa, and Chimaroke Nnamani, former Enugu governor.
Our sources said the meeting also cemented the agreement between the former governors and the EFCC boss to end their corruption trials in a matter of weeks from now. The sources told our reporters that Yar'adua assigned them with the duty of ensuring the "security the judgment" from the Supreme Court while promising to end the corruption cases against them as soon as the Supreme Court pronounces him president at the end of the appeal process.
SaharaReporters had revealed in several reports that Ibori invested close to N10 billion of funds he looted from the Delta State treasury to get Yar'adua manipulated into office. Ibori has been a major beneficiary of the policies of the Yar'adua regime, including secret letters by Aondoakaa to a London court exonerating Ibori from corruption allegations. Yar’adua has also consulted Ibori on several appointments and has given the former governor unlimited access to Aso Rock and recently broached the idea of making him the minister of the newly created "Ministry of the Niger delta".
Even so, Ibori panicked recently when the London Metropolitan Police decided to indict his UK lawyer, Bhadresh Gohil, on money laundering charges.
SaharaReporters has also learned that Ibori may soon face new legal problems in Ghana as part of a multifarious money laundering investigation. Our source disclosed that a new set of investigations being carried out by a yet to be disclosed country seem to be closing in on Ibori in Ghana. Ibori’s Ghanaian front, has been identified as Mr. Elias Preko. Our investigations revealed that Preko, a Ghanaian national, lives in the same London John Wood’s neighborhood as controversial Nigerian businessman, Terry Waya. Preko is suspected of assisting Ibori to stash away monies looted from Delta State. Preko worked with Goldman Sachs until five years ago. He now runs a private investment company out of London, UK.
After the meeting last week, Ibori traveled first to Ghana before jetting out to South Africa, where he maintains a substantial financial investment. One source told us that “One reason Chief Ibori is intervening to help Yar'adua stay in power is due to the assistance he's received from Yar'adua to rebuild his fraudulent business empire through offshore accounts in Dubai, Asia and South Africa.”
Two sources close to Yar’adua told SaharaReporters that Chief Justice Ibrahim Legbo Kutigi has given Yar'adua a commitment that the apex court would let him stay on in power for the sake of "national stability". The assurance was reportedly secured from the CJN during his sojourn in Ireland, where he was in the company of the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Umaru Abdullahi. One Abuja-based senior advocate of Nigeria told us that “Justice Abdullahi is known in legal circles as a very corrupt judge.” The source said Justice Abdullahi frequently “accepted bribes to upturn elections petitions rulings that were unfavorable to the ruling People Democratic party (PDP).”
A well grounded politician in Abuja told us that Yar’adua recently asked each member of the Supreme Court to forward the name of one nominee for ministerial appointment. This offer, which is part of the plan to secure the already negotiated favorable judgment, he told SaharaReporters, further delayed Yar’adua’s composition of a new cabinet, which Yar'adua blamed on the recess by the Senate last week. The senate spokesperson however denied the charges.
Already, Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu has nominated Adoki Bello Mohammed (SAN) to become the new Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), as Yar’adua reaches advance stages of separating the office of “Attorney General of the Federation” from that of the “Minister of Justice”. Mr. Adoki was credited with the succesful but bizarre decision by the Supreme Court justices to instal Rotimi Amaechi as the governor of Rivers State, even though he didn't participate in the gubernatorial elections of April 2007.
SaharaReporters has been unable to trace any specific bribes to the CJN. But our sources said the CJN has never been squeaky clean in his bench endeavors. One source pointed to the appointment of two of his sons to the Federal High Court by the Obasanjo regime. “In order to hide the obvious facts, Justice Kutigi arranged with Obasanjo to hide the last name of one of the judges. While Mohammed Idris, a Federal High Court judge, didn't use his last name, another of the CJN’s sons was appointed to the FCT Abuja High Court with the name of ‘Abubakar Idris Kutigi.’” Our source said that maneuver was a sign of compromise, Kutigi style.
Several sources knowledgeable about the deal between Yar'adua and the justices of the Supreme Court said the appeal process scheduled to commence soon would be mere orchestrated theatrics agreed upon between the parties in the case to fool the Nigerian public.
One impeccable source told SaharaReporters that the "think-tank" formed and headed by Ibori was aimed at enforcing the agreements earlier reached by the Supreme Court justices and the Yar'adua government.
Part of the agreement is to put finishing touches to plans to bring back Abubakar Atiku to join the PDP, a project to which the former Vice President has finally consented, according to several sources. Atiku and Ibori recently held detailed meetings in Dubai to finalize the details of the agreement to enable the former vice president to rejoin the PDP. The Supreme Court justices were then briefed on the deal and they verified Atiku’s agreement to return to the PDP.
However, while Atiku was in Dubai meeting with Ibori, Yar'adua fell ill and had to spend 17 days in sequestered living in Saudi Arabia. The situation put a temporary freeze on Atiku’s plan to join the PDP. Besides, Atiku's mortality also was tested recently in Dubai. A source close to him told SaharaReporters that the former VP nearly lost his life when he was overdosed with localized anesthesia as he embarked on an eye surgery in Dubai. He has since recovered.
If Atiku finally delivers on his promise to rejoin the PDP, Buhari would be left as the only petitioner challenging Yar'adua's election at the Supreme Court. “In that scenario, the Supreme Court justices in the deal are confident that it will be a cake walk to dismiss Buhari's petition,” said a politician familiar with the evolving negotiations.
When confronted with allegations of compromise and betrayal by Atiku, one of his close political associates told SaharaReporters that the former vice president “only gave his word to Yar'adua to the extent that the elections would be annulled by the Supreme Court and he would then support Yar'adua as a fresh candidate in a new elections where he intends to serve as PDP 's Board of Trustees chairman.”
But another source told us that this theory was fraught with dishonesty. “There is still a deep sense that the President is terminally ill, and Atiku is believed to be angling to become the next candidate of the PDP if the president dies.” The source said the associates of Ibrahim Babangida as well as former President Obasanjo were responsible for spreading the news that Yar’adua is near the point of death as they insist that they have secured solid evidence that Yar’adua is at the advanced stage of terminal lung cancer. Aso Rock sources told SaharaReporters that several medical doctors from Germany and Saudi Arabia recently left Abuja after a prolonged stay in the Nigeria catering to Yar’adua ill health. Yar’adua remains emaciated, pale and frail even as he struggled to read the annual Independence Day speech to Nigerians on October 1st.
Asked to sum up how things stand in relation to the presidential elections appeal, a lawyer who is privy to the horse trading spoke in a dour tone: “Whichever way the intrigues play out, it seems obvious to me that the justices of our highest court have been engaged in political negotiations with parties to one of the most important cases in this country’s history. The court seems to have betrayed Nigerians once again, in advance.”
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });