Police sources said Mr. Okiro reportedly left the country for Conakry, Guinea, to attend an urgent international meeting. He had invited Ribadu to meet with him following the completion of his nearly–aborted "Course 30" at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies. Mr. Ribadu’s was ejected from his graduation ceremony last Saturday in front of friends and family that had arrived to share the happy moment with him.
Mr. Okiro's absence from Abuja did not stop his office from issuing another query to Ribadu yesterday. The third query in a row, it accused Ribadu of dressing improperly to visit the "President." The accusation joins other petty offenses that could lead to a summary trial of Ribadu by a police disciplinary committee on December 4th 2008.
Saharareporters had previously reported that Ribadu's travails in the hand of IG Okiro and Mrs. Farida Waziri, the new head of the EFCC, will be escalated until the objectives of demoting him as a police officer, dismissing him from the force and putting him in jail are achieved.
Yesterday, a press parley aimed at briefing the media about the EFCC's anti-corruption week turned into another propaganda war against Ribadu as the EFCC chairperson gave some media houses information that accused Ribadu of owning properties in Dubai, London and Abuja.
The allegations were not new, but this time, it proceeded with the collusion of the local media which put themselves to the services of Mrs. Waziri by publishing the allegations without asking for proof or cross-checking them. Only the Abuja-based Daily Trust published one of the addresses in London, which it gave as "29 Kingsway, Leeds". The other property, supposedly belonging to Ribadu in England, is said to exist in the "Chelsea area of London," according to other newspapers that reported the story. Ribadu was also accused of owning a flat at the Palm Beach in Dubai as well as number 11 Mambilla Street, Udi Hills, Maitama, Abuja.
The layers of misinformation began to unravel when Saharareporters officially requested the EFCC spokesperson, Femi Babafemi, to provide accurate information about the homes the EFCC said belonged to Ribadu in London and Dubai. Babafemi didn't respond to our e-mail, but when we called him to follow up, he only told our reporter that the reference to Ribadu related to a petition written against his person with nothing specific about property addresses in London. He, however, promised to get back to SaharaReporters with further information, if he stumbled on any. That promise had not been fulfilled as at the time of publishing this story.
Saharareporters investigators swept through property records and other public records in the UK, including the UK electoral roll, but found nothing relating to Nuhu Ribadu. In the course of our investigation, we purchased two records from the UK Land registry relating to the property located at 29 Kingsway, Garforth, Leeds, LS25 1BW, and found out that the property whose price was not stated, is registered to JULIE ELIZABETH HART of Woodlea, Moor End, Boston Spa, Wetherby W Yorkshire LS23 6ER.
A similar property of the same address in Huby Leeds was also accessed by our investigators who found out it was registered to LINDA ANNE SIMPSON of 29 Kingsway, Huby, Leeds LS17 0AL. It has a listed price of 155,000 pound sterling.
The nearest possible information concerning a Ribadu in the Leeds area is about a 23 year old Fatima Zara Ribadu, a Nigerian female at the University of Leeds who studies information systems. We traced her address to 23 Woodlea Street Leeds, UK and discovered that the property was purchased in 2000 by one "Ibrahim Muhammadu Dodo" of the same address, and the property is worth 270, 000 pounds. While Fatima Ribadu shares the same middle name as Nuhu Ribadu's wife, Zara Ribadu, the Leeds student is clearly a separate entity from the former EFCC chairman, according to assorted information available about her. She is the daughter of Nuhu Ribadu's cousin, and is married to Dr. Ibrahim Dodo, a medical doctor in Leeds. Dr. Dodo owns the property, which was purchased via a loan.
The reference to two lawyers in the allegations against Ribadu concerns two Abuja-based self-styled "anti-corruption lawyers," Charles Ogboli and Ugochuckwu Osuagwu, who dragged Ribadu before a Federal High Court in Abuja last year accusing him of owning a piece of property worth several millions of dollars in Dubai. Attorneys to Ribadu in that case, Femi Falana Chambers, told Saharareporters that the two lawyers are yet to produce the address of the Dubai property (ies) they allege Ribadu owns. The next hearing in the case comes up next month, December 2008.
When Saharareporters contacted Ugochukwu Osuagwu, he told our reporters that his documentations are intact but also curiously claimed that Ribadu had admitted to the allegation in a sworn in affidavit filed before the court, which he supplied to SaharaReporters. But a cursory look at the affidavit shows that what Osuagwu claimed was Ribadu's admission of ownership of the unnamed Dubai property was a typographical error in the affidavit filed by a lawyer in Femi Falana chambers. The error was fully rebutted in the closing paragraphs of the affidavit where Ribadu clearly stated that he doesn't own properties in Dubai or elsewhere but in Abuja where his father–in-law, Professor Iya-Abubakar, purchased the house he currently occupies.
Sources told Saharareporters that both Charles Ogboli and Uguchukwu Osuagwu are working in tandem with the EFCC chairperson, Mrs. Waziri and some former governors to fight Ribadu. The characters of the two lawyers are currently under legal scrutiny before an FCT High Court in Gudu Abuja, where they stand accused of impersonation and extortion arising from letters they signed impersonating law enforcement officers with the intention of scamming a former junior minister in the Yar'Adua regime. Our sources said the two lawyers are doing everything to help nail Ribadu so as to shake off the charges, which may be discontinued by the Attorney-General of the Federation, Michael Aondoakaa, as soon as the plan to nail Ribadu, with their help, succeeds.
Indications are that the plot against Ribadu has now moved into a desperate ding-dong stage, where he is expected to be tossed around between the Inspector General of Police and the EFCC chairperson as they search for the perfect strategy to put Ribadu away.
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RIBADU REFUTES:
Refutation of EFCC’s Baseless claim on Ribadu’s properties
According to the publications, the leadership of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) also said, through its publicity office, that it has commenced investigations on Ribadu, based on “several petitions against Ribadu, which are being investigated at the moment.”
The EFCC also claimed that Mr. Ribadu did not declare his assets as EFCC Chairman before and after leaving office.
In its five-year existence, the EFCC has garnered a lot of local and international esteem on account of its sterling reputation for dogged investigation and efficient prosecution records. Thus, for this reason, one would expect such an institution to show more fidelity for evidence and facts in other to protect its name, its sense of honour, and the competence of its leadership.
Apparently, these shaping values have little meaning to the current incarnation of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). For the records, however, here are the facts:
Mr. Ribadu states categorically today, as he did late last year when this same baseless rumour was advertised by these same forces, that:
1. He DOES NOT own houses in Abuja, Dubai, the U.K or any other part of the world, other than his personal house built in his village in Yola back in the early 1990s;
2. Mr. Ribadu owns a yet-to-be-developed plot of land in Katampe, an undeveloped district of Abuja, which was acquired in 1998;
3. Apart from his official salary account, Mr. Ribadu does not operate a bank account anywhere else in the world;
4. He has dutifully sworn to oaths declaring his assert when he was appointed Chairman, and is in the process now of declaring his assets after the completion of his course at Kuru. Again, he urges the Commission in all its evident enthusiasm to proceed with the basic tenets of investigation of careful rather than tendentious scrutiny.
5. Regarding his official residence which has again being mischievously listed as a house he bought, here are the facts:
When the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), this is the in line with the policy of the last administration, offered for sale along with other houses in the area, Mr. Ribadu could not muster the funds to purchase the said house. However, sensitive to the possibility of a conflict of interest arising if he approached banks for a loan, given his position as EFCC Chairman, Ribadu nearly lost the house until his father-in-law, Professor Iya Abubakar, intervened. It was the Professor who bid for the house at a public auction and took a facility from his bankers, Fidelity Bank, to purchase the house, which cost N44m. As it is, Mr. Ribadu and his family are currently living in the Mambilla Street house, thanks to his father-in-law. All records pertaining to this transaction are available at the FCDA for anyone who wishes to check.
6. Since the Commission and its sponsors seem driven to conclusions without the care of preambles, Mr. Ribadu hereby grants express permission to the EFCC or anyone who finds that he has assets other than those he declared before the Code of Conduct Bureau when he assumed office in 2003, to seize them without further reference to him;
Last word:
Mr. Ribadu is naturally saddened that an institution in which he worked earnestly and professionally with many patriotic colleagues seem eager to seek alliance with methods perfected by enemies of the anti-corruption war. He looks forward to a return to sobriety and professionalism at the Commission.
Signed
Charles Musa Esq., LL.M, B.L, MCI. Arb
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