January 18, 2009
Following a series of recent scandalous revelations against her, the chairperson of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri, has vowed to take down imaginary opponents in the commission before she is shown the way out. Sources say Mrs. Waziri became delirious last week as news leaked to her that some officials at the Presidency have requested that Presidency-Awarded Umaru Yardua begin to look for her replacement as incontestable evidence flows into the Aso Rock Villa about her sleaze.(Presidency sources told Saharareporters that while some "decent" members of Yar'Adua's kitchen cabinet members were embarrassed about these revelations, it was Mrs. Waziri's inability to arrest and detain her predecessor, Nuhu Ribadu, which has enraged Yar'Adua personally. It is not clear if Yar'Adua will replace Waziri officially, but the source said he gave his word to the group that something be done about Waziri and requested that they start searching for a replacement for him.
(An enraged Mrs. Waziri is reported to be blaming her misfortune on the EFCC secretary, Mr. Emmanuel Akomaye, and the Director of Operations, Tunde Ogunsakin, and embarked on a war against them starting with a paid advertisement in a national newspaper calling for Akomaye's removal.
(Sources close to the plot said Mrs. Waziri has spent over N50 million to gather "actionable evidence" against the duo, and plans to expose their “dirty side” with the public in a series of publicized newspaper ads. Last week, one of such groups, "Concerned Nigerians in the United Kingdom" of 34 Mill Hill Way, London SW3 4PY sent SaharaReporters a suspicious article for publication. It was titled "The EFCC, Missing Files and Emmanuel Akomaye," asking for Akomaye to be removed so that Mrs. Waziri could do her job well. But we sent a response to intimate the group that we thought that Mrs. Waziri was corrupt too, drawing their attention to our latest story on the land scandal she was recently engaged in, and the Mercedes Benz Jeep bribe she took from Governor Akpabio.
The group coordinator, Abubakar Suleiman, responded by declaring his love for our reportorial style and saying that he wants to fight corruption alongside SaharaReporters. But he never made it back with an updated article, instead, the same account he claimed was an article then appeared as a paid advertisement on Thisday newspaper of January 15 2009. When we requested from him to explain who was paying for the ads, he became angry and combative in his response.
(Mrs. Waziri has so far refused to publicly address the issues of graft and abuse of office against her, but her handlers have intensified efforts to deal decisively with EFCC officers considered to be “disloyal.” She has also intensified efforts to buy the loyalty of staff members by calling emergency meetings of top officers at the various zones to ask that they declare their loyalty. Last week, at the EFCC training center at Karu, Abuja, she met with EFCC zonal officials in the Northern segment—Gombe, Abuja and Kano. She is expected to follow up with similar meetings in the Southern zones.((Sources at the EFCC told SaharaReporters that Mrs. Waziri preference is to have senior officers swear to an oath of secrecy so as to forestall further leakage of information and internal documents in the agency that have shown her to be reckless, corrupt and incompetent, but she was advised to shelve the idea after she was told that she lacks the constitutional right to do so.
Mrs. Waziri's current troubles are further said to directly relate to her inability to deal decisively with her predecessor, Nuhu Ribadu. Yar'adua had personally requested that she ensure that the former EFCC chairman was jailed, but Waziri found it difficult to act because many senior officers at the EFCC refused to carry out the order to arrest Ribadu. It is believed that Ribadu may now have left Nigeria, nullifying the ability of the EFCC to arrest him as requested. That seems to have had consequences for the EFCC clamp-down on former FCT minister, Nasir El-Rufai, whom it had earlier declared wanted, following allegations that El-Rufai would know Ribadu's whereabouts.
Following the clampdown on El-Rufai, the EFCC and the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, Michael Aondoakaa, filed charges against Ribadu accusing him, amongst other things, of not declaring his assets to the Code of Conduct Bureau as is required by law. To effect the filing of the charges against Ribadu, the Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro, last Tuesday drove down to the home of the acting secretary of the CCB, Alhaji M.G Buba, picked him up in the Maitama area of Abuja and drove down with him to the office of the AGF to "speed things up". No date has been fixed for the suit.
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