Nigeria’s notoriously corrupt Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa has decided to take desperate measures to ensure his survival on Umaru Yar’adua’s inept, snoozing cabinet.
Our reliable sources said Aondoakaa, dubbed by some Nigerian lawyers as the nation’s most corrupt attorney general, has taken to threatening “to spill the beans if he loses his post.”
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Our sources said that Aondoakaa had felt like a cornered quarry in recent weeks. One source said the attorney general’s coziness with corrupt former and serving public officials partly accounted for the directness with which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the Yar’adua regime’s awful record of corruption. A foreign diplomatic source in Abuja also said that Mrs. Clinton “was shocked at the open access to the Nigerian president enjoyed by a criminally indicted person like Mr. James Ibori.”
When the banking scandal broke, Aondoakaa was about to dust off his bag of tricks and work for the freedom of embattled bank chief executives-he had submitted a list of senior (prosecuting) lawyers to the EFCC, but he withdrew in silence after Yar’adua ordered him to stay out of the way.
Aondoakaa’s biggest scare came last week, after he made a curious statement asserting that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had cleared three former governors and Yar’adua’s Principal Private Secretary, David Edevbie, of allegations that they stole $38 million from the investments of three states in Nigeria’s mobile phone company, V-Mobile. Aondoakaa’s statement followed our report that British authorities had indicted former Governors James Onanefe Ibori and Victor Attah as well as Edevbie in the $38 million fraud.
It was characteristic of Aondoakaa, as soon as Saharareporters broke the news last week regarding the filing of new charges against the trio before a UK magistrate court, to jump to the defense of the three former governors, including Bola Tinubu who was not indicted in the UK because he laundered his own share of the loot in Nigeria. He bragged that the case in the UK was without merit because the EFCC had concluded its investigations and concluded that the three governors did not steal the assets of their respective states after divesting from V-Mobile.
A shocker came Aondoakaa’s way a day after his press conference when the EFCC issued a statement contradicting his claim. The agency denied it had exonerated any of the suspects and insisted that the investigations were still ongoing, adding that only the law courts could make a pronouncement on the innocence of the suspects. The EFCC further underscored that Ibori was still facing trial at the Federal High Court in Asaba, Delta State. The EFCC’s statement was signed by EFCC spokesperson, Femi Babafemi. A source close to Aondoakaa said the attorney general was stung by the refutation. “Chief Aondoakaa had never felt this kind of public humiliation as minister,” said the source.
Saharareporters has learnt that the EFCC’s chairperson, Mrs. Farida Waziri, authorized the statement and then traveled out of Nigeria, making herself unavailable to the AGF, who furiously sought to reach her and prevail on her to distance herself from the EFCC spokesperson.
Unable to find Mrs. Waziri, Aondoakaa issued a tepid statement to the effect that he had no disagreements with the EFCC over the former governors.
Our source said Aondoakaa had also tried last weekend to reach Yar’adua or otherwise gauge the position of Aso Rock, national security staff told him that the EFCC statement received the blessing of the “president”. Turned back by Yar’adua’s staff, Aondoakaa arranged to meet with Yar’adua’s wife, Turai, who has been his biggest protector. He reportedly communicated his anger through her to the husband before Turai flew out to Austria to represent Nigeria in Vienna to the 53rd Session of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Over last weekend, according to a politician close to the attorney general, a distraught Aondoakaa griped to friends and political allies that Yar’adua “was is an ungrateful person.” Our source said he also threatened that, should Yar’adua yield to pressures to remove him from the cabinet, he would use the media to expose everything he did on Yar’adua’s behalf, especially his efforts to get the justices of the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court to validate the fraudulent 2007 general elections.
After failing to see Yar’adua over the weekend, Aondoakaa was finally summoned to the presidential Villa in Abuja yesterday for an audience with Yar’adua.
Saharareporters can reveal that the simmering feud between Aondoakaa and Waziri has nothing to do with principled disagreement. A source in London revealed that both the AGF and Mrs. Waziri’s EFCC had offered no significant cooperation on the UK’s investigations of the former governors particularly over the V-Mobile case involving theft of funds belonging to three states.
The British source also said that the EFCC had refused to help administer interrogatories on David Edevbie as they progressed in their investigations. “Mrs. Waziri has stalled on all fronts,” said the source. However, Mrs. Waziri hastened to send an affidavit on behalf of Udoamaka Okoronkwo, Ibori’s mistress currently standing trial in London. According to a Metropolitan police source, Steven Otitoju, the EFCC’s new Director of Operations, wrote and swore to an affidavit pledging that the EFCC would arrest and detain Okoronkwo throughout the duration of her trial in Asaba. The UK judge dismissed the affidavit, instead asking that the judge in Asaba give a guarantee.
Several sources close to Mrs. Waziri and Aondoakaa said the two officials fell apart because the EFCC chair “felt shortchanged on a number of deals,” in the words of one source. The sources said Mrs. Waziri was aggrieved that Aondoakaa alone benefited from pay-offs from the Vaswani brothers as well as the Rivers State corruption case involving Nyeson Wike, the Chief of Staff to Governor Rotimi Amaechi. The case was dismissed a few weeks ago by a compromised panel of the Court of Appeal. “Madam is angry that Chief Aondoakaa made a ‘killing’ from those cases without considering her interests,” said a source close to Waziri.
A security source also told Saharareporters that Waziri’s recent toughening stance was carefully scripted by the Yar’adua regime to appease the international community, especially in the wake of Mrs. Hillary Clinton’s censure of the regime and the EFCC.
Shortly before Clinton’s arrival in Nigeria, Yar’adua took steps to make Waziri and the EFCC appear poised to effectively and professionally tackle corruption. He assigned Waziri the official accommodation within Aso Rock Villa that was once occupied by Emmanuel Andy Uba, Obasanjo’s former chief domestic aide.
Soon as Mrs. Clinton left Nigeria, Waziri and the EFCC made a circus show of relocating to Lagos to arrest bank CEOs and management staff fired by the Central Bank of Nigeria and to go after bank debtors. “It’s all an act to hoodwink the US,” said a source within the EFCC, noting that the agency’s pursuit of bank debtors and crooks still failed to ensnare Ibori and his big time associates, including Henry Imasekka, who was allowed to slip out of Nigeria to Ghana.
Though rattled by the attention that has come from his defaulting bank loans as well as the V-Mobile scandal, Ibori continues to press for advantage with Yar’adua. Yesterday, he spent a long time waiting to see Yar’adua. “He was deliberately kept waiting – and it was clear he wasn’t happy about it,” said a source inside the villa. A source said Ibori’s main objective was to keep David Edevbie at his job in Aso Rock. With Edevbie, a former commissioner in Delta State and one of Ibori’s most trusted associates planted as Yar’adua’s principal secretary, Ibori hopes to enjoy access to memos and other communication headed for Yar’adua’s desk. One source accused Edevbie of leaking memos from CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, thereby enabling many bank CEOs to tidy up some of their shady deals before the CBN wielded the big stick a few weeks ago.
Our source said that, while Aondoakaa’s fate remains uncertain, Yar’adua would retain Edevbie as his PPS. Part of the reason is that Ibori has made the case that if Yar’adua desired a second term, he needed to keep Ibori and other financial backers protected at all cost. “Ibori has convinced Yar’adua that, if the president sacrifices his benefactors, then others capable of backing him with their resources and political influence would think twice knowing that Yar’adua could sacrifice anyone,” said a source.
Ibori has also retained a measure of sympathy by persuading Yar’adua that Ribadu was orchestrating the Metropolitan police charges “in order to embarrass the Yar’adua regime,” said a source. He said Yar’adua, his wife and Aondoakaa are united in their fear of Ribadu whom they credit with giving information about their deals to British and American authorities.
Meanwhile, Ibori has told aides he would physically eliminate Ribadu with the help of Russian or Israeli hit men “if money can do it.” He boasts that “smoking Ribadu out” would make Yar’adua eternally grateful to him.
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