Ribadu

Ever since former President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed him chainman of the EFCC in May 2003, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu has always been in the news. There is no week that the media does not have one issue or the other to dissect about him. It is either he is been praised or vilified for the "controversial" manner he was waging or waged the anti-graft war.
From his supporters home and abroad. he won numerous awards including being named "man of the year' by a magazine for putting the war against corruption on the front-burner and making the fear of EFCC the beginning of wisdom for would-be and public office holders.
His critics, however, faulted his tactics, which they said did not follow due process, were selective and targeted at enemies of Obasanjo, real or imagined. And, ever since, the debate had always revolved on the issues of due process and selectivity until recently when the new EFCC led by Mrs. Farida Waziri said Ribadu also got his hands oiled while chasing after corrupt officials and acquired properties in Nigeria and abroad.
In the estimation of Obasanjo, the former EFCC chairman performed very well and deserved double promotion and re-appointment, which the former president did promptly in 2007 shortly before he handed over. In the rush to re-appoint Ribadu, a provision of the EFCC Act was flouted thereby arming opponents with a handy weapon to move against him.
Section 2(3) of the EFCC Act states:
"The Chairman and members of the Commission other than ex-officio members shall be appointed by the President subject to the confirmation of the Senate."
And Section 3(1) of the same Act states: "The Chairman and members of the Commission other than ex-officio members, shall hold office for a period of four years and may be reappointed for a further term of four years and no more:'
Ribadu was first appointed in May 2003 and by 2007, his tenure expired and Obasanjo announced the reappointment of Ribadu for a further four years without seeking and getting confirmation from the Senate as required by the Act.
Some Senators kicked against the move. With some of the ex-governors he had dealt with now serving as senators, it was not surprising that some federal lawmakers made moves to declare Ribadu's activities in the last six months he functioned under President Yar'Adua as illegal, null and void.
Although, the declaration was not made, it was obvious that Ribadu's days as EFCC boss were numbered. But for the goodwill Ribadu enjoyed in the international arena and among some prominent Nigerian including Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka, as a committed official from Nigeria in the global war on money-laundering, Ribadu would have been shown the way out of EFCC earlier.
Some of the toes Ribadu allegedly stepped on included Okiro himself, whom he allegedly kept waiting during a visit to the EFCC, former Military President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (rtd), former governors OIji Uzor Kalu (Abia State), James Ibori (Delta State), Boni Haruna (Adamawa State), Saminu Turaki (Jigawa), Jolly Nyame (Taraba), Chimaroke Nnamani {Enugu State), Diepreye Solomon Peter Alarnieyeseigha (Bayelsa State);Lucky Igbinedion (Edo State) and Joshua Dariye (Plateau State) among others.
Given the dusts that Ribadu's promotion and handling of the affairs of the EFCC had raised, it was not long before the President was convinced on the need to ease him out.
President Yar' Adua reportedly Okiro's request that Ribadu should proceed on the high profile NIPSS course given the height he had attained in the Police. And that was how Ribadu lost the EFCC job.
Midway into the course, the PSC on August 4, 2008, announced the demotion of Mr. Ribadu from Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG) to Deputy Commissioner of Police. Also demoted were 138 other officers.
Piqued by the demotion, Ribadu went to challenge the decision, which further worsened reasons between him and the authorities. Ever since, he had been issued a series of queries by the police authorities bordering on misconduct and indiscipline.
The EFCC is also after him to provide information on 20 of the 31 former governors' case files he claimed to have worked on before leaving office.
The government has insisted on his demotion and has posted him to Edo State to function as a DCP (his demoted rank).
Not wearing Police uniform with a DCP rank during the graduation ceremony on Saturday was one of the reasons the Police cited for moving against him.
At the height of his reign as EFCC chairman, Ribadu was ruthless with any public officer the commission perceived as corrupt.
Among those he dealt with were former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, 31 of the countries' 36 state governors, a host of States' Assembly, National Assembly and governorship and presidential aspirants, who were disqualified few days to the 2007 general polls among others.
So aggrieved were his victims that they vowed to deal with him.
Consequently, Ribadu was sent to NIPSS, Kuru for a 10-month course that would at the end of it, earn him the prestigious rank "mni" (member of the National Institute). This was done through the Inspector General of Police without any regard for the EFCC Act that established it. Amidst criticisms that trailed the President's action in sending Ribadu to Kuru, the man at the centre of the controversy, Ribadu, proceeded to NIPSS. He had not resigned as Chairman of EFCC before going to Kuru and thereafter President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua went ahead to appoint a new substantive chairman for the agency without removing him from office in the first instance.
He was demoted to the rank of a Deputy Commissioner of Police. But Ribadu had already entered NIPSS with an Assistant Inspector-General, which over-qualified him for the course .. Many questions however trailed the action of the federal government as it was not clear whether Ribadu would be withdrawn from the course.
However, he was undeterred by all the travails. He continued his course and participated in all the activities at the NIPSS. It should be noted that Ribadu himself did not know his status at NIPSS as the controversies raged because both the institute and the police authorities did not issue any statement to that effect.
Ribadu was one of the 65 participants that visited the President, a week before the graduation, and his name was part of those approved to be graduated' but unfortunately he could not graduate as some starry-eyed security operatives stormed the graduating Unity Hall to forcefully take him out in the midst of hitherto jubilating family members.
It was later revealed that the NIPSS management was confused as to which uniform Ribadu should wear at the graduation especially, as he was said not to have received the letter of demotion from the Police Service Commission. Ribadu was also present at the distinguished yearly lecture of the Institute, which was delivered the previous Friday before the graduation.
Immediately after the national anthem was sung and prayers offered for the success of the ceremony, the Acting Director-General of NIPSS, Mr. James Kolawole Opadiran, presented his welcome address after which the moderator invited Dr. Adamu Fika, Acting Director of Studies at NIPSS to present the graduands to the acting Director-General who in turn presented them to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan for the award of mni certificates.
But before that time, as Fika moved to the podium, he quickly and briefly announced that out of the initial 65 participants slated for the day's graduation, only 63 would be presented because two of them were sick and could not attend the ceremony.
"Mr. Allen Deibo Briggs and Mr.
Nuhu Ribadu have been exempted from participating in this graduation ceremony on health grounds;' Fika explained briefly.
Briggs was number 12 on the list of the graduating participants. But unlike Ribadu, Briggs was not seen at the distinguished lecture on Friday.
Some of the graduated participants halt. Having removed him from EFCC, one wonders what else Yar'Adua administration wants from Ribadu? Should people be punished and subjected to public ridicule for giving their best to the service of their fatherland?" he queried.
'We condemn in totality all executive assault on the person of Nuhu Ribadu by Yar'Adua and his cohorts: the Attorney-General of the Federation, the Inspector General of Police, the Chairman of the Police Service Commission, the Director General of NIPSS and the invisible hands of the corrupt and shameless ex-governors . who had vowed to deal with Ribadu for daring to prosecute them. This assault, to say the least, is shameful and a serious national embarrassment which posed a threat to the commitment of other young Nigerians to truthfully and passionately serve the nation in future;' he said.
He called on President Musa Yar'Adua to, as a matter of urgency, tender an unreserved apology to Ribadu for the embarrassment caused him and his family at NIPSS premises on Saturday November 22, 2008, order a reversal of his purported demotion and put a definite end to this shameless witch-hunting.
Addressing a press conference at the NIPSS preparatory to its graduation on Saturday, the Acting Director General, Mr. James Kolawole Opadiran, told journalists that there was no evidence to prove that Briggs stole the camera, saying that since the criminal case is with the Attorney General of the Federation to prosecute, the certificate that will be given to him on Saturday can still be withdrawn if the investigation turns out to indict him.
On the status of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the former chairman of EFCC, he said whoever merits the award of "mni': irrespective of any educational background, will definitely graduate. As it had been in the past, Ribadu's travails last week in the hands of security agents, who bundled him and his guests out of the graduation ceremony of the NIPSS has elicited mixed reactions. While some criticized the treatment, others said it served him right.
The President of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), Olasupo Ojo, a lawyer, has picked holes in the way the government had handled Ribadu saying that it smacks of lack of commitment to the anti-graft crusade.
Recalling how Ribadu was removed, arrested and detained and prevented from graduating at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies in Kuru near Jos by security agencies last Saturday, Ojo said that the Federal Government could not dissociate itself from the incidents.
His words: "For some time we have been watching the unfolding drama of Ribadu's illegal removal as Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) by President Yar' Adua and the order that he proceed to the NIPSS where the issue of his rank reared its head and culminated in the open resort to brutal and barbaric physical prevention of his graduation when every other surreptitious
attempt has failed.
"The entire travail of Nuhu Ribadu is a reflection of the attitude of President Yar1\dua to the anti-corruption crusade in Nigeria. For very obvious reasons, the President consciously incapacitated himself by riding into power on the wings of stolen public money that was used to fund his campaign and declaration as winner of one of the worst elections in Africa. This means he is nothing but a front for corrupt politicians including former governors to whom he has reason to show gratitude notwithstanding that they are facing different charges of corruption in various courts all over Nigeria.
"We are miffed at President Yar'Adua's use of fronts like the Attorney General of the Federation, Michael Aondoakaa (SAN), Inspector General of Police, Michael Okiro etc in the task of avenging the exposure of the corruption of his political benefactors.
"Considering the destructive effect of the treatment being meted out to Nuhu Ribadu on the task of nation building in Nigeria and the need to deliver Nigeria from the grip of thieves who are trying to deter patriotic anticorruption crusaders, we hereby challenge the pretender government headed . by President Yar' Adua to either charge Nuhu Ribadu to court if he has committed any offence or stop the violation of his fundamental rights as a patriotic Nigeria by releasing him forthwith from unjust and illegal detention."
Commenting on the issue, in a press statement Tuesday, AC called it 'poetic justice' for Ribadu, who had earlier been demoted by two ranks by the police authorities.
The AC said: "This is a man (Ribadu) who used the police to drag former Inspector General of Police Tafa Balogun on the ground like a stray dog, even when he was still a suspect in a case of fraud preferred against him. After all, as a lawyer, Ribadu should have known that an accused person is presumed innocent until proven guilty!" the party said. Ribadu, as head of the EFCC, also included the name of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar among those who were barred from the 2007 elections on the grounds of corruption, even though the Supreme Court later cleared Abubakar - who was the AC's presidential candidate.
In its statement, AC showed it has not forgotten the roadblock placed on the path of its candidate. It is the same Ribadu, as he strutted the land like a colossus, who used the EFCC to illegally bar many qualified candidates from contesting in the 2007 elections, until the Supreme Court ruled against such act in the case involving former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, merely days to the polls!
"This is a man who, drunk with power, virtually re-wrote the Nigerian Constitution by illegally instigating the impeachments of several state governors, including those of Bayelsa and Plateau states, with just one third of the membership of their Houses of Assembly; the same man who ran Globacom owner Mike Adenuga out of town over an unproven allegation," it said.
As chairman of the EFCC, AC said that Ribadu flouted court rulings with impunity, not minding the fact that he has now headed to the same court to seek justice after he was justifiably demoted. "Ribadu, as a tool in the hand of a power monger and an anarchist (former President Olusegun Obasanjo), helped pave the way for the emergence of this administration by throwing roadblocks on the path of credible opponents of the PDP candidate and emboldening INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission) to ruin the elections. Today, the administration does not want to have anything to do with him."
For Barrister Goddy Uwazuruike, a legal practitioner based in Lagos, the Police Service Commission action against the former EFCC boss was quite in order. He told The Guardian that the PSC is a statutory body set up constitutionally by the Federal Republic of Nigeria It is not just a body made by the General Assembly, but rather, a constitutional body recognized by the Federal Republic of Nigeria with the statutory power to recruit, promote, discipline and dismiss Nigeria police officers. There is a session of constitution which says that PSC may delegate some of its powers to the Inspector General of Police. "However, if any of the police officers is promoted by anybody other than the PSC, which has the legal right to control the Nigeria Police Force, such an officer has not been legally promoted."
He said that going by the act that established PSC, even the President nor the Inspector General Police Mr. Mike Okiro has any jurisdiction to promote any police officer, unless such power to promote is delegated by the PSC to do so.
He recalled: "The Former Inspector General of Police Tafa Balogun, dismissed thousands of police officers, but they were recalled by the PSC. He equally woke up one day and promoted 39 police officers, but the PSC queried the promotion and cancelled it. Ribadu as far as I' know was the deputy commissioner of police before his appointment as the chairman of EFCC." According to Uwazuruike: "Promotion of any police officer has nothing to do with the performance of the police officer. If a police officer performs gallantly, it is the commissioner that will recommend the officer to the AIG, then from AIG to the Inspector General of Police, who will in turn recommend him to the PSC which has the power to endorse the recommendation and effect it as well. But in Ribadu's accelerated promotions, the protocols were not observed:'
He observed that up till now,. Ribadu has failed to understand where his problem started. According to him, it is not Yar' Adua that is behind the problem. "Although Ribadu has a personality clash with Aandokaa, the Attorney General of the Federation. The real damage was done by Obasanjo who went ahead to shower promotions on Ribadu knowing fully well that he was not legally authorized to promote him."
He acknowledged that Ribadu tried in his capacity as a person but his accelerated promotions did not follow due process, maintaining that the only option left for Ribadu was to obey the law by accepting his previous rank of the Deputy Commissioner of police or resign. That is the only way he can extricate himself from the mess.

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