Leadership (Abuja)
Golu Timothy
23 October 2008
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) yesterday received a fresh petition against former President Olusegun Obasanjo from the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders in Lagos.
The petition was again presented to the anti-graft body following denials by the commission that there was a file of petition against Obasanjo and some former governors.
The leader of the group, Chief Vevo Adeniran, said he was surprised to hear from the EFCC chairman, Mrs. Farida Waziri, that Obasanjo had no case to answer bordering on corruption and related offences. He said his group had submitted a detailed petition against Obasanjo to former EFCC chairman, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, and was surprised at the disappearance of the file.
The commission's spokesman, Mr Babafemi Olufemi, confirmed the receipt to our reporter.
Adeniran said his coalition had challenged Waziri on the issue to either own up or be prepared to receive the petition.
Even though details of the petition were not officially made public, but LEADERSHIP gathered that contentious issues contained in the voluminous petition included the billion naira Obasanjo Library, mismanagement at the Nigeria Ports Authority and others.
Babafemi said yesterday, "Yes, it's true that we received the petition against former President Obasanjo today from the group, and we have started work on it immediately. I just returned from Lagos having gone for the event."
He also confirmed that the entire management of the Nigeria Shippers' Council and some of its staff have been summoned to appear before the EFCC to answer questions pertaining to acts of corruption and mismanagement.
Meanwhile, former Governor of Kebbi State, Alhaji Adamu Aliero, yesterday told an Abuja Federal High Court to hear the objection he raised on its power to try him over an alleged N10.2 billion fraud levelled against him before entertaining the substantive trial.
The court headed by Justice Adamu Bello had summoned the former governor who is presently serving as a senator to come and defend himself against allegations bordering on advance fee fraud, money laundering, counterfeiting, illegal charge transfers, fraudulent encashment, contract scam and other sundry offences he committed while his tenure as governor lasted.
But in notice of preliminary objection, Aliero told the court that it lacked jurisdiction to try him.
Also asked to appear before the court were the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).
They were summoned at the instance of an ex-parte application brought by indigenes of the state represented by a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chieftain, Alhaji Sani Dododo, seeking for an order of mandamus compelling the anti-graft agencies to investigate the allegations.
A series of petitions written by Alhaji Abubakar Kane, Alhaji Mungadi, Dododo and others to the EFCC and ICPC had alleged sundry graft offences bordering on diversion of over N10.2 billion were presented before the court.
Yesterday, counsel to Dododo, Mr. Victor Ekim, asked the court to hear the preliminary objection filed by Aliero challenging the jurisdiction of the court to try him together with the substantive suit.
But Aliero through his lawyer, Kola Awodein (SAN), opposed the application on the ground that the nature of the questions he raised on jurisdiction are such that require that the objection be taken first before the main suit.
He cited some Supreme Court cases where ruling on similar cases favour his position as against those cited by the applicant's counsel. The EFCC, ICPC and the Attorney-General of the federation, who are also respondents in the instant suit, aligned themselves with Aliero's position.
In his ruling, Justice Bello noted that since parties in the suit who supported the idea of entertaining the preliminary objection first before the merit of the suit were in majority, it will be fair to rule in their favour.
He granted Aliero's prayer for the court to hear his objection and separately adjourned the matter to December 1, 2008.
He gave parties in the suit 32 days to file their briefs of arguments, just as he expressed his desire to hear the matter speedily.
The petitions of 247 pages against Aliero gave a comprehensive list of financial misappropriation, contract scam, inflation of contract sum and payments for non-existent or non-executed contracts in Kebbi.
"EFCC and ICPC have a duty under the various statutes establishing them to investigate, make public the results of such investigation and prosecute the former governor if found culpable," they stated.
Also yesterday, the EFCC Chairman, Mrs Farida Waziri, told the senate committee on Drugs, Narcotics and Anti-Corruption that it was her predecessor in office, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu that cleared the former president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo of all corruption allegations and petitions.
Mrs Waziri also told the Senate panel that most of the public office-holders in Nigeria have chosen to abuse the immunity clause provided in the 1999 constitution, therefore, advocating for that aspect of the constitution to be reconsidered when the constitutional review committee starts its work after inauguration.
The EFCC boss similarly stated that one of the easiest ways of stamping out corruption in Nigeria would be the setting up of special courts for the commission as it was the case in Ghana .
Appearing before the Senator Shola Akinyede-led committee on Drugs, narcotics and anti-corruption, the EFCC boss who gave a detailed briefing to the committee members both on the report of her commission and statements credited to her in the media concerning missing files and the controversial "no case against Obasanjo", Mrs Farida cleared the air.
"There is no missing files in the EFCC, what I met in the EFCC were preliminary investigations and such investigations are done in stages before you get to the level of prosecution.
"I did not inherit any ready made case files and that was what happened, I did not even meet the 31 cases that Nuhu talked about and I think he should be the right person to talk about those cases and why he could not prosecute those people, so there are no missing case files, case files were not even handed over to me, you know Nuhu was not there I had to call Lamorde on two occasions.
"In the case of former president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo I remember it was even Nuhu that wrote and cleared former president Obasanjo and if there is anybody with any petitions they should bring them up.
"I am surprised when people talk about 31 cases and let me state that with what greeted my coming to the EFCC, I would have made history if I inherited 31 case files as it was told to the world".
Responding to a question on why there are so may untreated petitions with the EFCC, Mrs Farida answered, " Nigerians are petition writers and they felt the best place for them to get justice is to come to the EFCC and when I came into office we had a meeting and discovered that some of the petitions were not supposed to come to the EFCC, this is because they have nothing to do with the mandate of the commission, some of the petitions , and most of them came from the FCDA office of the EFCC which was established by Nuhu, maybe on the request of El-Rufai and those cases are land matter cases and not cases for the EFCC.
"So we now have about 946 cases that we can actually handle."
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madam EFCC, u are a very unstable, pathalogical liar. since u called off the arrest of lyle imoke, because of a phone call, i will never believe what u say. u keep changing yr stories. first, u never recd files on obj and 31 governors. now the story has changed to the files are not ready for prosecutions. u can fool people some of the time, but u cannot fool them, all the time. i am as usual, CAPITAL G.C.
If Obasanjo is to be prosecuted, then the other former presidents like Babangida , Abdul Salam and others should be prosecuted too. Though I did not like what he did or his policies, he should be given a fair chance and immunity given to other past presidents when they were out of power.