Vanguard
7 December 2008
interview
Alhaji Mujaheed Asari Dokubo, leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, needs no further introduction. One thing you would notice on seeing him without being told is that this 'freedom fighter', is sick. And, as he put it, it all started after he was put in a dark underground cell during his two years incarceration under the regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo. Sunday Vanguard ran into Asari in a friend's house in Lagos and he agreed to speak on his ailing health, criminality in the Niger Delta, Malam Nuhu Ribadu's travails, among others issues. Excerpts:
THE administration of President Umaru Yar'Adua seems to be at a loss over the recent harassment of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu at his graduation ceremony at NIPSS, such that the government would order investigation into the circumstances surrounding his alleged arrest and denial of graduation. How do you see the whole situation?
To me, the situation was very embarrassing. It was done in very bad taste. In the first place, Nuhu Ribadu ought not to be in NIPSS. Ordinarily, he is not up to an officer that should attend the NIPSS course. But he was there. Six months after his demotion, the police authority would have done everything to remove him from NIPSS, but they allowed him to pursue the course for the duration. Naturally, it is expected he should be awarded the certificate for the course, only for them to come to the graduation arena to eject him forcefully. It is wrong. It is embarrassing to both the people who carried it out and to Ribadu himself.
But like I said before, Ribadu ought not to be there in the first place. The real rank of Ribadu in the police ordinarily ought to be Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), not even Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP). Ribadu, in six years, was promoted from Chief Superintendent of Police to Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG). Where was the due process we are talking about?
What of his colleagues, his course mates, those who came into the police force the same time with him? What risk did Nuhu Ribadu take for him to be catapulted to that rank? He served the interest of and pleasure of the dictator, the former president by persecuting all those that the General wanted him to persecute. Apart from that, Nuhu Ribadu did not achieve anything.
I start to wonder when respected people like Wole Soyinka and Gani Fawehinmi are drumming up support for Nuhu Ribadu. To me, Nuhu Ribadu ought to face trial, along with Maurice Iwu, Sunday Ehindero, Kayode Are and Obasanjo, for taking away from the people their constitutional right to choose people who would govern them. Nuhu Ribadu was the chief culprit in carrying out, in manipulating and in totally disrupting the electoral process in 2007. I do not believe in Karma, I'm a Muslim, that what happened to him serves him right? No. His rights were violated when he was forcefully removed. The people who withdrew the rank he did not merit ought ordinarily to have withdrawn him, because, in the first place, he was not qualified to be there.
Should Ribadu be blamed for a rapid promotion he never bargained for?
Nuhu Ribadu bargained for the promotion. He begged for it and he knows that the person promoting him did not have the constitutional authority to promote him. General Obasanjo, the dictator of the Nigerian State then, did not have the authority to promote Ribadu. That authority is vested in the Police Service Commission, PSC, which Ribadu is very aware of.
That is it. Ribadu, a man in uniform, serving government, was one of the people campaigning for PDP openly. He was in a campaign clip where he was campaigning for Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, the man in Aso Rock today. So, he was meddling in politics, he was openly insulting and abusing the then vice president, Atiku Abubakar, who had fallen out of favour with Obasanjo. He was abusing people, insulting people, like Atiku, Tinubu, Orji Kalu, Alamieyeseigha, Dariye. He was abusing them. He employed unconstitutional means in removing governors. In Bayelsa State, he did it.
In Plateau State, he did it. He attempted it in Adamawa State, his own state where legislators were arrested, beaten and detained. In Plateau State, INEC was there withdrawing the certificates of elected public officers with active connivance and participation of the judiciary. They withdrew the certificates and held another election even where there was a subsisting case by the legislators in the court. He did all that without recourse to the constitution. He was lord unto himself.
So, I know, with the character of Nuhu Ribadu, the person who promoted him ought not to have promoted him in the first place.
Would he have rejected the promotion, knowing it would be termed to mean insubordination to constituted authority?
So, now that they have removed him, he refused to wear the rank of Deputy Commissioner of Police, which he does not merit. He ought to be an Assistant Commissioner of Police. So, is it not insubordination for him not to wear his new rank. The agency of government that is concerned has removed him. Now he is protesting, meaning he actually lobbied for the position. Obasanjo contemplated making him even the Inspector General of Police before he left. What kind of due process was he talking about in promoting mediocrity who never went through the courses to get promotion? He was being given promotion because he was hunting the enemies of the man in power.
But rapid promotion did not start with Ribadu. There is history of such ...?
(cuts in) Who? Under democratic dispensation?
Like it was said that even the present I-G was also a beneficiary of rapid promotion?
Where? When? Let them point it out. What is the length of service of the present I-G? Can you compare a fine gentleman with Nuhu Ribadu along with others who scuttled the democratic process and foisted on us people who ought not to be close to where they are today. Everybody who is praising or talking about Ribadu, Nuhu Ribadu did nothing to fight corruption.
In fact, he was part and parcel of electoral corruption. He did not see the money that was being spent in the power sector, the people's money. Now, we are here (in Lagos), there is no light. How many days? They said it is about two weeks. For Nuhu Ribadu not to be punished and he is still opening his mouth to talk! It is only here that people like Nuhu Ribadu can talk. As an individual, he ought not to have that rank that was given to him. He should have been put back in his proper rank.
But what happened to him that day (at NIPSS) was wrong. They shouldn't have allowed him to reach that stage before cutting off the show for him. It is not right in this case.
But now that the government reportedly ordered NIPSS to issue him his certificate, how would you react to that?
As I said, they ought to issue him the certificate as long as they allowed him to go through the course. They should issue him his certificate if he finished his course. Even though there is the argument that he is not up to the rank to attend the course, did they not know when they allowed him to continue the course?
But it was argued that sending him on that course was just a ploy to remove him as the chairman of EFCC.
The removal of Nuhu Ribadu from EFCC is something that ought to have been done immediately, if the government that was coming was a government on the side of the people. Like I said before, Ribadu should have been removed and put on trial. So many people are disqualified, are we going to count? The greatest corruption is to steal the people's mandate, the people's vote, which Ribadu, Ehindero, Kayode and Obasanjo orchestrated.
Talking of the stealing of people's mandate, today we have the mandate of Governor Adams Oshiomhole restored to him. How would you react to his victory?
I was overwhelmed with joy, totally overwhelmed, because I never expected the outcome of that judgment. That judgment was not in agreement and in accord with the behaviour of the fascist judiciary in Nigeria, a country where a man will be in prison for over 10 years and still be awaiting trial, like Al-Mustapha, a man pronounced guilty before even evidence is taken from him, like my case.
So, what we were expecting was that, if they become too ashamed, they could order a re-run of the election. That was what we were expecting. So, it came like a thunderbolt or like somebody being beaten by a thunderbolt. It's out of the ordinary. It seemed like God touched the heart of those men because they acted outside the script that has always been written for the Nigerian judiciary. I'm not applauding the judiciary. Even, immediately after Adams Oshiomhole's victory at the Appeal Court, another bizarre judgment came up involving Rotimi Amaechi, the Supreme Court imposed governor in Rivers State and the candidate of the Accord Party.
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