Posted by By SAM ANOKAM on
Chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, yesterday reacted to mounting criticisms against the organisation's operations, alleging that the anti-corruption agency was only being lampooned and blackmailed due to its incorruptibility.
•As Atiku faults claim of missing $23m
Chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, yesterday reacted to mounting criticisms against the organisation's operations, alleging that the anti-corruption agency was only being lampooned and blackmailed due to its incorruptibility.
Ribadu, featuring on a live African Independent Television (AIT) a.m discussion programme, Focus Nigeria, also threw light on why his commission could not prosecute state legislators who co-operated with it in impeaching their governors to pave way for their criminal prosecution.
The tough law cop was reacting to allegations of gun-point arrest, prejudice and selective operations by EFCC, often tending to violate citizens' constitutional rights.
But Ribadu described the criticisms as a ruse aimed at calling a dog a bad name in other to hang it. He said those behind it were criminals who had fallen on the bad side of the law and seeing that they could not compromise the agency's officials resorted to the campaign of calumny. 'We have been called all sorts of names at different times. Once they said we were religious zealots, again at one point it became selective and now it is (that we're breaching) the rule of law. They must say something because in those days they gave money to law enforcement agents, but with us, it is not working. If you cannot bribe us, if you cannot compromise us, the next thing they do is to try to blackmail us," Ribadu said.
Also, the EFCC boss explained that the commission was not obliged to prosecute state lawmakers, who might have shared in the proceeds of looted public funds alongside their governors, if they received it under ignorance that it was stolen, moreso, when they assisted in bringing the culprit governor to book. 'By saying they are acting after to deal with the governor shows that they were not in conspiracy with him in the stealing.
However, the Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organization yesterday described as a blatant lie Ribadu's allegation on the programme that the Petroleum Technology Trust Fund (PTDF) lost $23 million during the period that Vice President Atiku Abubakar supervised the Fund.
'The EFCC Chairman could not have been unaware of the recent AIT televised interview of Alhaji Maina Waziri, until Wednesday the Executive Chairman of PTDF, on the issue of the $23 million, which Ribadu wants the world to believe has been lost," the statement continued.
'Waziri has told the world that no money is missing from the PTDF and that the $23 million in question, hitherto deposited in Trans International Bank, has been assumed by the bank's new owners, Spring Bank Plc. He also stated at the same interview that Spring Bank has begun to repay to the PTDF.
'The Atiku Campaign Organisation has a recorded tape of this interview and would be glad to make it available to Nuhu Ribadu, to stop further illiterate comments on this issue."