Posted by By TOPE ADEBOBOYE on
The Action Congress (AC) on Sunday launched a blistering attack on the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Malam Nuhu Ribadu, who it accused of employing 'uncouth and dangerous language" on the nation's Senate.
The Action Congress (AC) on Sunday launched a blistering attack on the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Malam Nuhu Ribadu, who it accused of employing 'uncouth and dangerous language" on the nation's Senate.
Said the party in a statement: 'To describe the Senate as unserious and threaten that Nigeria will collapse because the bottom has fallen off the charade of an investigation he conducted on the PTDF are not only uncharitable but treasonable."
The party also accused Ribadu of conniving with President Olusegun Obasanjo to mislead Nigerians on the activities of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), saying that Ribadu wasted public funds on an investigation that could not stand the 'simple test of fairness."
In the statement, issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the AC insisted that President Obasanjo was the real culprit in mismanaging the PTDF funds and accused the EFCC of partisanship.
Said the party: 'The truth is that the report of the Senate Review Committee (on PTDF) has shown that it was President Obasanjo who misappropriated PTDF funds, hence he was indicted accordingly instead of the finger pointed at Vice President Atiku Abubakar by a blatantly partisan EFCC and its puppeteers."
The party, which described the report of the Senator Ndoma-Egba Senate ad hoc Committee on PTDF, which had earlier indicted Atiku, as a hatchet job, berated the EFCC boss for turning the other eye when most members of the committee were allegedly rewarded with choice plots of land.
'We are also tired of the well-worn lies by Ribadu that a letter from the FBI triggered the EFCC's investigation when in fact, it was Otunba Oyewole Fasawe who lodged a complaint that US congressman Thomas Jefferson had swindled him in their business deal. Suddenly, the complainant became the accused in the hands of the EFCC, because the commission and its masters thought they had seen an avenue to nail an innocent man in the person of the VP.
'Now, working along the same warped logic employed by Ribadu and his masters, a feckless and malleable INEC turned the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on its head by purportedly disqualifying our presidential candidate from next month's polls, ostensibly on the basis of an indictment, packaged, supervised and executed by the grandmaster of the plot himself, President Obasanjo.
'What a cruel joke, when Thomas Jefferson, the man at the centre of FBI investigation, recontested and won in his constituency," the party further said.
While accusing Ribadu of employing unlawful methods to fight corruption, the AC said the EFCC boss was already losing credibility.
'It is the EFCC's failure to adhere to the rule of law that has now seen the EFCC sponsored impeachments in Ekiti and Plateau overturned," it said.
The party also faulted the Peoples Democratic Party's rejection of the review committee's report, saying the party's secretary, Ojo Maduekwe, was a frustrated pretender.
'The truth is that the much-touted anti-corruption fight of the PDP-led government has now been exposed as a sham and a deceit and we are supremely confident that in the fullness of time, those who have engaged in weaving a web of lies and intrigues against others will themselves get caught in it," it said.
Meanwhile, the party has accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of planning to rig next month's elections through the use of some INEC-supplied 'magic pens equipped with erasers."
Quoting a report published in the Leadership newspaper last Friday, the AC said the so-called pens were actually pencils designed like pens and accused INEC of planning to rig the elections with the use of such pens.
'Whose interest is INEC serving by decreeing the use of pencils and erasers to fill result sheets at polling units? What informed the choice of such satanic writing materials? Is this part of the rigging strategies that have been developed by the highly partisan and biased INEC?," the party queried, while vowing that Nigerians would resist all attempts to rig elections.