Years
after leaving office as the pioneer chairman of the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu has named some Nigerians
he said tried their best to frustrate the nation’s fight against
corruption.
Mr. Ribadu spoke on Thursday when he
presented the lead paper at the 2016 Annual Lecture organised by the Law
Chambers of Joe Kyari Gadzama in Abuja.
Speaking under the theme “Corruption and
the Nigerian Economy: Lawyers as Change Agents”, Mr. Ribadu named
foremost lawyer, Ben Nwabueze, former Attorney General and Minister of
Justice, Michael Aondoakaa, and his successor at the EFCC, Farida
Waziri, as people who undermined the country’s efforts to fight against
the cancer of corruption.
“I still recall with amazement and shock
how some very senior lawyers made it a duty upon themselves to bring
down the EFCC and stop the work we were doing. Many of them, like Prof.
Ben Nwabueze, SAN, teamed up with politicians to wage a very serious
propaganda to discredit the work we were doing,” he said.
He also said Mr. Nwabueze personally went to court on many occasions to challenge the powers of the EFCC to fight corruption.
“One thing that also did a serious
damage to the war against corruption was the active connivance of some
senior lawyers who represented the governors we charged to courts after
the 2007 election,” he said.
“It is on record that we charged the
former governors of Jigawa, Taraba, Adamawa, Plateau, Enugu, Ekiti,
Delta, Abia and Edo states as the first set of ex-governors to face
prosecution. However, almost 10 years after most of the cases have not
gone anywhere because of deliberate action by lawyers to frustrate the
trials,” he said.
Mr. Ribadu, a lawyer and former police
officer, also said he was shocked that some lawyers who found themselves
in government also worked against the fight against corruption.
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