A former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, on Wednesday said he did not at anytime aspire to be the Inspector-General of Police while in office.
He faulted an allegation by a former Inspector-General of Police, Sir Mike Okiro, that he was desperate to use his position as EFCC chairman to be the nation’s police chief.
Ribadu, who made the clarification in a statement through his spokesman, Mallam Adularia Abdulaziz, insisted that ex-Governor James Ibori was instrumental to Okiro’s appointment as IGP.
He said an influential former governor from North-Central and a couple of other people helped to facilitate Okiro’s selection by Ibori as IGP.
The statement said, “Our attention has been drawn to the shameless lies a former Inspector General of Police, Mr. Mike Okiro recklessly spewed to the media yesterday. The cause of Mr. Okiro’s anger, the statement, in a London court, by Mallam Nuhu Ribadu that James Ibori was instrumental to his emergence as the Inspector General of Police (IGP) needs no further equivocation as it was an open secret to everybody in the government circle then.
“If Okiro is now denying this in public, there is no way he can deny this open secret to a number of people including an influential governor from the North-Central then, and a couple of other people who helped facilitate his selection by Ibori.
“It was this same shameless method of desperate lobbying that Okiro, a chronic political jobber and sycophant of the first order would use in getting subsequent appointments as Chief Security Officer to the PDP national chairman and later, regrettably, as the chairman of the Police Service Commission.
“The assertion by Okiro that Ribadu wanted to be the IGP further underlines the former IGP as a perennial peddler of falsehood.
“The truth is Nuhu Ribadu’s focus then was consolidating on his modest efforts at the EFCC, especially at a time when he was working on high-profile cases, including that of Okiro’s godfather, James Ibori.
“We therefore challenge Okiro to name those people he called Ribadu’s friends that narrated the fictitious story of Ribadu’s interest in becoming the IGP to him.”
Contrary to Okiro’s claim, Ribadu said he has evidence to show that an assassination attempt was made on his life.
He added: “The highest distortion in Okiro’s statement, however, is his attempt to rewrite the well-known and widely documented assassination attempts on the former EFCC chairman, and Okiro’s hands in it all.
“It is ridiculous that Okiro is now desperately trying to paint himself in another colour after all the scheming he orchestrated. It beats our imagination that Okiro would want a Nuhu Ribadu he was fighting to destroy to report those incidences to him. It would have been a case of having a culprit to be a judge in his own case.
“At the time, the trio of Michael Aondoakaa, the former Attorney General of the Federation, Okiro and Mrs. Farida Waziri, the former EFCC chairman, had created a hell out of the world for Ribadu. The only sensible thing to do was to avoid these characters and seek solace somewhere else. This notwithstanding, it is a blatant lie that Okiro telephoned Ribadu ‘several times’ but that he did not answer his calls.”
