Those who ‎‎frustrated our fight against corruption – Ribadu

A former Chairman of ‎the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Nuhu Ribadu, on Thursday accused 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.
Ribadu made this known while presenting the lead paper at the 2016 Annual Lecture organised by the Law Chambers of Joe Kyari Gadzama in Abuja.
He said he was shocked that some lawyers who found themselves in government also worked against the fight against corruption.
Ribadu spoke ‎on the theme: “Corruption and the Nigerian Economy: Lawyers as Change Agents.”
He said: “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.
“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.‎
“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. ‎
“Take the case of Mr. Michael Aondoakaa, whose most cardinal agenda as the AGF seemed to be destroying EFCC by every means possible and frustrating all the cases.
“In that regard, he attempted to take over the prosecutorial powers of the commission, which would have rendered the EFCC into a toothless bulldog.
“But of course we resisted.‎”
Ribadu said Aondoakaa later found a partner in Waziri when she was appointed as the chairman of the EFCC to replace him.
He said the damages inflicted on the ‎EFCC by Waziri has continued to haunt the anti-graft agency.
He said: “We did all the work and took the investigation to a very advanced stage, but the case was handed over to private lawyers who connived with some officials to feather their nests from it.
“The lawyers ended up earning more than even the government, to the anguish of those diligent workers who built the case.
“That was a very unprofessional practice and against global best practice.”