Nigeria: A Father’s Injustice To Son, By Comfort Obi

The people of the Niger Delta and, especially, those from Delta State, are up in arms. They are angry. And are joined in this anger by several Civil Society Organisations, and men and women of good conscience. They should. Their anger is justified.

It stems from a brazen injustice. A brazen cheating. A brazen stealing.

They say Delta State is being robbed not only in broad day light, but in the full view of national and international television. The architect? Their son.

For two consecutive terms in office, spanning 1999 to 2007, a young man, James Ibori,  from Oghara, Delta State, presided over the affairs of the State.

Dashing, well connected, upwardly mobile, ibori was, it is alleged, a creation of the Military. They say it was the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, who made him. They say he was representing Abacha here and there, doing this and that, and in the process, made some money. That catapulted him to the status of a man of influence. And power. As the late flamboyant politician,  K. O. Mbadiwe, would say, Ibori became  a man of timber and calibre.

With the contacts he made in high places, not just in Government, but with  very wealthy businessmen, industrialists, and power-brokers, it was easy for him to become the Governor of Delta State – one of Nigeria’s oil rich States in Nigeria’s oil rich Niger Delta.

Ibori, as Governor, was like a colossus. He was the lord in the manor, and one of the power brokers in his party, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP. To boot, he had ambition.

Speculations were high, at the time, that he wanted to be Nigeria’s Vice President  to whoever  the then President, Olusegun Obasanjo, would pick as his running mate. In Nigeria, Presidents and Governors, not the people, pick their successors, and force them on the people.

Obasanjo, an old fox, did not have Ibori on the cards. So, Ibori did not  succeed, but he was one of the people instrumental to the denial of another highly regarded Niger Deltan of that position, before Goodluck Jonathan was chosen.

In the early stages of the Umaru Yar”Adua, Ibori was still a power broker. A couple of them in that circle, his circle, used to meet at the Aso Villa residence of a very influential Senator, former Senator, where they discussed Nigeria, and made decisions.

But, soon, things started to fall apart. Ibori’s problem began when it alleged that he dipped his hands, very deeply, into the Treasury of the State while he was Governor. Initially, he was not worried about the allegation. The main man who should expose him was one of his circle, one of those with whom he usually met with, at the residence of the influential Senator. He was, also, one of those with whom they blocked the other Niger Deltan from being Yar’Adua’s  running mate. So no wahala?

But there was wahala.

His circle shocked him. His wahala came at a wrong time, a time the Yar’adua Government was anxious to please the international community, which had put it under pressure over corruption. Something had to give. That something was Ibori.

To show its seriousness, Ibori was picked. Ironically, he was, allegedly, picked from the same house where they usually met.

To cut the long story short, Ibori was arraigned in a court in Delta state, a state, where, in  fairness to him he empowered a lot of young men, installed his cousin, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan Governor, and turned his Community, Oghara, into “little London.”

It was a court case programmed to fail. Neither the Federal Government, nor the Delta State Government was anxious to prosecute Ibori, really. Any action against him was to, as they say, fulfil all righteousness. The Delta State Government, governed  by his cousin, told the Court that no money, belonging to the State, was missing under Ibori; that the State was looking for no such money.

With a weak case, no evidence, no serious witness, so to say, the Delta State Court discharged and acquitted Ibori of all charges. So, there were claps.

But it was not the end of the case.

I forget the sequence now, but the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, under the press-shy, hard working, but inexplicably unappreciated AIG Farida Waziri, made another bid to re-arrest Ibori. But his Oghara people blocked the EFCC. Men, women, youths, trooped out for days, and dared the EFCC. The next time anything was heard about Ibori, he was in Dubai, enjoying himself.

When a scandalized British Government and its Police, asked the Nigerian Government to furnish them with documents and files on Ibori so as to prosecute him, Nigeria took offence. The then Attorney General of the Federation and Minister for Justice, Mr Michael  Aondoakaa, SAN, took offence. He said the British Government was poking its nose into what was not its business. He said it was insulting to the sovereignty of Nigeria.

But a seemingly-stabbed-on- the-back EFCC kept at it. One day, it clicked. Ibori was arrested in Dubai, and ferried to the United Kingdom. The  seriousness of the case hit Nigerians the day his mug shot was made public. He looked looked at once, weak, lost,  and depressed. I felt for him.

I hate to see a Nigerian leader, or any Nigerian for that matter, humiliated outside our shores. But it is what it is. Ibori was, successfully, prosecuted, convicted, and jailed in the  UK for money laundering and corrupt enrichment.

But his  humiliation did not wane his political influence in Delta politics. His political structure was in tact. It did not kill his spirit either. If it did, he did not allow it show. He, perhaps, cries in the rain. The day he arrived Delta, after serving his jail term, he was received with pomp and pageantry. Every who is who in the State went to pay him homage.

At the Thanksgiving Service, Ibori told the story he always told. He was a victim of political persecution, he thundered. He said, before God, in the Church, that he was innocent of the allegations for which he was jailed. True?

This other day, the British Government put a lie to his claims. Ibori milked his state to the tune of millions of Pounds Sterling, it said. Converted, it is billions of Naira. The British Government has recovered the money from him, and ready to repatriate the sum to Nigeria.

For a start, an initial sum of £4.2million Pounds Sterling would be repatriated. At the meet to sign the agreement, or whatever, the British Government representatives and that of Nigeria were excited.  Nigeria was represented by its Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN. They spoke big grammar. But what did the grammar translate into?

To the Niger Delta people, the Delta State Government, a number of Civil Society Organisations, and, a number of individuals, including this writer, it translates to unbelievable injustice.

Malami, quoting whichever law, said the recovered money would go to the Federal Government of Nigeria. He immediately shared the money out to projects, the same projects to which, for years, monies budgeted, and/or recovered from loots, had always been allocated to – the never-ending Lagos-Ibadan express way, the Abuja-Kano express way, and the second Niger Bridge, a bridge, every Government from Obasanjo to Buhari, had been promising to finish, year after year, particularly during election years. Mercifully, the Buhari Government is taking the Bridge more seriously than other Governments did.

Malami, at the finalization meeting to repatriate the Ibori loot: “Nigerian Government provided the mutual assistance and back-up to the British authorities while the prosecution of James Ibori lasted in London, and today, we are rightfully taking benefit of that cooperation.