RIBADU’S UNSOLICITED ADVICE ON WOLFOWITZ.
I have read the generously published view of the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu on the present fate of the President of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz. The patronizing views of Ribadu argues that the World Bank would be better if it overlooks the indiscretions of Wolfowitz, whom he says has been good for him and the work he fancies himself as doing in Nigeria. Although, Ribadu never made any efforts to throw some light on how Wolfowitz should escape with an obvious act that conflicts with his job as the president of an organization that should be guided by the strictest moral code, he went ahead to mount a lengthy sermon on how Wolfowitz himself has aided his clearly partisan job in Nigeria that has played a major role in landing us in the present pass where unconscionable electoral fraud and seamless atrophies have been imposed on a country that should show the light in the continent on what the best practice should be.
Ribadu, in his usual predilection to self-adulation never advanced so much reasons on why Wolfowitz should walk away with a misdemeanor that is viewed as serious in decent societies but rather mounted his usual sermon on how he had tackled corruption in Nigeria even when we all know that he has excelled in providing dubious cover for the most corrupt cult of political office holders that indulge in the most brazen and deadly cannibalization of power while hunting any one that raises questions to the elephantine scruples of his principals. I am aware that the international community to whom Ribadu is directing his wonky logic is not fooled about what he is doing in Nigeria to entrench the most bizarre regime of corruption that has presently overwhelmed the nation’s political sphere. And it is instructive that this is coming soon after the mangled 2007 election, which standard Ribadu played a prominent role to compromise. I believe that the developed world are not fooled that Ribadu was merely arguing through the same prism of relativity, with which he had distorted, defaced and defamed the perception of corruption in Nigeria. To him, Wolfowitz’s indiscretions should be tolerated, just the same way he has merely tolerated some of the hair-raising cases of official corruption that have been committed by President Obasanjo, his repertoire of political handmaidens, valets and chamberlains and the many acts of corruption of those that are behind the most heinous electoral fraud in the world presently.
I don’t possibly care what happens to Wolfowitz and I will never link his fate to mine or to that of the suffering millions that are groaning and trashing under the weight of official corruption that now hold them in a deadly vice-grip while the Ribadus collect obscene and corrupt booties from pretensions to fight corruption. I care not what happens to Wolfowitz after violating the code of public conduct in his place of work and I believe that tying his fate to those of millions of famished Nigerians that are being made to suffer from preventable want occasioned by the gluttony and excesses of those Ribadu has provided cover for, is a criminal way of blackmailing a developed world to serve the witless ends of the masters Ribadu has served so diligently that they have inflicted deep gashes on Nigerians. Truth is that I would be naïve to link Wolfowitz’s support to whatever Ribadu loudly gloats he is doing to any enterprise that would uplift the causes of short-changed, cheated and duped Nigerians. Perhaps, his support for Ribadu and whatever he is doing in EFCC has done well to confuse Nigerians as the most impudent corrupt acts go on and have led to the lightening promotion of Ribadu even when his promotion borders greatly on acts that would never be tolerated in any country that is serious to make progress. I don’t tie the fate of Wolfowitz to the fate of Nigerians that have witnessed and are still witnessing the most contemptuous rape of all institutions in the land by the gods Ribadu serves.
A country that have noted Ribadu’s chameleonic self-deceptions while the president’s many corrupt acts go on, a country that is witnessing the unholy bazaar that take place in Abuja is possibly not the one Ribadu was talking of when he gloated of how Wolfowitz assisted him to fight corruption even with the intransigence of what he termed “disgruntled lawmakers”. The country that went through the horrendous electoral rape that happened last month is certainly not the corruption-free eldorado Ribadu was concocting in his tepid support for Wolfowitz. The country that has witnessed the obscene plunder of the past eight years that has practically crippled the country while Ribadu chases shadows and hunts the political opponents of PDP cannot be employed as buffers for the shortcomings of Wolfowitz. A nation that passes through Ribadu’s countless somersaults on the NPA scandal, the Andy Uba money laundering scandal, the Transorp shares, the presidential library extortion, the MOFAS account scandal, the PTDF looting, the Otta Farm renaissance, the huge feast the oil ministry has been turned into, the indecent bazaar of oil blocks to family members and cronies, the unfettered PDP governors’ feast, the selective judgment on corrupt PDP governors, the Pentascope fraud are not fooled as Ribadu, roundly compensated for distorting the war against corruption and providing cover for the most corrupt and deadly cult of public officials in the country, cannot be employed to embellish a self-serving solicitation by Ribadu.
All said and done, the main issue is not on whether Wolfowitz should be relieved of his post for violating the sacred ethics of his job or not but whether indiscretions should be graded to allow for such shifty reasoning as that of Ribadu who has employed that strange logic to undermine the war against corruption in Nigeria. The issue is whether aggravations should be weighted in the same partisan scale, as Ribadu was wont to employ in doing whatever he feels he is doing in Nigeria. There is no doubt that such unseemly conduct is a deliberate ploy to adopt a partisan approach to fighting corruption and it is clearly not in sync with decency and reasons hence Ribadu’s logic cannot bail Wolfowitz but proof of his innocence will. Methinks that a value-laden fight against corruption, as the one Ribadu expounds, is bound to deliver bags of doubts, cynicisms, contradictions and ironies-just the way Ribadu’s war against corruption for which he waxes so immodest at the drop of a hat, has done. Is it not funny that while Ribadu gloats so loud about his self-assessed success in fighting corruption, the decibel remains the most thriving enterprise in Nigeria today? Is it not curious that while Ribadu professes to fight corruption, the actions and body languages of the gods he serves disavows that act? Is it not just abhorrent that while Ribadu fights corruption, he deliberately ignores the real purveyors of the act and goes rather against all those that politically disagree with them? Is it not strange that Ribadu’s war against corruption and its effect on the political development of the country delivers the most corrupt electoral charade ever seen in human history? Ribadu played a frontal role in midwifing this charade. He interpreted his brief to mean hunting those that stand to inflict maximum political damage to the interests of Obasanjo and the PDP. Up till the day of the fraudulent elections, Ribadu’s EFCC was busy arresting and tracking down candidates of opposition parties in a desperate bid to weaken the opposition and up the hands of an unrepentant PDP cabal. Ribadu was indecently frontal in all the machinations, contrivances and the deliberate shenanigans that tails pinned into this fraudulent election and he was awarded for all his patronizing acts with a shocking promotion by the machinators and inheritors of this macabre dance. So I honestly do not see the moral pedestal on which Ribadu stands to counsel on the Wolfowitz case. If Ribadu is operating in the clime where Wolfowitz is being persecuted for extending official favours to his girlfriend, he would have long been shipped out of office for compromising the integrity of his office by the many acts he has committed in the process of shielding the president and his PDP cabal from justice. If Ribadu operates in a more developed society, he would have long been relieved of his job for using it to deliberately distort rather than fight corruption. If Ribadu operates in a saner environment, there is no way he would have been promoted from an Assistant Commissioner of Police to an Assistant Inspector General of Police in just a spate of one and half years. If Ribadu is operating in a cleaner clime, he would have long resigned once he began playing the dirty political games of Obasanjo and the PDP. Instead of Ribadu finding comfort in his loquacious and voluble self-praise, he should spare us of the constant reminder that we live in a country where the whims and idiocies of public servants are forced down on the people even when they border on manifest indiscretions that compromise themselves and their offices.
As I conclude this piece, I have just read that World Bank panel has found Wolfowitz guilty and that as a result, his media aide has resigned. He faces the option of either resigning or being forced out. This suggests that Ribadu’s penchant of grading corruption in line with who commits it is strange to the developed world. It should be strange to us as Nigerians also if not that it is being forced through the use of arms and the appeal to constant self-glorification, which drive the EFCC war against corruption. Best practices all over the world abhors the type of selectiveness with which Ribadu tamely sought to confuse the world about corruption and with which he vainly tries to distort our own views of corruption. So Mr. Ribadu should look for another front to ventilate his worn-out and selective logic that has largely compromised the war he is fighting. The developed world is far too gone than to tolerate his absurd logic and partial mindset in fighting corruption. That still enforces the view of a leading world paper in the wake of the corrupt gerrymandering of Ribadu’s corruption list that was prominent for excluding friends and operatives of the PDP that Ribadu and the masters he serves can only fool people most of the time and not all the time. Ribadu should keep quiet and not seek to obstruct the way justice works by his clearly subjective mind.
Peter Claver Oparah.
Ikeja Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com
