RIBADU'S BACKSTABBING AS HIGH ART - an article by Levi Obijiofor

If the information contained in the leaked United States’ embassy cables released last week by Internet whistle-blower Wikileaks is accurate, the former chairperson of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu, must be seriously troubled. Reports published in this week’s editions of two national newspapers — the Punch and Vanguard (5 September 2011) — which was obtained from Wikileaks alleged that Ribadu told former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Ms Robin Sanders, that corruption under Olusegun Obasanjo’s government was far worse than it was under the regime of Sani Abacha.

According to Vanguard and the Punch, Wikileaks reported that Ribadu’s comments were made during a four-hour private meeting he had with Ms Sanders in late December 2007. A major item on the agenda of the meeting was Ribadu’s transfer from the EFCC to the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) for further studies. There were other issues that touched on national security.

This revelation by Wikileaks will worry not only Ribadu but also Obasanjo. It is odd that Ribadu, a man appointed by Obasanjo as the chief anti-corruption crusader of the government, would harbour such negative impressions about the administration that he served. This is classical backstabbing of the kind never before experienced by the Nigerian public. Why would Ribadu tell the US diplomat what he was unable to tell Nigerians for years about the level of corruption in Obasanjo’s government? And why would Ribadu portray Obasanjo’s government, the same government that he served, as an administration infested with corrupt officials? What this implies is that Ribadu’s capacity to judge human character is at best inconsistent.

Ribadu will not emerge from this latest scandal more honourable than he was prior to the disclosure. For years, he entertained national and international audiences with exaggerated accounts of the EFCC’s achievements during his tenure. At the peak of his power, he was seen as a superstar, an emblem of anti-corruption for which he was invited to international conferences and workshops. During Obasanjo’s tenure which coincided with the period that Ribadu reigned as EFCC chairperson, Obasanjo repeatedly challenged all those who accused him of corruption to produce evidence to substantiate their allegation. Ribadu did not rise to that challenge. He kept mum and fooled the nation into believing that Obasanjo’s government was most righteous.

Ribadu’s silence about his knowledge of corruption in Obasanjo’s government was probably driven by an overriding interest in his own ego. His persona was sustained by the folk hero status which showed a dashing senior police officer without blemishes in pursuit of corrupt men and women across the country. Unbeknown to foreign officials and some Nigerians, Ribadu was not really the quintessential 21st century anti-corruption law enforcement officer despatched by natural forces to clean up the corrupt and filthy nation known as Nigeria. He was not deeply committed to the war on corruption because now we know he believed the government he served was stinkingly corrupt. And yet Ribadu’s EFCC took pride in harassing corrupt rodents – small men and women who constitute a blot in the corruption map – as well as critics of Obasanjo’s government.

The Wikileaks revelations have shredded the mystique surrounding Ribadu. Everyone now knows, through his own confidential discussion with the former US diplomat, that Ribadu the prophet did not truly believe in his anti-corruption sermon because he understood his boss to be a shepherd who managed a government of corrupt men and women. Evidence from the leaked diplomatic cables suggests unambiguously that Ribadu was not truly dedicated to the government’s campaign against corruption. If he was steadfast, he would not have remained loyal to a government he believed to be soaked in endemic corruption.

I would argue that the late disclosure by Ribadu of what he knew about Obasanjo’s government may have also harmed his (Ribadu’s) integrity. Whatever drove the man to make such spiteful, if not vicious, comparison between Obasanjo’s government and Sani Abacha’s regime needs to be unpacked carefully. All through the years that Ribadu served Obasanjo, he told the nation in public and private fora that Obasanjo was spotless and that the EFCC had no evidence of corruption against Obasanjo’s government. However, the leaked cables suggest that Ribadu had a different idea about the level of corruption in the government that Obasanjo led. If corruption was so widespread in Obasanjo’s administration, as Ribadu reportedly confided in the US diplomat, why didn’t he take a dignified exit from that government, by resigning as the boss of the EFCC?

The entire revelation has cast Ribadu in the image of a double agent, a man who must never be believed or trusted. While he pretended to be a loyal servant of Obasanjo during the time he served as the EFCC chairperson, he also found time to sneak out to convey to a diplomat allegations which a genuine law enforcement officer would have used effectively to prosecute all those believed to be corrupt. This sneaky kind of behaviour qualifies Ribadu to be conferred with the unenviable title of the man with a double face.

On the basis of the Wikileaks’ disclosures, there are many questions that Ribadu alone must answer. The longer he delays his response, the more the leaks will damage his previous image as a well respected senior police officer. He has no reason whatsoever to act like a mole for the US diplomat in Nigeria. That conduct raises a more serious question that touches on our national security. Has anyone considered what would have happened to our national security interests if Ribadu had won this year’s presidential election? No one would guarantee that Nigeria’s national interests would be secure in the man’s hands, given that he finds it fashionable (as shown in the Wikileaks’ report) to relay matters of national interests to agents of foreign governments.

After reading the accounts of the Wikileaks’ revelations published in the Vanguard and the Punch newspapers this week, I wondered what might be going through Ribadu’s mind. His reputation as the no-nonsense incorruptible anti-corruption watchdog who was dreaded at the time he headed the EFCC has now been blemished by revelations about what he knew and how he failed to do anything to stop corruption at the highest levels of government. Ribadu bottled up his knowledge of corruption in Obasanjo’s government while he portrayed himself as the unstoppable anti-corruption chief.

What could have motivated Ribadu to say all those nasty things he said about Obasanjo while he presented to the nation an exaggerated image of the man he served? Did Ribadu intend to establish himself as the pillar of wisdom on which American diplomats would draw secret information about the weaknesses of our national leaders? All the statements Ribadu made in the past to absolve Obasanjo’s government of corrupt practices could now be regarded as one man’s untruthful accounts of the government’s fight against corruption.

While I will not defend Obasanjo and his government (I have never really been an admirer of the man and his eccentric ways), I would argue that Ribadu’s confidential comments about Obasanjo were driven chiefly by self-serving objectives. Unfortunately, those confidential assertions have been transformed into public knowledge, thanks to Wikileaks. Ribadu would have realised by now that in the complex world of diplomatic exchanges, nothing really qualifies as confidential conversation anymore. What is classified as secret information today will eventually become unclassified or unrestricted information tomorrow.

It is unimaginable that one man could talk so single-mindedly and clandestinely about the high level of corruption in the government that he served and yet ignore the fact that he was the head of that government’s anti-corruption agency and also the model of morality for the nation. Although we are all better informed about Obasanjo’s government owing to Ribadu’s unrestrained conversations with an American diplomat, Ribadu must now feel he has committed a major blunder.

In and out of office, Ribadu radiates the image of a man who is specially equipped with an over-abundance of wisdom. But public perceptions of his good judgment have been undermined by his prattle about Obasanjo’s government. Let me be sharp here: Ribadu’s secret statements about Obasanjo’s government have typecast him (Ribadu) as a cold-hearted and manipulative man who has immeasurable political ambition. Ribadu’s allegiance to Obasanjo must now be regarded as fragile as a piece of chinaware.

Obasanjo is arrogant, insufferable and lacks decorum in public places but why did it take Ribadu so long to reveal that Obasanjo’s government was far more corrupt than the government that Sani Abacha led in the mid to late 1990s? Ribadu and Obasanjo are locked in a game of wits.