The Presidency on Monday evening fired back at former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and presidential candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the 2011 general elections, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu for describing Nigeria as a sinking ship.
Speaking on Saturday at a lecture, Ribadu had described Nigeria as a sinking ship, saying that “since the unfortunate events of the Nigerian Civil War, we have existed as a nation struggling to forgive ourselves of the mistakes of yesterday but while we struggled with this, our democracy has become modelled into an avenue where sentiments are highlighted by pro-exclusion politicians to corner the votes of their kinsmen because they cannot do so on grounds of their individual reputation or records.”
Ribadu had argued that with the country’s challenges, Nigeria is on a pathway to self-destruction, begging for the people’s collective and very immediate effort at snatching its future from the hands of those who ride on ethnic, religious and regional sentiments towards self-enrichment.
“The challenge ahead is enormous,” he had said. “The challenge is for us to form networks that will engage and destroy the evil missions of the exclusionists and agents of anarchy among us.”
But reacting through a statement released by presidential spokesman, Dr. Reuben Abati, the Presidency rejected Ribadu claims as false, hypocritical and self-serving, adding that the yearnings of the masses have not been neglected by President Goodluck Jonathan as claimed by Ribadu who called the administration a tyrannical leadership.
“We find it very sad and utterly deplorable that Nuhu Ribadu has resorted to shameless wolf-crying, the peddling of arrant falsehood and the denigration of the elected government of his fatherland in furtherance of his selfish quest for continued national political relevance after his wholesale rejection by Nigerian voters in 2011,” the statement read.
“It is very unfortunate indeed that the once highly respected former EFCC chairman has now taken to political prostitution and developed a penchant for irresponsible and reckless utterances aimed at improving the electoral fortunes of his new friends and ‘leader’, who he once famously denounced as a crook who is “not fit to hold public office.
There can be no doubt that nothing else but blind ambition for an office for which he is clearly unfit is driving Ribadu to infer that an administration led by a president who welcomed him back to the country after his self-imposed exile, restored his rank in the Nigeria Police to save him from the shame of demotion and converted his dismissal from service to retirement has now become tyrannical and anti-people. We take special note of his ingratitude.”
The Presidency further stressed that “if Ribadu wants to talk of tyranny then he should talk of the days when he orchestrated the impeachment of governors with an illegitimate quorum of legislators who had been threatened by the EFCC under his watch.
“It beats the imagination that Nuhu Ribadu, a man who once presided over an EFCC which in 2007 compiled a list of disqualified politicians aspiring for office without a court order or legal backing now has the guts to accuse the man under whom Nigeria has had the most credible elections in this Fourth Republic of being the leader of a ‘sinking ship’.
The statement described him as worse when it comes to tyrannical practices and hypocrisy because as Chairman of the EFCC, he removed governors through undemocratic means and barred legally entitled persons from contesting elections on claims that they were corrupt. It added that only misguided ambition could have driven Ribadu to urge Nigerian youth to rise and save the country from an administration which he willingly served recently, but which he now claims is ‘imposing private interests on the majority’.
“It is certainly the height of hypocrisy for Ribadu who built his entire reputation as an anti-corruption crusader by completely disregarding the rule of law and recklessly trampling on the rights of perceived enemies of the government of the day, to now accuse an administration that has consistently upheld the rule of law and respect for fundamental human rights of being tyrannical.
“It is only a shameless man that will turn around and accept to be the political lackey of a man he once openly accused of corruption at various times between 2004 and 2007. Now that he has been used and abused by the undemocratic overlords that reign over the ACN and fearing that he may soon be dumped now that vehicle is about to be subsumed into the so called All Progressives Congress, Ribadu is desperately seeking fresh relevance.”
The Presidency accused Ribadu of descending into a moral abyss since leaving the EFCC, calling him a thoroughly unprincipled attention-seeker whose entire career in the public service was built on bootlicking and doing the bidding of the powers of the day without a care for legality, which should have been his primary concern as an officer of the law.
The statement stressed that President Jonathan and his administration will not be distracted from the diligent implementation of the agenda for national transformation by the likes of Ribadu and their comments.
