Tony Eluemunor is Ibori’s media
assistant. Read his article below…
“ In this final article in my series of replies to Simon Kolawole’s “The Welcome Party” (Thisday newspaper of Sunday December 25, 2016),
where he condemned thevmassive celebration Chief James OnanefeIbori’s release from UK jail elicited in Nigeria, I will face the sixth untruth in his single article. He wrote: “Season Three, I call it ‘The Journey’, started in 2010 when the government of President Goodluck Jonathan re-opened the case and Ibori, in an attempt to escape another trial, ran to Dubai”.
In this final article in my series of
replies to Simon Kolawole’s “The
Welcome Party” (THISDAY
newspaper of Sunday December 25,
2016), where he condemned the
massive celebration Chief James
OnanefeIbori’s release from UK jail
elicited in Nigeria, I will face the
sixth untruth in his single article. He
wrote: “Season Three, I call it ‘The
Journey’, started in 2010 when the
government of President Goodluck
Jonathan re-opened the case and
Ibori, in an attempt to escape
another trial, ran to Dubai”.
OlusegunObasanjo’sAso Rock had
spent its entire second term setting
traps for Ibori, but he was re-elected,
was not impeached, and completed
his tenure. The first obstacle was that Ibori’s name mysteriously
disappeared from the list of those
cleared to contest the 2003 elections, which was displayed at Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
headquarters, Abuja on a Saturday.
The then INEC Secretary, Dr. Hakeem
Baba-Ahmed, was in charge as Dr.
Abel Guobadia had travelled to Benin for the weekend. I called Guobadia in Benin, and he denied that INEC stopped Ibori; he addressed the press in Benin the following day to insist that Ibori was cleared. Today, Baba-Ahmed is a columnist that pontificates on right and wrong, and I laugh, knowing that talk is cheap.
The next attack was the ex-convict
court judgment forgery. That too
failed to fly. Then after Ibori had
completed his two terms of office, as
Delta State Governor, Mr NuhuRibadu stepped in to stop his
forward match in Nigerian politics.
He arrested and arraigned Ibori in
Federal High Court, Kaduna. Why
Kaduna? Forum shopping is the
answer! Between Asaba and Kaduna, there are well over eighteen Federal High Courts starting from the Benin Division of the Federal High Court.
That is a story for another day. His
real weapon was to keep an accused
in Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC) custody and
torture him until he would choose
either to die or plead guilty. D.S.P
Alamieyeseigha got this treatment
and he was counseled by several
people to plead guilty and live. My
witness here is no less a person than former President Goodluck Jonathan himself. He met with Alamieyesiagha at the Vice President’s Lodge,
Marina, Lagos, and convinced him to
plead guilty. Jonathan, on that
occasion, was an emissary of late
President UmaruYar’Adua’s, who
promised to grant Alamieyeseigha
state pardon because he was
convinced that he was a victim of a
witch hunt.
What pained Yar’Adua the most was
that Alamieyeseigha was accused of
purchasing Chelsea Hotel, , Abuja, for himself, when it was bought for
Bayelsa State. If this is true, then
only God can understand why
Jonathan who was Alamieyesiegha’s
deputy did not correct this
impression, even when he became
President. Till today, that hotel lies
totally fallow! Iboriescaped Ribadu’s deadly plot by requesting the court to remand him in Kaduna prison. What followed; that it took the Judge two complete months to decide whether to grant Ibori bail is a sign of what had been plotted for him. Ibori would have been given the Alamieyeseigha treatment, denied bail; trial would have stalled indefinitely, until he would be forced to plead guilty. May 2010, things had changed drastically. Jonathan was now President, and after Jonathan had declared that Ibori should be arrested DEAD or ALIVE, as newspapers widely reported, his administration attempted to slap a coup d’état charge against Ibori; a charge whose punishment is death.
Pretentious investigations actually
began after which arrests would
follow. The Chief Apostle of that plot
from hell was Jonathan’s one-time
National Security Adviser (NSA) late
Gen. Owoye Andrew Azazi followed
by the then Chief of Defence Staff,
Air Marshal Paul Dike whom late
Azazi reported the fake intelligence
to; the two then went to work onthe
then Chief of Army Sfaff. Azazi had
already set plans in motion before he told Ibori’s brother, friend and
comrade Chief D.S.P Alamiesiegha
who then dragged him to see Ibori in
Lagos to repeat his allegation to him
face to face. What delayed their
planned arrest of Ibori was the
stance of the then Chief of Army
Staff, Gen Abdulrahman Bello
Dambazau (the present Interior
Minister) who refused to join in that
devilish plot. He told them that they
could not make a coup plot against
Ibori stick without dragging in some
innocent soldiers. He said to Azazi:
“Sir, you have been everything in the
Army, including its head. So, why
will you destroy the Army just
because you want to rope in a
politician into a non-existent coup
plot? How many troops are under
Ibori? Were he to contemplate a coup plot, would he, a bloody civilian, even know who to recruit? Would Ibori not prefer to wait for the next election and work against the re-election of a sitting President, which you and I know he has the power to do? To make this thing stick, you know you have to rope in a lot of innocent soldiers, and destroy many families – all because of politics. You and I know that no real intelligence report has brought this up or fingered Ibori. Sir, if you want to take him out, find other ways to do it but don’t involve any innocent
soldier; no officer, no troop, under
me.” Then he promised to talk with Ibori.
On leaving General Dambazau, the
lawyer who accompanied Ibori to
that meeting advised him to leave
Nigeria if he wanted to remain alive.
Ibori did not return to his house,
which by then was being watched by
strange faces: without getting home
to collect anything, he left Nigeria for
Dubai, where he did not bother to
hide but stayed in a hotel to
contemplate his next move.
Just one more thing, before we close
this chapter; last Monday, Dr. Patrick
Dele Cole, Obasanjo’s former Special
Adviser, International Relations,
published “Return of James Ibori” in
the Vanguard. He bore witness to
what I wrote last week that Obasanjo declared an all-out war against Ibori, using the Federal Government, EFCC,
the Police, the diplomatic trail and
heaps and heaps of lies. Cole granted this much: “(Ibori’s) achievements are considerable”, “he belonged to the club of rich men; though he was fantastically generous and he carried himself as a successful rich man.
James Ibori, like most PDP members, did not believe that General OlusegunObasanjo, OBJ, would want a second term. Ibori had said electing OBJ for second term was unwise and that OBJ was unelectable.
This is why OBJ had it in for Ibori
who had led the movement to stop
Obasanjo’s second term bid because
that was the original agreement at
the time of recruiting OBJ to run in
1999. OBJ was to be President for
only one term, so even the third term
proposal was unaccepted”.
“Have it in for Ibori” is an idiom,
meaning “to persistently try or desire to criticize, cause harm to, or harass someone, especially due to a
grudge”. So, the truth is that it was
not an anti-corruption fight that led
to Obasanjo’s misuse of the EFCC to
hound Ibori; it was Ibori’s opposition
to Obasanjo’s crudity which was
giving politics a bad name, according to Cole, Obasanjo’sUnder Secretary in Dodan Barracks, Lagos, whom Obasanjo appointed Daily Times M.D
in 1976, 1987 -1990 Ambassador to
Brazil and who returned as
Obasanjo’sAdviser inAso Rock, Abuja in 1999. And when Cole wrote that “Ibori led the Southern revolt” he should know what he was talking
about. Often, he was the one
Obasanjo sent, whenever the 1999 –
2007 set of South-South Governors
metto advance the Fiscal Federalism (Resource Control) course, to whittle down the effect of any collective stance. Unfortunately, Cole is from the South-South.
Rather than reveling in the witness
of Dr. Cole (PhD, Cambridge) that I
wrote the truth in my last article, I
mentioned him for thedeceptive
philosophy in his essay’s
introduction and conclusion. His
intro: “HIS (Ibori’s) achievements
are as considerable as his
background is somewhat murky and
unclear”. So, right from the first line,
he had to detract from Ibori’s
achievements by bringing in unclear
and murky background. How does
Dr. Cole define murky and unclear?
Would he agree that some things
about himself are really “murky and
unclear”? When Obasanjo dropped
him, only Aso Rock insiders knew it
was because of an oily business
concerning Sahara Oil and Ghana.
Does that make Cole’s life murky and unclear ever after? I don’t think so.
Ambassador Patrick Dele Cole and
Chief YomiEdu are two people that
can testify to how most of the PDP
Governors of 1999-2007 spent their
own resources in their various states to get Obasanjo and the PDP in power. Most of them were men of
means before contesting for the
position in their various states. That
is one admission he makes and
probably accounts for PDP’s solid
structure in Delta State today.
His concluding paragraph: Showing
his angst at the heroic welcome Lagos crowds accorded the late Biafran leader Chief EmekaOdumegwu –Ojukwu on his return from exile and the one Ibori is sure to receive, he asked a totally illogical question:
“What if at the end of the World War
II, Hitler was to come back to
Germany, what would be Germany’s
reaction”? Hitler was the aggressor in the Second World War. That some
people still believe in his Nazism,
Aryan race and anti-Semitism
nonsense has no bearing with the
Ibori issue, which is strictly that of
government’s forgery of indictments
against him. The example of the most publicly known charge against Ibori, the $15m bribery allegation, will do: Ibori was not asked about it when EFCC questioned him on July 4th 2007. It was never mentioned while he was being questioned after his arrest on 10th December 2007; EFCC never questioned Ibori at all on it. So Ibori never made any statement about it.
Interestingly, Ibori was arraigned at
the Federal High Court in Kaduna on
December 11, 2007, but the three
statements about that bribe
allegation – Ribadu’s, Lamorde’s and James Garba’s were dated December 12, 2007. That is, two days after Ibori’s arrest and a day after he was arraigned in court.
Such leaves doubts in Ibori’s
follower’s minds – doubts about the
money’s origin, Senator Uba’s role,
etc. Uba himself would later issue a
press statement saying Ibori handed
out the money in his presence and
house but he was ignorant of the
reason for that transaction. Thus
Uba, a Senator of the Federal
Republic, was contradicting Ibrahim
Lamorde and James Garba, who said in their police statements that when they collected the money from Uba’s houseIbori was not there, and that Andy Uba’s aides brought out the money. That is yet another set of
contradictions in the various
statements as though all the accusers have been condemned by an unknown force never to agree on any material particular except on the
name Ibori. Ribadu himself has
made some five statements and all
contradicted every other one! And if
Ibori handed out the money, in Uba’s
presence, why did EFCC lawyer, Mr.
Rotimi Jacobs say in open court that the money came from IBORI’S
UNKNOWN AGENTS? Hey, how many versions should truth have? The real truth will come out one day.
For lack of space I’ll reserve my
expose of all the lies in Ribadu’s
several statements as well as in those of Lamorde and James Garbafor next
week. Coles last statement: “One thing is clear; Ibori’s arrival in Delta will change the political dynamics of
Delta State and thereby of South South.” Wrong: Delta state and
South-South politics never changed;
the people have remained loyal to
Ibori’s leadership though he has and
remains absent from home for almost a decade. This is truly remarkable!
Cole may not understand this; just as he did not understand Ndigbo’s ever enchantment by Ojukwu. May it
never be forgotten that Ibori has not
yet returned, yet he is causing this
entire ripple. This is because the
South-South celebrates the grace of
God which kept their hero alive
despite all the devilish machinations
against him which began during
Nigeria’s, no, Obasanjo’s, era of
brigandage, gangsterism and
banditry which claimed the lives of
Bola Ige, A.K Dikibo, Harry Marshal,
ChubaOkadigbi, DSP Alamieyesigha,
and countless others. And none
stood as stoutly in the turf of battle
as the Odidigboigbo himself.
Tony Eluemunor is Ibori’s Media
Assistant.
