A former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu, has described his successor, Farida Waziri, as a liar in response to Mrs Waziri’s claim that Mr. Ribadu served under her.
Mr Ribadu, on Thursday, stepped into a controversy generated by a series of interviews conducted by the media unit of the EFCC with past and present government leaders and officials.
In one of the interviews, published in the commission’s magazine, Zero Tolerance, former President Olusegun Obasanjo questioned Mrs. Waziri’s qualification as head of the EFCC, and said her tenure severely reversed Nigeria’s gains in anti-corruption war under Mr. Ribadu.
The comments drew a fierce response from Mrs. Waziri who accused the former president of manipulating the EFCC with Mr. Ribadu as his tool, to seek a third term in office.
She defended her competence for the job by citing a string of academic and professional qualifications, amongst which she claimed to have supervised Mr. Ribadu and the current EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde, when they all served in the Nigeria Police.
“To further expose the height of mischief in the allegations,” she said of Mr. Obasanjo’s comments, “the past and present chairmen of the EFCC have both worked under me, yet someone can open his mouth to say I am not qualified to head the same agency.”
Mr. Ribadu denied those claims on Thursday, and labelled Mrs Waziri a “merchant of falsehood” who recycles “crooked statements to the point of cliché, in spite of attempts at clarifications.”
He said it was inappropriate for Mrs Waziri to claim he worked under her.
“This is a naked lie that she keeps flaunting to seek undue relevance and validate her own appointment. At no time in my career did I work under the same section or unit as her. In fact, contrary to Waziri’s claim that she “trained” me, it was I that actually lectured her and others, on fraud investigation and prosecution, when she was newly posted as Head of Special Fraud Unit, even though she was my senior in rank,” the former EFCC boss said in statement he personally signed.
“I was then the Head of Prosecution at the Tribunals under the leadership of Mr Sunday Ehindero, then CP Legal,” Mr. Ribadu said.
Mr. Ribadu also disputed another claim about being used to push Mr. Obasanjo’s third term.
He said it was evident that Mrs Waziri, who was nowhere near EFCC at the time, was ignorant of what transpired.
Mr. Ribadu said it was saddening that after all the damage inflicted on the operations and credibility of the EFCC by Mrs Waziri, she turned back to abuse the young men and women who had put in all their energy in cleaning up the country especially during that critical time, by dismissing their work and sacrifice.
“EFCC was not about Nuhu Ribadu. Rubbishing its work, therefore, is like insulting all the thousands of its operatives across the country who put their lives on the line to make Nigeria a better country. If Mrs Waziri has a personal score to settle with anybody, she should direct her attack at the person but not the organisation,” Mr. Ribadu said.
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