Ribadu Can Go To Hell

When the former President Olusegun Obasanjo capriciously decided to accord the erstwhile Chairman of the EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu, double promotion from Assistant Commissioner of Police to Assistant Inspector General of Police, the decision faced varied criticisms. Some argued that, if at all such promotion was to be carried out, there was a need for the imprimatur of the Police service commission to have been sought before such a move was ratified, whilst some argued that the promotion was simply superfluous. There was also a claxon that Nuhu Ribadu lacked the experience to be worthy of that promotion. But unfortunately, the former President, being an inexorable aficionado of absolutism, thought his decision, as always, was final. Indeed, it was.

So, by making Ribadu an AIG, he hierarchically became next in command to the supremo of the Nigeria Police Force – the Inspector General of Police. And it is a plain commonsense that, by default, the Assistant Inspector General(AIG) of Police is under the COMMAND of the Inspector General of Police(IG). Thus, Mr Mike Okiro, being the Inspector General of Police in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is, in order of hierarchy of the Nigeria Police Force, superior to Nuhu Ribadu, who is a mere ASSISTANT under him. It goes without saying that the IG Mike Okiro is the Oga of Nuhu Ribadu. Therefore, Nuhu Ribadu is ACCOUNTABLE to Mike Okiro.

Having been previously appointed the Chairman of the EFCC, an agency under the auspices of the presidency, Nuhu Ribadu is also ACCOUNTABLE to the supremo of the Nigerian presidency – the sitting President, which is currently occupied by Alhaji Umar Yar’dua, but whose legitimacy is still a subject of litigation. So, this makes Nuhu Ribadu simultaneously ACCOUNTABLE to two bosses – the President and the IG. But being that the position of the Chairman of EFCC is a political appointment, Nuhu Ribadu is more of a Policeman more than anything else because the Nigeria Police Force is his primary constituency.

But meanwhile, in the Police Order Act, which Nuhu Ribadu consented to before being admitted into the Nigeria Police Force, all officers above the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police are required to pass through the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), in Kuru Plateau State, which Nuhu Ribadu is yet to fulfill.

Just as it is everywhere in the World, where parastatals and establishments occasionally review the qualifications and credentials of their employees and workers, the Nigeria Police Force, under the leadership of IG Mike Okiro, reviewed the credentials of its officers. In this review, it was noticed that some of its top officers, like AIG Nuhu Ribadu, were yet to obligatorily fulfill the compulsory attendance of leadership training at the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS); and just as any establishment or parastatal anywhere in the World would do, Nigeria Police Force simply asked AIG Nuhu Ribadu – NOT in his capacity as the EFCC Chairman but AIG – to go and pass through this leadership training.

But surprisingly, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, as well as his fans, was chagrined that IG Mike Okiro could ask the whole RIBADU, the superhuman anti-corruption czar directly sent from God to sanitize Nigeria, to go to Kuru and undergo this required NIPSS training. Ribadu especially, the man that fancies himself as the Jesus Christ of Nigeria, saw the action of the IG as nothing short of anathema. He could not understand why he, of all people, should condescend to go on compulsory nine-month study at the NIPSS.

Nuhu Ribadu, in his galling hubristic crassitude, could not keep quiet at this perceived sacrilege. He, together with his supporters and minions, hurled paroxysms of innuendoes at the government of President Umar Yar’dua for removing him from the leadership of the EFCC surreptitiously. Some of his ardent but misguided fans have even circulated petitions throughout the world, urging President Umar Yar’dua to rescind his decision forthwith. They say, the removal of Nuhu Ribadu from the leadership of EFCC would bring the anti-corruption war into atrophy.

In their words, “Nuhu Ribadu is the only one that can fight corruption in Nigeria”. Hogwash! Is the job of the EFCC Chairman a Rocket science that nobody else can perform in the country of 140million people? I am befuddled by the logic of the people that have been perfervidly theorizing this incongruity.

I have searched in vain to find anywhere in the law of the Nigerian Police which stipulates that its top officers from the rank of Commissioner must compulsorily pass through the NIPSS leadership training, where a man called Nuhu Ribadu is to be exempted from this standing rule and regulation.

Why must Ribadu be treated differently from other officers of Nigerian Police who have passed through this training? Does it not occur to the people spouting this obtuse advocacy that one of the scourges that have essentially invigorated corruption in Nigeria is nepotism, which they have been inadvertently supporting? Does it not even occur to Mr Nuhu Jesus Christ Ribadu himself that by parading himself as AIG without fulfilling the pre-requisite of undergoing the NIPSS training, he is simply stamping poseur on his forehead, which, in itself, is one of the attributes of a corrupt mind?

Why is Nuhu Ribadu, the man that is already infamous for his nauseating ribaldry and utter disdain for etiquette and rule of law, poised to exacerbate his obloquy by not doing the right thing of complying with the Police Order Act?

Rather than holding him responsible for his culpability in the orchestrated derailment of their democracy by invidiously indicting certain politicians without proper prosecution before the elections, which was largely appurtenant to the actualization of the “do-or-die” creed of Obasanjo, Ribadu is incredibly being apotheosized to the heavens by some Nigerians.

This was the same Ribadu that solemnly declared Obasanjo a Saint in the PTDF saga, but only for independent investigation to reveal that it was this shameless curmudgeon himself that was pilfering from the PTDF through his proxies and licentiously instructing his factotums to be showering largess on his concubines and cronies from the purse of the PTDF. This was the same Ribadu that visited Ibadan and literally declared Akala and Adebidu as unadulterated specimens of corruption but only for Akala’s name to be conspicuously missing in his compiled list of corrupt Nigerians that were to be disqualified from contesting elections.

This was the same Ribadu that repeatedly thumbed his noise at the Courts and superciliously disrespected the AGF. This was the same Ribadu that was, shortly after the “do-or-die” elections, openly rejoicing with the renegades in the ruling party at the PDP retreat.

Why are Nigerians losing their objectivity over this charlatan who has repeatedly demonstrated his unabated solidarity with their number one enemy, Olusegun Obasanjo? Do Nigerians really think Ribadu is fighting corruption with his schmaltziness?

Given the litany of jiggery-pokery and shtick of Ribadu over the years concerning Obasanjo, are Nigerians not romanticizing fantasy by thinking Obasanjo was ever going to be actually probed by the EFCC under him?

Well, considering the way some pudden-headed caterwaulers were moronically blathering that, without Obasanjo, Nigeria would disintegrate, I am not surprised that this same bovine postulation is being advanced about Nuhu Ribadu.

It’s been close to a year that the tenancy of this former President expired at the Aso-Rock, in which he had retaken over his rightfully deserving and commensurate status as the President of the chickens and cows at one Farm in Otta, Ogun-State, but Nigeria is still standing till today and water has not stopped to flow down the 4,000-kilometer course of River Niger.

We should stop getting unduly sentimental about Nuhu Ribadu; the IG is doing the right thing by asking him to attend the NIPSS training. If Ribadu feels he is too big to attend the NIPSS training as the Act of the NPF stipulates because he is EFCC Chairman, then he can go to hell.

Enough of all this nonsense of one scrofulous tyke holding the whole Country to ransom in the name of fighting corruption.