8 April 2009

Lagos — The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has said it is still investigating the allegation of corrupt practices against former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

This is contrary to the claim by the ex-president that he remains the only former leader that has been investigated by both the EFCC and Indep-endent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Com-mission (ICPC) and given a clean bill of health.

Obasanjo spoke as a guest on a British Broadcasting Corpo-ration (BBC) programme, Hardtalk, anchored by Stephen Sackur.

He said he could hold his head high even after leaving office, as no one had come up with corruption charges against him.

But answering questions yesterday on an Africa Indepe-ndent Television (AIT) programme, Focus Nigeria, Head of Media and Publicity of the commission, Femi Babafemi, said EFCC's team of investigators were still working on the petition against Obasanjo.

A caller had asked Babafemi to confirm the claim by the former president that he had been cleared by the anti-graft agency.

Responding, he said: "The former president made the statement and not EFCC and I cannot confirm the statement he made."

But Babafemi stated that there was an issue when the present EFCC Chairman Farida Waziri came on board that there was a petition submitted by the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL) to the commission and nothing had been done about it.

"The EFCC chairman then asked the coalition to come forward with the petition. I came to Lagos to personally receive the petition. The chairman then assigned the petition to a team of investigators and they are still working on it," he said.

On the state of the investigation, Babafemi said it was still ongoing.

Responding to another question on the Halliburton scandal where some top government officials were alleged to have received bribes from the company to secure Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contracts in the country, Babafemi confirmed that the EFCC had quizzed some Nigerian suspects.

He also said the commission had written a letter requesting the Attorney-General and Justice Minister Michael Aondoakaa to write to the US Department of Justice for details of the court judgment which indicted some Nigerian public officers and officials of the Halliburton Group.

Obasanjo was alleged to have engaged in corruption, mismanagement and high-handedness during his eight-year rule between 1999 and 2007.

In its petition to EFCC, CACOL accused Obasanjo of corruption and asked the commission to probe some of the known assets of the former President believed to have been acquired with the proceeds of corrupt practices while in office as the Nigerian President. Specifically, it asked the EFCC to investigate sources of the funds the ex-president used to establish his various business concerns as well as the propriety or otherwise of:

"The establishment of the N6.5 million presidential library by Chief Obasanjo in his home town, Abeokuta Ogun State with monies collected from members of the public as the president of Nigeria, and currently the library is being run as his private business;

"His establishment of The Bells University of Technology estimated to worth a conservative estimate of N40 billion in Badagry, Lagos State; "The 200 million units of shares he bought in Transnational Corporation of Nigeria, TRANSCORP; and "the resuscitation and expansion of Obasanjo farms in Ota, Ogun State and in various parts of Nigeria into multi-billion naira establishment."

But while dismissing all allegations of corruption levelled against him, Obasanjo had said on the BBC programme that he was ready to subject himself to scrutiny so as to defend himself.

When the BBC interviewer reminded him that he had allegedly been indicted by various committees of the National Assembly, the former president took umbrage at the remarks, warning Sackur that he was accusing him of corruption.

According to him, "What you are doing now is that you are accusing me of corruption. And no one has accused me of corruption and I'm not going to take that from you. Why are you accusing me of corruption? Do you have evidence to back your claims up? Let anybody with corruption allegations against my name come out to present it."

He said his regime created two anti-corruption bodies to tackle the hydra-headed problem of corruption in Nigeria and that the efforts of the anti-graft agencies were even applauded by the Scotland Yard.