A
former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mallam Nuhu
Ribadu, has warned that the refusal of President Goodluck Jonathan to grant
amnesty to terror group, Boko Haram, can plunge the country into another civil
war.
Ribadu,
who was the presidential candidate for the Action Congress of
Nigeria in the 2011 presidential election, spoke on Liberty FM in Kaduna on Saturday.
He
urged the President to grant amnesty to the violent Islamist
sect for peace to return to the country, saying
he (Jonathan) should not claim that the sect members were ghosts.
He
argued that with the way things were happening in the country, if
nothing was done, “Nigerians will lose Nigeria to a civil war.”
Advising
Nigerians against voting for a leader they can not trust, he
told Jonathan to “hearken to the voice of the people.”
Ribadu
said, “Jonathan was wrong to have said he will not grant amnesty to Boko
Haram; he should not fail to protect the people and when people
call saying we are tired, we are down; even if it means to dialogue and have an
solution to the whole process, he should opt for such.
“You
cannot say they are faceless because faceless people do not do things like
this. Faceless people cannot be responsible and daily you see them on Facebook. Faceless people
cannot be in your custody; ghosts cannot be people that are in the community,
people who at a point wanted to dialogue.”
The
former EFCC chairman added that a war could be averted “if
we come together forgetting about sentiments, about differences and
working towards unity and saving the resources of this country because it
is only through that that we will be able to achieve peace.”
Ribadu
added that the presidential pardon granted former Bayelsa State Governor
Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and others showed that Jonathan was insensitive
to the plight of the Nigerian masses.
According
to him, it was worrisome for a government that knew nothing about
the case to pardon the former governor who was convicted for looting
public funds. He argued that the action was a big
setback for the fight against corruption in the country.
He
said, “The pardon granted Alamieyeseigha and Shettima Bulama by
the President is a tragic development. A very unfair action against
Nigerians because corruption is our biggest problem and any step taken against
the direction of reversing it is a negative development in our own country.
“Our
leaders are very insensitive to the ordinary people and very unfair to Nigeria.
If you take selfish interest before the interest of the people, personally, as
a person who did the work of fighting corruption, they were my own cases and
they were extremely very important to me.
“They
were the first set of convictions that we recorded and they were significant
because they were the first set of cases of convictions in Nigeria since
independence. We have never had a governor or a Chief Executive Officer of a
bank being convicted for a crime.”
Meanwhile,
a coalition of Northern civil society groups, led by Mallam Shehu Sani,
also faulted the pardon granted Alamieyeseigha, saying it had
made nonsense of the anti-corruption crusade of the Federal Government.
The
coalition argued that the pardon granted the late Gen.
Shehu Yar’Adua, former Chief of General Staff , Gen. Oladipo Diya
and the late Gen.Abdulkareem Adisa was just to give creditability to the
exercise.
It
said, “What we know very well is that pardon for Alamieyeseigha
is unpopular, and President Jonathan has demonstrated over the
years to be rewarding corruption and aiding and abetting it.”
Source:
Punch
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