TRIBUNAL SUMMON RIBADU, ALAIBE, EDEM OVER ASSET DECLARATION

Timi Alaibe

Nuhu Ribadu

The Code of Conduct Tribunal has summoned the former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, Managing Director of Niger Delta Development Corporation, NDDC, Mr. Timi Alaibe and erstwhile Chairman of NDDC, Ambassador Sam Edem for failure to declare their assets.

A notice of the summon signed by the Principal Registrar of the Tribunal, Mr. Abdulmalik Shaibu, directed Ribadu, Aliabe and Edem to report at the tribunal’s court hall at the Federal Secretariat, Abuja, on Wednesday.

Ribadu, according to the notice, is being charged for allegedly failing to declare his assets when he assumed office of the chairman of the EFCC in April 2003 until he left in 2007.

Ribadu is to appear before the tribunal alongside the former Chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission, Ambassador Edem, and the MD of NDDC, Mr. Alaibe.

Both men are also said to have breached the Code of Conduct Act by not declaring their assets when they assumed office.

The case against Alaibe and Edem did not hold at the Tribunal’s last sitting in Abuja on November 18, 2008.

Edem was arraigned before an Abuja High Court on August 17, 2008 for allegedly stealing N800m belonging to the NDDC.

He was said to have plotted to kill Alaibe and used about N510m to procure the service of one Perekambowe Ogah, a sorcerer, to “spiritually influence” Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan and Akwa Ibom State Governor Godswill Akpabio to take decisions in his favour.

Edem has since been granted bail by the court.

On Alaibe, a petition detailing a web of his massive looting of NDDC and money laundering had been forwarded to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

The petition submitted by a group which preferred to be referred to as Concerned Niger Deltans accused the NDDC Managing Director of personalizing the activities of the agency and using cronies to milk the agency of its financial resources.

The group alleged that Mr. Alaibe stole funds belonging to the commission and purchased properties in London with title number NGL331782 at 180 Verulam Court, Woolmead Avenue at a whooping cost of 180,000 pounds in 2005.

Mr. Alaibe never declared those properties to the appropriate agency.

Also expected to appear for plea and hearing is the Vice-Chancellor of the Imo State University Prof. I.C. Okonkwo. During the November 18 sitting, Okonkwo was represented by a lawyer who claimed that he (VC) was on official assignment in Owerri.

The case against the Chairman of the Etsako West Local Government Area of Edo state Mr. Abdulganiyu Audu, who pleaded not guilty to the charge of failure to declare assets, would also continue on Wednesday.