THANKS FOR RELEGATING FORMER MINISTER OF JUSTICE, MICHAEL AONDOAKAA: HE IS STILL AN AGENT OF CORRUPT LEADERS

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THANKS FOR RELEGATING FORMER MINISTER OF JUSTICE, MICHAEL AONDOAKAA: HE IS STILL AN AGENT OF CORRUPT LEADERS – SACK, PROBE AND PROSECUTE HIM NOW!!!

The Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL) is a group of organizations with the objective of fighting corruption and corrupt persons at all levels in Nigeria. We thank you for your demonstration of listening leadership by acceding to the popular request for the removal of Mr Michael Aondoakaa as the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation. However CACOL views his redeployment to the Ministry of Special Duties as just a step in the right direction but not necessarily the right step. The best step to take given the menace the former Attorney-General constitutes to the credibility of your regime is his permanent removal from your government as he remains a glowing fire on the roof of your cabinet. Besides, his days at the Ministry of Justice needs be probed, investigated to determine the roles he played, how and why he played them in shielding corrupt Nigerian leaders from facing justice.

We have been a keen watcher of Chief Michael Aondoakaa, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), since his humdrum days as the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, AGF. Mr Aondoakaa raised our doubt in his ability to carry out the AGF duties as the number one public defender in Nigeria when his appointment was confirmed by the Senate in 2007 and he declared he would rather prevent corruption in the country than prosecute corrupt leaders. He had turned out to be roguish, corruptible, insensitive, deceitful, most controversial and incompetent either as a Minister in any Ministry or the Attorney-General in Nigeria

This supposed Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Federation whose activities since he assumed office had proven that he was a wrong person for the right position he held in trust for us, the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The senior member of the bar demonstrated by his acts, behaviours and his deceitful public pronouncements, especially saying Nigerian president could “rule our country from anywhere in the world”, even as a sickly vegetable, while Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua as president disappeared for more than a third of a year without anyone confirming his location or his state of health, that he is not honourable enough for the trust

Nigerians reposed in him. By the sloppy handling of high-profile corruption cases, he demonstrated that he was not ready to defend the best interest of Nigerians especially in apprehending and bringing corrupt leaders to justice. Rather than taking steps to make corruption unattractive to politically exposed citizens, his efforts were only geared towards arranging soft-landing for and glorifying convicted corrupt leaders, providing covers for the indicted and suspected ones to evade the course of justice and preventing the anti-corruption agencies at home and abroad from bringing the corrupt to book. We have reasons for this assertion.

We had wondered how the gentleman would not start a journey of one thousand years with a step but would rather start from the end. He wanted to prevent an accident that had happened, that is, cry when the head was already off. He was criticized that his strategy was an impossible task and advised to devise a strategy to deal with cases of the large number of Nigerian leaders who were already being investigated or prosecuted both within and outside Nigeria; he admitted he would prosecute all proven cases of corruption but never did anything in that direction till his days faded out in the justice Ministry. Beyond that, we had a couple of other reservations on the competence and appropriateness of Barrister Aondoakaa occupying a position that required high sense of responsibility, integrity and commitment to the course of justice. It is our belief that an effective public defender also needs a great sense of morality, empathy and selflessness. All these great qualities were found absent in our then AGF Aondoakaa.

The first indication that the AGF’s admission of responsibility to prosecute corrupt leaders was a fluke came to fore when he said publicly that he and the anti-graft agencies under his ministry would have prosecuted former President Olusegun Obasanjo if there had been a petition against the ex-president whose corrupt activities while in office were an open secret to all and sundry. CACOL was thoroughly flabbergasted by the statement not only because the AGF, as the number one public defender in the country, needed not ask for petitions before ordering investigation and possible prosecution of suspected past or current public office holders, but also all enlightened Nigerians knew that we submitted petitions that chronicled some of the suspected corrupt dealings of the former president while his tenure of terror lasted. The petitions that were submitted on hand to the EFCC and ICPC just a few weeks before he made the statement were preceded by public processions staged by CACOL members and various news media reported them worldwide. We later wrote Chief Aondoakaa to express our disappointment in him that we expected him to be better informed about issues affecting his office than he demonstrated. We then advised him to resign if he did not have enough nerves to man the office whose primary function was to defend the best interest of the ordinary Nigerians.

Again there is a case of conflict of interest between Barrister Aondoakaa and his function as the Attorney-General of the Federation. It would be recalled that our AGF was one of the counsels defending the former Governor of Benue State, George Akume, also accused of corruption, in a case seeking the Supreme Court to declare that the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) was an illegal body that lacked the rights to investigate or prosecute corruption cases. Since the EFCC is an agency under the Ministry of Justice, it means Chief Aondoakaa as the Minister of Justice was handling a case against the Federal Government he was appointed to be part of and whose side he was expected to defend as head of defence legal team. What this meant was that, Mr Aondoakaa as the Justice Minister was prosecuting a case against an agency he supervises and also prosecuting cases of corruption against those who turned out to be his clients that his private law firm defended. If he had his way, it meant he would abandon the Courts and just scrap the EFCC as ‘the unnecessarily troublesome agency’ by administrative fiat, at least, while his clients’ cases lasted. His interest in cases of some alleged corrupt past governors made him both the prosecution and the defence counsel in them!

Any wonder then that the first assignment the Minister embarked upon was to try to incapacitate the EFCC and its sister agencies like the ICPC and CCB by usurping their prosecutorial powers. When that attempt failed owing to the widespread outcry against his proposition, he tried another trick of subsuming them under the Nigeria Police – the para-military civil defence institution that sees itself more as a military outfit and has turned night mare to the civilian populace. The Nigeria Police had been rated as the most corrupt institution in Nigeria. That effort failed too. Nonetheless there was a hiding place for the AGF to protect his alleged corrupt allies in the constitutional provision that made him the Lord of all prosecutions to be undertaken by all agencies under his ministry. He had to assent to all cases prepared by the agencies before they got to Court. If he withheld his assent, the culprit might never get prosecuted no matter what evidence and witnesses there were against such culprit. This was the instrument Barrister Aondoakaa did not fail in utilising to its maximum.

It was this almighty power the AGF used to protect many of his cronies without us knowing since the anti-graft agencies may only grunt but could not sing as long as their boss had vested interest in any case being handled. One glaring case of the use of this veto power was his attempt to prevent the detention and arraignment of the indicted bank executives over illegal loan dealings. Chief Aondoakaa with neither notice nor instruction travelled out of the country while the indicted bankers were being picked up by the EFCC. If the latter had not been smart enough to have obtained a court order to detain the banksters, many of them would have escaped the course of justice. The AGF might have reasoned that the Commission would be incapacitated since it would merely rely on his assent for the detention and arraignment of the alleged bad bankers while his sojourn for nothing lasted in Europe.

It must have been with extraordinary courage that the EFCC contradicted the AGF over the Vmobile scandal. The AGF’s had engaged in a miscalculated attempt to use the EFCC as cannon fodder in protecting one of his former governor friends, Chief James Ibori, who and two other ex-governors the AGF claimed the EFCC had cleared of culpability. Ibori had, while in office as Delta State governor used shares of Delta State as collateral for N44billon loan taken by his private company, Ascott Limited, from one of the failing banks. The coercion attempt backfired and exposed the hypocrisy of Chief Aondoakaa as the EFCC refused to be wrongly used and cried out against the malfeasance. Chief James Ibori especially had asked the creditor bank to sell the shares he knew full well belong to his state to offset debts owed by his private company without regards to the criminality of such act of dishonesty. It was in his attempt to give legitimacy to his patent lies that Aondoakaa further lied against those not indicted on the deal as having been cleared along with his serial-corruptionist friend, Chief James Onanefe Ibori.

The AGF, who was expected to be the chief prosecutor of caught thieving rascals in government houses, only served as their chief protector. As we observed earlier, it was our Aondoakaa who frustrated Ibori’s trial in another London court because he withheld necessary information and mandate needed to prosecute the case. According to the court, “the evidence against him (Ibori) did not emanate from Nigeria”. Just about the time our AGF protested the prosecution of Ibori by the Met police in London, the Court of Appeal in Kaduna struck out the EFCC’s case against the suspected crook on the grounds that Kaduna was about 700 kilometres from Delta State where the offence was allegedly committed! CACOL suspected that Aondoakaa’s stance on the case influenced the court’s decision since he bosses the courts. Our dismay stems from the fact that there had been several earlier pronouncements that Federal Courts, be it High or Appellate were one and the same no matter which part of the federation its officials operate. This gives an impression that “the present suspect on trial was a special one with larger-than-life image and should be so treated”. Nonetheless, the preferential treatment had not been our worry but using it as an excuse to frustrate diligent prosecution of a leader who is suspected to have caused his people a lot of socio-economic calamity.

Equally, Mr Aondoakaa, in his times as the AGF tried to forcefully take over the prosecution of the former governor of Abia State who was being arraigned for corruption charges from the EFCC based on a purported restraining order on the prosecuting EFCC. Although the office of the AGF was expected to argue on the side of the EFCC, the contrary was the case. The counsel representing the AGF took up the defence of the alleged culprit by asking for stay of proceeding based on a non-existent restraining order. Again, Barrister Aondoakaa had earlier tried to save the former minister of petroleum, Chief Dan Etete in 2007 when he was being tried in France for money laundering when he wrote that he was unaware that Chief Etete was ever accused of any corrupt practice neither was power of attorney given to any French lawyer to prosecute the then minister. This gimmick failed as Etete was tried and convicted in absentia to three years imprisonment and a fine of 300,000 euros.

Your Excellency would remember that the AGF tried to extricate Ibori from the restraint proceedings in a London court. According to media reports, the Southwark Crown Court in London had on August 2, 2007 frozen Ibori’s assets around the world estimated at about $35 million. But the freeze order was lifted on October 2, 2007 after Speechly Birchain, Ibori’s Lawyer, presented to the court a letter written by Aondoakaa stating that the former governor was under no investigation in Nigeria in response to an inquiry from Birchain without reference to EFCC, ICPC, CCB or any other investigating agency in the country. Significantly, AGF Aondoakaa said in his letter that he had not requested the Metropolitan Police in London for any assistance in investigating Ibori as required under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between Nigeria and Britain. This let Ibori off the hook. Nonetheless, Ibori’s victory in Britain was short-lived as another court has reinstated the freeze order on his assets. Besides, Chief James Ibori, according to a Counsel to the EFCC, Mr. Rotimi Jacobs, is an ex-convict of Clerkkenwell Magistrates Court, London. He was fined 300 pounds and ordered to pay 450 pounds as costs.

Despite his promise to diligently prosecute all indicted corrupt public officers in Nigeria, the relegated AGF was reported to refuse to release the 25 witnesses from the EFCC requested for by the Metropolitan police in London to bring Chief Ibori and Victor Attah, the former governor of Akwa Ibom state to trial slated for Tuesday September 21 2009 for alleged money laundering. Our then AGF was in the game of trying to frustrate the trial of his friends for corruption once again as he had earlier done and failed for Dan Etete and James Ibori in France and London respectively. To protest the trial by the Met Police, as he had done in the earlier cases also, the then AGF Aondoakaa shamelessly jetted out to London with a view to don his wig and gown in court to defend the alleged international fraudsters, even when he claims to be fighting corrupt leaders at home. What a shameless ambivalence. Thank God for the Nigerian Liberty Forum who smoked him out of his Marriot Hotel hide out in London and threatened to shame him if he eventually appeared in the court.

This same Aondoakaa as Minister of Justice and AGF whose priority should be the defence of ordinary Nigerians by promptly bringing corrupt leaders to book had severally demonstrated that he had no interest in such engagement. It would be recalled that the then AGF promised to bring to book all those mentioned in several international scandals such as Siemens, Wilbross, Pentascope, Halliburton etc but did not do anything beyond efforts to sweep the vices under the carpet. Even when he succumbed to public demand for definite action on Halliburton scandal, the AGF only pretended to have traveled to the United States in search of the indicted Nigerians in the case. We learnt that our AGF only went on a trade mission to the US rather than chase after the Halliburton culprits. When he came back he handed the case over to a committee headed by the Nigeria Police as if the police force was more effective than the EFCC that had earlier done extensive work and recorded much progress on the scam. And as expected, nothing has come out of the rigmarole.

Now that the EFCC had woken up from its slumber and ready to hold the bull by the horn, it is our hope that the current AGF, Mr Adetokunbo Kayode would not constitute himself as clog in the wheel of anti-corruption progress in Nigeria. Nigerians are not satisfied with logical gymnastics Barrister Aondoakaa played with the rule-of-law mantra with which he helped corrupt friends of his hide their criminality to escape justice. We are also not satiasfied by the mild punishments the judiciary gave the convicted former governor of Bayelsa State, Dipriye Alaiyemesigha and former Inspector-General of police, Tafa Balogun as well as former governor of Edo state, Mr Lucky Igbinedion which were based on corrupted version of what justice should be termed “plea bargain”. Whoever is found guilty of crimes against the people should be made to face the full wrath of the law.

Mr Acting President, we would not want you to continue to accord state respect to suspected or convicted corrupt leaders like Peter Odili, the former governor of Rivers State who was granted yet to be vacated perpetual injunction against arrest and prosecution, and Lucky Igbinedion, the convicted former governor of Edo State, who was given just a slap-on-the-wrist punishment for monumental corrupt practices. True, these former governors belong to the same alumni of past governors with you. However they are your friends you need to do away with and openly disown otherwise the case of “show me your friend…”, will apply and Nigerians may begin to treat you as an accessory, accomplice or a potential member of the club of corrupt leaders. Their indulgence by both the judiciary and federal government is a dent on your minimum agenda and your Minister of Information, Dora Akunyili’s re-branding campaign.

Mr Acting President, we wonder if it is true that you find it difficult to completely do away with Chief Michael Aondoakaa from your cabinet because he was nominated for your predecessor’s appointment as the AGF by the ex-convict of London’s Clerkenwell Magistrates Court, former Governor of Delta State, Chief James Ibori who we also learnt was the biggest financial powerhouse for the your joint presidential campaign in the 2007 election. Could it therefore be true that you may never be able to remove this powerful minister of yours from the Executive Council of the Federation owing to his close relationship with your former colleague and benefactor? If you fail to permanently remove him, your Excellency, Chief Aondoakaa will not only embarrass you as the chief accounting officer of your regime, no matter how short you hold forth in this capacity as Acting President, he will also get you ostracized from the company of leaders of comity of decent nations as Umaru Yar’Adua experienced with the G-20 and ignored by President Barack Obama when he came calling in Africa. Retaining such a global embarrassment as our past AGF in your EXCOF can also return our country to the pariah status we donned for so long for allowing military brigandage in our polity. It is also capable of exposing you and your regime to more international ridicule as you experienced during the last August visit of the US Secretary of State, Mrs Hillary Clinton, who tongue-lashed the government you were second in its command for keeping crooks in your cabinet and paying just lip service to the fight against corruption. Furthermore, it has been proven, as we stated above that Chief Michael Aondoakaa is a personal friend to the Iboris and other corrupt public office holders in the country, including bankers of fraud and their collaborators. He would never have any reason to spot any fault in them, no matter their indictment. He is an incurable enemy of the anti-corruption agencies who will therefore forever remain the conduit for espionage and rebellious activities in your government.

CACOL therefore calls on you, Mr. Acting President; to live up to the confidence that ordinary members of this society repose on you by clamouring for your elevation to the present status of Acting President and summon up adequate courage to do the right thing by performing the sacred duty that will stand the test of history no matter whose ox is gored. Barrister Aondoakaa is a dent on whatever your regime stands for, he should be asked to resign forthwith or be sacked.

Furthermore, we appeal to all concerned arms and organs of government, especially the Senate, judicial officers both at the bar and the bench, especially the National Assembly and all recipients of a copy of this letter should please exert adequate pressure on the relevant organs and authorities that will ensure timely exit of this pro-corruption activist that Aondoakaa is. The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to which Aondoakaa belongs to should please stop this member of theirs from further embarrassing Nigeria by recalling him out of the National Cabinet. On our own part, CACOL will team up with all other progressive institutions, organizations and individuals to, at appropriate time stage indefinite mass protest to ensure the deserved exit of this man, who has once acted as the Attorney-General of the corrupt, from the cabinet of our government.

Finally we urge the current Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Prince Adetokunbo Kayode and all government functionaries in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, including those in political and administrative offices, to do their utmost best to ensure that all alleged corrupt leaders truly and sincerely prove their innocence or otherwise face the full weight of the law. It is our country, nay all of us that will be better for it. Justice must not only be done at all times, it must be seen to have been done. That is where our national pride truly lies. That is the actual re-branding Nigerians need.

The President of the Senate
The Honourable Speaker, House of Representatives
The Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation
The Chairman, National Judicial Commission
The President, Nigerian Bar Association (NBA)