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‘Maga No Need Pay’: Nigeria Gets Creative to Fight Cyber Scams
Related to country: Nigeria


http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2010/02/03/maga-no-need-pay-nigeria-fights-cybercrime-with-song.aspx


By Tim Cranton
Associate General Counsel, Microsoft


This week, a new pop song hits the airwaves in West Africa with a highly unusual message: Don’t be seduced by cybercrime.

Cybercrime is a global issue, but perhaps no form of cybercrime has been more associated with a region than the advance fee fraud collectively known as “Nigeria” or “419” scams (419 is the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud). Through schemes such as fake lotteries, bogus inheritances, romantic relationships, investment opportunities or – infamously – requests for assistance from “officials,” scammers promise an elusive fortune in exchange for advance payments.

West Africa is by no means the only source of these scams, but the region is stepping up to address their impact in a variety of creative ways.

419 scams have taken root in Nigeria’s popular culture. Scammers enjoy a rebellious, “cool” mystique, even producing songs and music videos that celebrate their own audacity. At the same time, 419 scam victims around the world are often stigmatized as naïve or gullible, which discourages many from coming forward.

This week in Abuja, Nigeria, members of the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit and Microsoft Nigeria are meeting with the Economic and Financial Crime Commission of Nigeria (EFCC) and other international stakeholders to plan programs to combat Internet fraud in West Africa.

One particularly innovative effort is a campaign to redirect the energies of young Nigerians drawn into cybercrime, which is known locally as “yahoo-yahoo.” On the campaign’s front lines are 24 ambassadors for the Microsoft Internet Safety, Security and Privacy Initiative for Nigeria (MISSPIN). These young Nigerians work with local communities throughout the country to help establish productive online alternatives to Internet fraud and educate the youth of Nigeria on avoiding the trap of cybercrime.

MISSPIN Ambassador Ohimai Godwin Amaize is working to shift cultural perceptions of scammers and their victims through the B.L.I.N.G. project, which unites some of Nigeria’s most influential musicians around the problem of cybercrime. Their song, “Maga No Need Pay,” challenges young Nigerians to resist the temptation of “yahoo-yahoo” and avoid creating more maga, or victims. The song, an Afro Hip-Hop and R&B fusion, is intended to help inspire both national and international audiences.

I’m also proud to announce that on September 7-10, the EFCC will convene the 1st West-African Cybercrime Summit in Abuja. Coordinated by the EFCC, Microsoft, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) and the International Mass Marketing Fraud Working Group (IMMFWG), this conference will bring together an international group of political leaders, decision makers, criminal justice authorities, industry representatives and other stakeholders from Africa and around the world to help:

* Raise political awareness and commitment to combat cybercrime
* Build capacity for scalable and sustainable solutions
* Develop multi-lateral cooperation

These are by no means the first steps taken to fight advance fee fraud. In 2008 Microsoft joined with Yahoo!, Western Union and the African Development Bank to establish the Advance Fee Fraud Coalition. Last fall, Microsoft, Western Union, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Trade Commission launched a public safety ad campaign in Bing to help warn consumers about financial fraud.

Cybercrime knows no national boundaries. To fight it effectively we must embrace a variety of approaches – technological, legal, and cultural. Motivating individuals to reject cybercrime and pursue legitimate ventures begins with campaigns like MISSPIN and the B.L.I.N.G. project. With awareness, education and partnership, we can help make the Internet safer for the whole world.

I encourage you to check out “Maga No Need Pay” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGCnl6O6bnE. For more information about advance fee fraud in general, please visit http://affcoalition.org.

February 8, 2010 | 3:59 AM Comments  0 comments

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District 9: Deconstructing Brand Nigeria
Related to country: Nigeria


Not a few Nigerians were incensed with Oprah Winfrey when she maligned Nigeria and Nigerians in a TV discussion about the global scourge of cyber crimes. In an attempt to lend credence to her inflammatory pronouncement, Oprah purportedly played the video clip of a popular Nigerian hit-track that celebrates cyber crimes popularly known here in Nigeria as "Yahoo-Yahoo" to millions of viewers hooked on to her Oprah Winfrey Talk Show worldwide. Whatever that meant, I believe Oprah is entitled to her own opinion.

Only last week, Sony Corporation issued an apology to Nigeria over a TV commercial for its latest PlayStation which attacks with innuendo, the reputation of Nigerians. The Sony apology came shortly after Nigeria’s official image maker, Information and Communications Minister, Prof. Dora Akunyili issued a release condemning and demanding an unreserved apology from Sony Corporation. Good for Nigeria and kudos to Madam Dora, Sony has withdrawn the commercial, but not before it had been posted on YouTube, entrenching our global reputation in the liminal limbo between death and dying.

And just as Nigerians were still smarting from the attack delivered by the Sony advert came a new assault, this time from the world’s movie capital – Hollywood. In District 9, a 2009 science fiction directed by Neill Blomkamp, written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, and released on August 14, 2009, Nigerians are portrayed as voodoo experts, gangsters, drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, cannibals and an unintelligent bunch of weapon traffickers. For the sake of our cinemas, let me avoid a sheepish regurgitation of the plot within this discourse.

I saw District 9 on the evening of September 9, 2009. Shot on location in Chiawelo Soweto, South Africa, District 9, apparently another Hollywood sell-abroad in the league of movies like the famed Indian Slumdog Millionaire, grossed $US 37 million on the weekend of its release and has been attracting reviews some of which have critiqued it for its apparent selection and demonization of the Nigerian people. This is where I have a problem. Whether the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Sony and now Neill Blomkamp acted in good faith or whether they were right in their assertions about Nigeria is first, not as important, as telling ourselves the truth about Nigeria and the need for us to do something serious about it. Before we be begin to roar in outrage, before we begin to call for the heads of those who amplify our national notoriety, let’s do a bit of introspection here. Are we truly not what they say we are?

Talking about cyber crimes (Yahoo-Yahoo), we rank third globally. Corruption nko? Until Nuhu Ribadu appeared on the scene in 2004, Nigeria was globally reputed as one of the most corrupt nations of this world. Sadly, in the last one year, Nigeria has begun a steady relapse into the dark days of the past. Or is it prostitution? Let us leave Italy out of this matter. Our electoral process is reality stranger than fiction! Since independence, our leaders have been powerless about the power issue plunging the entire nation, particularly our manufacturing sector into the recklessness of fruitless darkness. Our terrible roads are probably too long an issue to discuss here. Or is it our sharply declining per capita income or lazy theories of seven sleeping agendas? Maybe we should talk about the deprived communities of the Niger-Delta and the resultant carnage unleashed upon us by militant youths who should be in school to make their families and our nation proud. Tell me; where else in the world do people get slaughtered over cartoons they know absolutely nothing about?

It is this same Nigeria of rock star bankers in shiny suits and armoured car convoys dishing out may-God-forgive-them loans in billions of dollars to their friends, families and well-wishers. It is this same Nigeria where people live and die to understand that the police who ought to protect them could indeed, be their worst enemy. Can we just wake up from this lame sentimental slumber and picture a country whose Minister of Education wasted over 150 million naira on his birthday and wedding anniversary party at the Transcorp Hilton in Abuja while millions of Nigerian undergraduates are wasting away at home over government’s inability to provide better welfare for university lecturers? And then, when some overfed over-inspired overseas buffoon begins the lame game of name-calling, we cry blue murder! Are we not worse than what they even call us? Has our own Nollywood not portrayed Nigeria and Nigerians in far more injurious perspectives than this Hollywood flick we have made so popular by our untamed crocodile tears?

More worrisome is how far all these will go to validate the doctrine of rebranding Nigeria. These are perhaps some of Madam Dora’s brightest moments. And for all the self-styled consultants and apostles of branding and rebranding Nigeria, this is one glorious opportunity to step up their game; sell new ideas to the government, and get paid the Abuja way – all at the expense of taxpayers’ money. After all,“Why I dey vex? Is it my money?”

If Nigerians can devote to Nigeria, the same amount of energy and attention they expend on ignoble distractions like District 9, we will have moved a few more miles away from Hades. Our worst enemies are not the Oprahs, the Sonys or Blomkamps of this world. We are our own greatest enemies, and interestingly too, our greatest messiahs.

Regardless of the foregoing, for whatever it is worth, I am averse to the creative recklessness of Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, director and writer of the movie District 9, respectively. If it was contemptuous labelling the gang of neighbourhood terrorists in District 9, Nigerians, it was far more distressing calling their leader ‘Obasanjo’. At its best, this was creativity debased and by all means a desecration of our cultural dignity and identity.

By singling out Nigerians and the immediate past president of the country for such undesirably bizarre and stereotypical castings, District 9 comes crashing down the pedestal of ‘great’ science fictions placing the movie at the very heights of self-conceited racial prejudice. Coming from a South African director, and viewed from the lens of prevailing socio-political and cultural realities in the African continent, one can hardly deracinate its thematic preoccupation from its hideous xenophobic expression. Whatever good, satirical or allegorical outcome the makers of this movie planned to achieve, they rubbished with their audacity of slanted imagination.

By daring to depict the world’s largest conglomerate of black souls in such despicable candour, Neill Blomkamp plunges his audiences globally, into the paradox of distorted worldviews of not just Nigeria, but South Africa and the African continent as a whole. Let somebody remind the young South African director that this same Nigeria produced Africa’s first Nobel Laureate for Literature, the legendary Prof. Wole Soyinka. Philip Emeagwali, regarded as one of the fathers of the Internet, is a Nigerian. The Chinua Achebes, Emeka Anyaokus, Gamaliel Onosodes, Nuhu Ribadus, Chimamanda Adichies, and the Asas of recent memories are not from space like Blomkamp’s aliens in District 9. They are all Nigerians. Ikponmwosan ‘IK’ Osakioduwa, current host of the Big Brother Africa TV show ongoing in South Africa, is a young Nigerian. It is also on record that a Nigerian university, the University of Ibadan emerged winner of the recently concluded Zain African Schools Challenge. But all these are facts, the Oprah Winfreys, Sonys and Neill Blomkamps of this world chose to ignore because the good among us have allowed the bad and the ugly to take prime positions in our fatherland. Perhaps, more instructively, this is a lesson to future filmmakers.

For us as Nigerians, we have a long way to go. We are the embodiment of aspiration, audacity, ability and achievement in the entire African continent but we have this constantly nagging challenge of good governance which has brought the nation to its very knees since independence. Today, the way out may not be etched in a bloody revolution. No, maybe not yet. But before us, especially my generation of young people lies a formidable opportunity to kick out our bad leaders using the ballot box. If we can get it right with the quality of candidates that emerge as our leaders; if we can identify our potential leaders as candidates and begin to mobilise for them; if we can register to vote at the polls; if we can stay with our votes to ensure that they count, then the good men can have a chance to emerge and clean up decades of rot and rubbish in both high and low places. Then we will have no need for rebranding; we will begin to receive befitting welcomes in airports world over; we will have good, great movies named after us. Then, our story will become an inspiration to the world.

Ohimai Godwin Amaize
September, 2009

http://www.mrfixnigeria.blogspot.com/

Ohimai Godwin Amaize is Creative Director at the Youth Media and Communication Initiative (YMCI), Abuja, Nigeria

September 19, 2009 | 1:36 PM Comments  0 comments

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Who Can Rescue This Rogue Republic?
Related to country: Nigeria

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

The Piano Lounge of the Transcorp Hilton hotel, Abuja is perhaps the last place where a soul-stirring discussion about Nigeria and her myriads of challenges are expected to occur. The trappings of affluence, the conjured fantasies, and the recycled vanities on proud display, can almost leave you drowning in the waters of illusion – a false feeling that all is well, when so much is actually unwell.

My first encounter with Mr. Nduka Otiono was during my undergraduate days at the University of Ibadan where he lectured my class as a visiting scholar to the Department of English, and successfully initiated us into the cult of Metaphysical Poetry. Then he was still General Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) and had carved a niche for himself as one of the leading lights of the literary movement in Nigeria. Mr. Otiono’s stay with us at the department was short. He soon left the University, leaving us to battle with the wits and conceits of the metaphysical poets. That was four years ago, and I had lost touch with him until about two months ago when I located him on Facebook one of the world’s fastest growing online social utility networks. So it was a meeting I eagerly looked forward to when I received a message from him on Friday 25 July, 2008 asking me to meet him the next day at the Transcorp Hilton on a brief visit to Nigeria from Canada where he relocated in the face of the depressing demands of the Nigerian system.

I had anticipated a short meeting. But it was not to be. We spent over five hours sharing thoughts on the travails of the Nigerian nation. Our discussion moved from the poverty and hunger in the land to the Niger Delta crisis and then to the failure in leadership. For the first time in a long while, I was listening to an intellectually insightful dissection of the Nigerian conundrum. At a point, it became so emotional tears began to well up my eyes. We looked at the power sector in Nigeria, attempting a sincere analysis only to end up with an emotional paralysis. We had thought; if only Nigeria could just fix the energy problem, a large part of our problems would be solved. With $16 billion we could have generated 16, 000 megawatts of power, sufficient to help drive the Nigerian economy to unimaginable heights of economic rebirth. But today’s sad reality is a seemingly powerless probe on a power sector bedeviled by inefficiency, corruption and a harvest of scandals. What is the problem with us?

In the course of our discussion, we were soon joined by one Mr. John, a friend of Mr. Otiono who works in one of the banks as a customer relations manager and later my good friend Ferdinand Adimefe, a budding author and youth corper serving at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in Abuja. Together, we all continued with this passionate talk about our national misfortunes. A little insight from the banking sector opened another can of worms. It was disturbing to hear how some of these financial houses had become homes to all kinds of immoral transactions. If you were not touched by the financial roguery, you only needed to hear how hundreds of Nigerian female graduates end up becoming sex merchants in some of these banks, many of which appear with attractively bright exteriors but thrive on the dealings of their ‘stinkingly’ rich interiors!

At a point, we were joined by Mr. Toni Kan Onwordi, Head of Corporate Communications, Visafone who exchanged banters with Mr. Otiono and then moved on. I had heard so much about Toni Kan (as he is popularly called), read a few of his write-ups and had come to admire him just like my big brother Tolu Ogunlesi who works in the same outfit. I wondered how the likes of this young man survived the frightful and sleazy conditions of the Nigerian media where you are constantly confronted with the two unpleasant options of starvation or having to embrace the brown envelopes. I saluted his resilience and prayed for some of my friends in the media who are fighting to remain men and women of honour in this untidy rat race of what may be termed for want of better description, a voodoo republic that thrives on the ‘lootocratic’ orgies of a heartless hegemony! I immediately recalled that Mr. Otiono had been in the Nigerian media for over a decade and once sat on the editorial board of the now world-famous Thisday newspapers. I do not intend to write Mr. Otiono’s biography. But I am convinced it was a good thing that happened to him when he experienced a paradigm shift from the Nigerian arena, proceeding overseas in order to retain the sanity of his body and mind.

The statistics are horrifying. I shivered with righteous indignation when UNODC boss Mario Costa mentioned that between 1960 and the present day, Nigerian leaders had stolen over $400 billion! With just $10 billion, the city of Lagos can be transformed to the mega city status it deserves with all basic infrastructures in place. Yet, recent research and development indices have revealed that the city of Lagos is a looming catastrophe. Thus, while cities like Dubai and Hong Kong continue to amaze the world with their advancement prowess, the city of Lagos has been marked as one of the disaster megapolis of the century – waiting to happen! Why should this happen to a nation so richly blessed? Our education sector has not fared any better. When Prof. Niyi Osundare, in his valedictory lecture at the University of Ibadan remarked that the universe has left our Universities, it was a death knell that sounded loud and clear. What is the state of our tertiary education today? What kind of graduates are we producing? Are we producing assets or liabilities to society? What is happening to the infrastructure, the laboratories, the libraries, the lecture rooms and the hostels? Is it not pathetic how much our Ivory Towers have fallen from the heights of social re-engineering to the depths of helplessness, becoming idle towers of subsidized illiteracy?

If that is not enough to jolt you, Nigeria currently has about 10 million school age children out of school; 4.5 million are potential primary schools pupils and the other 5.5 million, young men and women who should be in secondary school. When you combine that with the about 60 million adult illiterates in the country, one can hardly see any light at the end of the tunnel. Maternal mortality rate in the country is put at 1000 to 100, 000 births in our labour rooms. That is equivalent to 10 plane crashes everyday! The Nigerian situation is akin to a grotesque theatre of the absurd whose spectators are a ruthless elite sitting, watching and satiated by this spectacle of blood, tears and sorrow. In the midst of this disillusionment, the mass of the Nigerian people remain resilient. This is still their country, their home and their fatherland. They are deeply troubled and are forced to ask questions. They want to know why poverty reigns in their fatherland. They want to know why those in the positions of responsibility continue to let this great country down. Nigerians are asking questions, but are they receiving and acting on the right answers?

I come to one sad conclusion. The problems of this great country are man-made and if there will be any solutions, it will have to come from Nigerians themselves. But who is ready to bell the Cat? Who can rescue this rogue republic from the hands of these pirates? Here again lies the tragic irony. We have a nation populated by some of the brightest brains on the face of the earth who individually are geniuses in their own rights but have never been able to collectively fix any problem they set out to solve. It is a tragedy that swings the way of pessimism, but history does not prove me wrong. We are confronted by a very strong cabal whose only interest in Nigeria is driven by their devious doctrine of self-preservation at all costs. They are deadly and dangerous. They are few in numbers, yet very powerful. I also understand they have devised an efficient machine programmed to resist the change we desire in this great nation. They can get you sacked from your jobs, and make life unbearable when they think you have become a threat. That is why the efforts we have made so far amounts to little or nothing, because all this talk does little or nothing to them. They hardly even read or hear you talk.

But should we give up? A million times, NO! The change that we seek must prevail. We will not join them because we can beat them. It has not been an easy battle, but we must continue the fight and I see victory over this reign of mediocrity.

July 30, 2008 | 2:15 PM Comments  0 comments

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Building the Nigeria of Our Dreams
Related to country: Nigeria

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Indeed, these are trying times. Apparently, yet paradoxically, these are times when the past presents more hope than the future. For some, it is perceived there is no future at all. The pathway to a new dawn has become a rocky terrain of recurring mirage. The gates have been closed with a hopeless bang, leaving echoes of failure and disappointment. These are times when hopes are continually raised and dashed on the rocks of deceitfulness. And whereas, the unfolding spectacle is a quintessential theatre of the absurd, it is amazing to see how much we continue to nurture an affinity for rot and a fancy for dust. But how did we degenerate so fast? When did we relapse into an awfully dysfunctional state whose landmarks are replete with colonial micro-nationalism, social insecurity, comatose institutions, intellectual peonage, value collapse, a national assembly unable to defrock itself from the garb of crookedness and the spiteful penchant of public officers for public stealing?

One of the biggest challenges confronting the Nigerian state today is the issue of corruption. World over, corruption has become an issue of great concern. While some consider it the bane of constructive efforts towards the building of a virile society, it is for others a necessary tool for accessing and securing personal fortunes. Sadly enough, the Nigerian experience is a careless harbinger of deferred dreams. Efforts geared towards the advance of project Nigeria, have been continuously truncated by the terrifying conditions of a system bedeviled by corruption. In the midst of this deepening crisis and perhaps the quest for a potent way out of the corruption quagmire, the Fix Nigeria Initiative (FNI), the civil society interface of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) invited youths from the six-geopolitical zones of Nigeria to the 1st National Youth Anti Corruption Summit which was held at Bolingo Hotel and Towers, Abuja on Monday 10 September, 2007.

According to the FNI, the aim of the summit was to bring together youths to deliberate on issues of corruption, integrity, accountability and the crisis of the Niger-Delta. I was one of the youths who attended the summit. At the end of the summit, it became clearer that the task of ridding our nation of the scourge of corruption was more Herculean than often imagined. A novel and imaginative way of problematising this in relation to the idea of building the Nigeria of our dreams, is a brief assessment of the role of the Nigerian media and its impact on the youths who are often considered the foundation of the future. Among the several presentations at the summit, I was particularly touched by the submissions of ace broadcaster Mrs. Eugenia Abu who herself a media practitioner, boldly chastised the Nigerian media for what she described as its promotion of consumerism and sex rather than our cherished moral values. According to her, “Today’s consumerism has ensured that there is so much representation of the power of money. The logic of profit prevents the discharge of the media’s responsibility to society.”

Indeed, the media, it is that safeguards the truths and moral values of society. As the Fourth Estate, as well as guard dog and conscience of society, it is a formidable force and potent tool in nation building. In consequence, its responsibility to society must not be compromised in a way that produces misrepresentations to young persons who are for the most part, observers of its social portraits. Hence the need for the media to embrace a paradigm shift and strive to continually portray cultural processes, whether African or Western, from a standpoint that provides sufficient subtext of the informing essence and context. The reality of our socio-cultural experience must not be allowed to disappear under the red light of reality TVs. Our soap operas must be strategic enough to cleanse the dirt which has permeated the fabric of society. Concerted efforts by the media to empower our youths must be prioritized over musical concerts and parties which only encourage materialism and bad role-modeling. Why do we preach patriotism to the fatherland when the media has forgotten that Taiwo Akinkunmi, the man who designed the Nigerian flag is still alive and has become a sickly beggar in the streets of Ibadan? Do we really expect young Nigerians to be patriotic to Nigeria when those celebrated by the media today are those who have imbibed the ideals of Hollywood while parading themselves as Nigerian versions of Shakira, Rihanna, Jay-Z, and 50 Cents? How many Nigerian movies are centered on contemporary Nigerian or African icons like Dora Akunyili, Nuhu Ribadu, and Nelson Mandela?

Permit me this; I am not advocating an anti-showbiz Nigerian media. I still enjoy good music, movies and soaps, whether Nigerian or foreign. But the prevailing truth is that the media must get its priorities right. What Nigeria needs at this time in her historic journey to national greatness, is a responsible media that understands its powers as a vital tool for social construction. So profound is the strength of the media that it can turn good people into bad people and otherwise. Thus, the media must be able to re-evaluate itself.

While media responsibility to society cannot be overemphasized, it is instructive to those who care enough that the task of building the Nigeria of our dreams is a task for all. So much is required to rescue the Nigerian state out of its current state of pollution. There are many who have expressed uncompromising belief in the dawn of a new Nigeria, but very few have actually taken bold steps towards orchestrating the desired national rebirth. Fela Durotoye is one notable Nigerian of my generation I admire so much for his great passion in the task of rebuilding the Nigerian nation. At 35, he is a retired successful entrepreneur who has undertaken the task of seeing Nigeria become the most desirable nation to live in by December 31, 2025. To this end, practical steps are already being taken to actualize the vision preciously tagged: “Gemstone 2025.” We need more hands like him.

For some, the foregoing represents a trite picture of an idea too lofty. Such critics only bring to mind a foretaste of the ill-naturedness of the human mind and its inherent pessimism. Without doubt, we can attain the Nigeria of our dreams. However, the way out of the Nigerian crisis is a distant journey into the innermost recesses of our minds. What we need is not a revolution of guns and machetes. We desire a revolution of the mind – an arrival at the threshold of the charity that truly begins at home. Every Nigerian must attain that distillation of spirit where service to the fatherland is prioritised over personal interests. From the lawmaker to the clergy, and the aristocrat to the so-called hoi polloi, let there be a sense and sameness of direction. We must not allow the diversity of our cultures to blur the clarity of our glorious future. Patriotism must not be viewed as an alien term that begins and ends in our newspapers when our journalists make references to the systems of the West. Nigerians must arrive at the crossroads in their cultural and socio-political odyssey where historic decisions about their future will be taken without risky hesitations or dangerous compromises.

February 18, 2008 | 5:39 AM Comments  0 comments

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Re: Ribadu's Properties
Related to country: Nigeria

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

The attention of Nuhu Ribadu, Executive Chairman, EFCC has been drawn to a mass of allegations which have been given generous space in the media.

The publications of allegations against Ribadu arise from the attempts by two lawyers to compel the Inspector General of Police to initiate investigation into allegations that Mr. Ribadu purchased and owns properties in Abuja and Dubai. They are also praying the court to compel EFCC to render the Commission’s audited accounts and submit same to the National Assembly.

Mr. Ribadu wishes to state categorically that:

1. He DOES NOT own houses in Abuja or Dubai or any other part of the world, other than his personal house built in his village in Yola, in the early 1990s;
2. Apart from that, Mr. Ribadu owns a yet-to-be-developed plot of land in Katampe, an undeveloped district of Abuja, which was acquired in 1998;
3. Apart from his official EFCC salary account, Mr. Ribadu does not operate a bank account anywhere else in the world;
4. Like other Fulani, Mr. Ribadu also owns cows which he rears in his village;
5. Mr. Ribadu hereby grants express permission to anyone who finds that he has assets other than those declared above, to seize them without further reference to him;
6. When his official residence which belonged to the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) was, in line with the policy of the last administration, offered for sale along with other houses in the area, Mr. Ribadu could not muster the funds to purchase the said house. However, sensitive to the possibility of a conflict of interest arising if he approached banks for a loan, given his position as EFCC Chairman, Ribadu nearly lost the house until his father-in-law, Professor Iya Abubakar, intervened. It was the Professor who bid for the house at a public auction and took a facility from his bankers, Fidelity Bank, to purchase the house, which cost N44m. As it is, Mr. Ribadu and his family are presently living in the Mambilla street house thanks to his father-in-law. All records pertaining to this transaction are available at the FCDA for anyone who wishes to check.

7. It must be stated that as a public officer, Mr. Ribadu has dutifully sworn to oaths declaring his assets as and when due. The declarations are public documents and can be accessed at the appropriate agency for purposes of verification, seizure of undeclared assets and prosecution if need be.

Further, Mr. Ribadu is saddened that otherwise learned gentlemen lend themselves as vehicles for the purveyance of obviously false allegations that the Commission has not been making annual renditions to the National Assembly in line with Sections 35 and 36 of the EFCC Establishment Act, 2004. The simplest check that people can carry out is to ask their representatives in both chambers of the National Assembly to find out whether the Commission had ever neglected to comply with those provisions of the Act and if indeed it has been submitting details of its audited accounts and a compendium of its activities, every year, since its inception.

EFCC wishes to state that being sensitive to the peculiarities of its operations and environment, the Commission has even gone beyond the demands of the Act to engage highly professional external auditors (other than government-appointed auditors) to audit and re-audit its books. These reports have been routinely submitted to the National Assembly before the 30th day of September, every year, since 2003.

A cursory study of the allegations not only shows that they are pitiably shallow, but also throws up the unmitigated desperation of certain groups of people who have an axe to grind with the EFCC, to employ all tactics to embarrass its key officials, divert attention from their justified investigation and prosecution and ultimately derail the work of the Commission.

While Mr. Ribadu is saddened by the fact that enemies of the anti-corruption war would stop at nothing in the bid to sully its image, he welcomes the opportunity offered by the lawyers to deal squarely with the wild and resurgent allegations from which have regrettably spawned endless pepper soup joint plots for the Nigerian theatre of the absurd.

The attention of Nigerians is drawn to the fact that these kinds of wild allegations have always attended the work of the Commission. Right from inception in 2003, EFCC has faced all manners of unsubstantiated allegations, from operating torture chambers, to grand corruption. Even as we made to conclude this response, we learnt that gun-running has been added to the long list of dreamt-up allegations against EFCC. The attempts at blackmails would definitely continue as long as EFCC continues to do carry out its functions with determination. But, Nigerians are advised to be wary and to always be guided by what we have said in the past that, “When you fight corruption, it fights you back.”

Dapo Olorunyomi
Chief of Staff to the Executive Chairman.

January 10, 2008 | 9:43 AM Comments  0 comments

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