Ribadu faults Jonathan, wants amnesty for Boko Haram

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.”