By Steve Osuji
My dear brother Dele Oyewale, someone called my attention to your Sunday Vanguard rejoinder to my article.
Let me first express my disappointment at your ignoble remarks concerning two great men of the pen mentioned in my writeup.
You are supposedly a journalist and I dare say that any journalist practising today who doesn’t know Messrs Sonala Olumhense and Ikechi Emenike would need a recertification if indeed such a one was certified as a journalist ab initio.
In a better ordered clime, Olumhense should be running the EFCC. SO, as we like to call him, epitomises contemporary journalism profession in Nigeria. With the acute interest he has shown in reporting EFCC’S affairs, a smart chairman of the commission who seeks results would work closely with him.
But instead, you dare to deride SO, describing him as having an “archive of acerbic commentaries…,” as one “dishing out falsehood about the Commission…” and as one who seems to be “irredeemably lost to reason.”
Mr Spokesman, let’s just say that you committed sacrilege. And let’s forgive you and put it down to what Yoruba are wont to dismiss as ayi mo nkan kan (a lack of knowledge and wisdom!).
As for Chief Ikechi Emenike, the litigant, who the EFCC is dragging and abusing, if indeed you ever were a journalist, you would have advised the Commission better. Emenike is to the journalism profession, what a retired four-star General is to the army.
When Chief Emenike was Editor of the NEWBREED, Nigeria’s first wave-making weekly magazine in 1988, I wonder where Mr. EFCC Spokesman was. But suffice it to say that you would never have made the cut as his cub reporter!
I want to wager that you’re not in charge of your beat in the Commission otherwise you would never have any reason to disrespect veterans of your profession.
In fact, you would have advised your Chairman to invite Chief Emenike over for a nice, little chat or at the least, encourage him to obey the orders of the courts.
Since you chose to lapse into insults instead of addressing the issues I raised, I will try to number the issues as in a nursery book format so you will understand and address them one by one.
Here we go:
1. Chief Emenike was a longtime tenant in House No.6 Aso Drive, Abuja.
2. This was long before the EFCC found out that the said property was among a list of numerous others believed to be proceeds of fraud.
3. EFCC then directed the tenant to cease payment of rent to the landlord and pay to EFCC’s rent collector. Chief Emenike duly paid rent to the EFCC for about six years.
4. EFCC then advertised the forfeited property, among numerous others, for sale.
5. Chief Emenike applied for right of first refusal in the sale as stipulated by the EFCC Act guiding sale of forfeited assets.
6. EFCC agreed in principle pending the final valuation of the property.
7. After some years, in a rather dubious twist, EFCC passed word to Chief Emenike that house No. 6 was no longer for sale as the commission wished to convert it to the Chairman’s use.
8. This led Chief Emenike to approach the court to press his rights.
9. The High Court of the FCT presided over by Hon. Justice Hussain Musa ruled that the Assets Forfeiture Act precludes the EFCC from keeping or reserving any forfeited property for itself or its chairman. The judgement is still subsisting and yet to be appealed by the EFCC.
10. The same judge granted Chief Emenike the RIGHT OF FIRST REFUSAL.
11. While this judgement was subsisting, EFCC fraudulently went through the backdoor to secure an ex parte order ejecting Chief Emenike from the property.
12. When the same court realised it made an error; through outright deceit and concealment of facts by the EFCC. The court stated thus: “A mandatory order of injunction is hereby made restoring the applicant/tenant to No. 6 Aso Drive, Abuja from where he was ejected…”
13. But the EFCC’s armed operatives resisted the Court Bailiffs who went to execute the court orders to reopen No. 6 Aso Drive. EFCC threatened to shoot the court bailiffs.
14. In defiance of multiple court orders, EFCC under the watch of its venerable Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, has continued to occupy No. 6 Aso Drive, Abuja.
I had titled my article, “EFCC’s Alarming Impunity.” Please tell the world how the facts above, all extracted from court documents, do not represent blatant impunity, lawlessness and abuse of power.
You claimed I made “worrisome” and “unjustifiable” allegations against the EFCC chairman; and that I am running a campaign of calumny against the EFCC. Please I challenge you to explain to the world what you mean from the foregoing facts.
Finally, none of the previous EFCC chairmen can hold his or her head high today. They all got tainted.
We sincerely hope the current chairman, the pastor gentleman would acquit himself better and for once, show exemplary conduct in the running of the EFCC.
It must be noted that the current matter with Chief Emenike speaks ill of him already. If he would deign to damage the judiciary so much in a small matter such as this, what becomes of the big cases?
Olukoyede still has ample time to redeem himself. Making his annual accounts public and being ultra-transparent with recovered assets will help a lot.
This column wishes him success.
Osuji was Editor at The Guardian, Thisday and NewAge.
