Osinbajo Did NOT Send EFCC After Adoke – TheNigerialawyer

Ibrahim Magu, the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission (EFCC), has denied that Vice-President Yemi
Osinbajo used him to victimise Mohammed Bello Adoke, former
attorney-general of the federation.

In his memoirs, “Burden of Service: The Reminiscences of
Nigeria’s Former Attorney-General”, published by Clink Street
Publishers in London and New York and now on sale in Nigeria, Adoke
alleged that Osinbajo, Senator Ali Ndume and Mohammed Abacha used
the EFCC chairman to hoodwink him and implicate him in the OPL 245
bribery scandal.

Adoke said he had helped Magu back to reckoning in the EFCC
after he was allegedly signed after the removal of Nuhu Ribadu and
that if he was a indeed corrupt person as being portrayed by the
commission, he would have asked Magu for favours.

In a strong-worded response issued on his behalf by Wilson
Uwujaren, the EFCC head of media and publicity, Magu said he is
alarmed at the “brazen attempt” by Adoke to “rewrite history and
portray himself as victim of persecution”.

The statement read: “Specifically, he claimed in Chapter 8 of
the book, that Magu was recruited by Prof. Osinbajo to hound and
persecute him despite, as he claimed, his role in reinstating Magu
to the EFCC from the police ‘where he had been vegetating.’ Adoke
attributes his source of information on the alleged Osinbajo
instruction to Magu against him to an unnamed governor from the
North West, who according to him, claimed Magu told him that he had
the instruction of Osinbajo to ‘deal with Adoke.’

“Adoke equally claims that an unnamed senator also confided in
him that Magu nursed a personal grouse against him because he
believed that he (Adoke) owned half of the Centinary City in Abuja.
That Adoke neither named the North West governor nor the Senator
that provided the weighty intelligence on which he took Magu to the
guillotine in his book, could only mean one thing: the claims are
tissues of lies, contrived to entertain and attract underserved
attention to himself. The acting Chairman of EFCC Ibrahim Magu
categorically states that at no time did the Vice President
discuss, counsel, or direct him in any way on any issue concerning
Mr. Adoke. It is wicked and evil to make such a false allegation
against anybody especially where it is based on hearsay.

“[It] is obvious that what Adoke is offering the reading public
in the account of his sojourn in governance is nothing but a
bouquet of half truths and plain lies.The accounts in Chapters 8
and 9 as it relates to the EFCC and its Chairman, Ibrahim Magu are
not only inaccurate but self serving. For the records and emphasis,
Magu never received any instructions from the Vice President,
neither had he communicated verbally or in writing to any governor
from the North-West or senator about such a patently false
purported instruction from Osinbajo to ‘deal with Adoke.’

“The EFCC is not the battle axe of political figures and could
not have been called out to deal with anyone. Adoke’s ploy is
simple. He wants to create a false narrative that the offenses for
which he has been charged are not genuine but are the product of
some high level conspiracy against him. But, first of all, there is
no discernible reason for such a conspiracy. Secondly, it is an
entirely false premise. It is clear that this is symptomatic of a
drowning man clutching at straws.

“Adoke ran well outside the track when he said he was
instrumental to reinstating Magu, to the EFCC from the police
‘where he had been vegetating.’ The Commission is unaware of
Adoke’s role in Magu’s return to the Commission in 2012 after being
away for a few years. It is well known that the EFCC Acting
Chairman is a pioneer staff of the Commission, with many stripes to
his sleeves by way of accomplishments that have no link to
Adoke.

“Magu and the EFCC have no interest in any public spat with
Adoke who remains a suspect under investigation for criminal
offences and against whom a competent court had issued a subsisting
warrant for his arrest. The said warrant has already been executed
by the International Police Organisation which placed him on its
wanted list.”

The anti-graft agency said Adoke should now make himself
available for prosecution.