IBORI: A SLAP ON OUR JUDICIARY!

    James Ibori is now a household name synonymous with corruption, runaway ‘common thief’ and all that has to do with justice. Arrested in Dubai by INTERPOL for offence committed in UK while on the run from Nigeria where our toothless bulldog, EFCC, couldn’t make a solid case against such a common thief.

   Ibori has always been deceiving Deltans as well as Nigerians from 1999 when he contested the gubernatorial election under falsified date of birth to conceal his true identity as a convicted person in UK. The question I keep asking myself is that how many political office holders are really telling us about their true identity?  Salisu Buhari, the speaker of the house in 1999 almost got away with a falsified Toronto certificate if not for the tired less effort of our journalists!

    So, when the UK court sentenced him to thirteen years imprisonment for fraud and money laundering of fences, we all hive a sign of relieve that at least one scapegoat\t has been made.

  It started five years ago, December 2007 to be precised when Ibori was arrested by Economic and Financial Crime Commission and was arraigned before a Federal High Court in Kaduna state in 2007 on 170 count charge of of corruption and use of public fund for private businesses. He won the battle for transfer of his case to newly set up Federal High Court in Asaba in 2009 and in the same year he was discharged and acquitted of all charges brought against him.

   His case file was re-opened three month later when President Goodluck Jonathan became substantive president. He was accused of embezzling over forty billion naira Delta state share in Oceanic bank; forty four billion shares in Intercontinental bank. This made EFCC to immediately declare him wanted. He refused to surrender while police launched a man hunt on him.

    He escaped to Dubai on 13^th may, 2010 and was arrested by agents of INTERPOL in an international arrest warrant issued by UK government in respect of money laundering.  He was later handed over to the UK authority in Dubai who sent him to London on 14^th April, 2011. He was finally arraigned on June 2011.

  There is every reason to believe that many political office holders like Ibori are still out there under the protection of our dear law enforcement agents who have  links and connections with some political bigwigs. It is a case of selective justice; a justice that place some people above the law and some below it. It is a case of poor man being beaten and tortured because he stole ‘garri’ when  ‘common thieves’ in the names of governors, senators, ,honourables  and others who wield political powers  are  just parted at the back and are asked ‘to go and sin no more’.