Erstwhile Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu in an interview with Liberty FM, Kaduna on Saturday 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 urged the President to grant amnesty to the violent Islamist sect for peace to return to the country, he also advised President Jonathan not claim that the sect members were ghosts, stressing that with the way things were happening in the country, if nothing was done, “Nigerians will lose Nigeria to a civil war.”
During the chit-chat he also warned Nigerians against voting for a leader they can not trust, and he implored 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.”
Ribadu,also a former presidential aspirant in the 2011 at the same platform faulted the presidential pardon granted former Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and others showed that Jonathan was insensitive to the plight of the Nigerian masses.
“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,” he added.
Echoing further, “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.”
Edited by: Abass Ogundipe