OIL SECTOR PROBE REPORTNIGERIANS SHOULDN’T KEEP QUIET – RIBADU

Up till now, nothing is being done about it; no implementation, not even
recognizing that these people did the work. So, with this experience, will I
say that if same set of people call me to come and do, whether I will accept or
not, I’m not sure. I’m discouraged; I feel somehow disappointed and possibly
even let down. But my country, Nigeria; the people of Nigeria are my own
people; I’m part of it. I’ll love to help; I’ll love to participate; I’ll want
to always do what I’m asked to do to help our country if it is going to make a
difference.
You had a problem while
submitting the report of the task force, what actually happened?
From the very first day when I accepted to chair the committee, I made it very
clear to everybody including our other members that we’re going to do this work
for Nigeria and for Nigerians, and we must be honest. I said then that I
decided that I was going to do it not because I was expecting anything from
anybody.
I refused to take anything from them; from either the Nigeria National
Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) or government, including even the allowance; I did
not take one penny, one kobo, but I also told other members if they wanted,
they could also do the same thing, because I know given the industry and what
was involved, it would be very difficult for you to do an honest job if you
allow yourself to benefit from that. I considered the job as that of outsiders
being asked to come and look and check and tell them the truth. Therefore, we
must take ourselves out of it. And there were so many good Nigerians in that
committee who did unbelievably well.
But there are also others while doing the work, decided to take appointment in
the same industry, the same NNPC, but I thought that was wrong and inappropriate;
we kept quiet. We understood that we could still do our own work, and it would
not stop or interfere with the outcome. We continued with the work up to the
point when we concluded, and at the point of submission to the president, of
course you saw what happened.
Part of the observations you
made was that Nigeria does not even know how much crude it generates and how
much it sells; is that right?
It’s right. If you go into the report, you’ll see what we have said and our
recommendations. We said it openly and clearly that nobody will tell you with
all the confidence that we know what we’re producing. That is a fact, because
no one knows what is coming out from the ground, and if it comes out from the
ground, it goes through a process; it goes through the flow station before it
comes to the export terminal and the pumping stations, and different companies
are doing that at different locations and places.
These wells do not have meters that will be able to measure for government to
be able to know what is being taken out. The moment it is taken out, it goes
through a process where it is going to be separated, where gas will be taken
out; crude oil will be taken out and then water before it comes to a point
where it will be stored in preparation for export.
We said let’s have meters; real time reporting. The technology is available
now. All over the world, they have it; why don’t we have it here? We made that
recommendation; we said that even if it means the companies that are involved
in the production must be made to bear the cost of installing these meters;
government must have real time reporting of what is going on. It’s not very
difficult. Technology will be so much available now that you can get it so
easy. You fix in all these wells, even if we have 10,000 wells, and we have a
lot of them.
It is very possible for you to build a system through which you will even
report immediately. That report could go to, for example, Revenue Mobilization,
Allocation and Fiscal Commission, because the constitution says they must know
what is our earnings from the resources, from selling things; constitutionally
they ought to know. There is nothing wrong for the National Assembly to have
information daily of what we’re producing; there is nothing wrong for the office
of the president of Nigeria to know that; there is nothing wrong for the
Federal Ministry of Finance to also have that daily report. This is what is
happening if you go to Norway, Saudi Arabia, countries that produce ten times
what you’re producing. Saudi Arabia produces over 10 million barrels of crude
oil a day; we produce just 2 million, but they have insight. We say let’s have
it.
We invited companies that are providing this; some of them are in Nigeria. We
had a very long engagement with them in terms of explaining the technologies
that are available. So many companies are here that can do it. We said let’s do
it quickly. It’s not going to be too difficult and expensive.
We also said let’s know who’s buying it; NEITI and Customs should know. So, all
these things can only be done properly and effectively if you have a very
effective metering system. Technology will be able to solve this problem for
us; so you’ll know what you’re producing.
We also spoke about the NNPC itself. It will be improper for one organization
to be everything; produce, appoint people who produce; regulate;  import;
export;   collect the money, they do A-Z. How will you expect proper
accountability in such an organization? I think that is not proper. The NNPC must
be restructured in a way that there will be transparency and accountability. 
We also spoke about the need for us to do what other oil producing countries
are doing: we said don’t appoint contractors to sell our crude oil; we’re the
only big country in the world that is doing that. We now produce this crude
oil. Ok, we have our own percentage out of it. Out of this percentage, we now
appoint contractors where they will now take this crude oil from us to go and
sell it to others. Meanwhile, the crude market is very open and direct, and
everybody knows; only refineries can buy crude oil; only companies can buy
crude oil. All other countries deal directly with the refineries that are
buying this crude oil or the countries; why do you need an agent? What is the
reason for you to appoint an agent to go and sell it on your behalf? There is a
big problem here.
Today, we have appointed 42 of them just a bundle of corruption that is
ongoing. You don’t need it; it’s a shame. We said no to what the LNLG is doing.
They’re operating as if they’re not in Nigeria, being that they’re outside our
system and they’re not accountable to anybody. We said let it not be so; come
back on track. We said that there are so many countries that are not paying
tax; they’re not paying royalties. We came out with the figures. One company is
owing $1.5bn, and they refused to pay.
It’s all in the report. We brought almost all the areas where money is taken
and then where corruption is taking place. And we said stop or do something
about giving 450,000 barrels of crude oil daily for internal consumption. There
is a big problem there. The NNPC is given the monopoly to do what they like
with it, they will the refine what they like, and out of it, they will give
other companies to do swap. There is a very unclear thing happening in that
place. 450,000 barrels of crude oil is too much; it’s almost like  
one quarter of what is being produced daily. Our best crude goes to that. We
said stop it or adopt a better process of doing it.
The way it is done today, Nigeria is losing; we’re not getting value from that.
These are the things that we brought out and asked government to do something
about quickly. And if you do those things, I’m telling you it will change this
industry immediately, and it will not need any new law for you to implement.
You don’t even have to bother yourself about any PIB law. Implement these
first: openness, transparency and accountability; bring security to the sector;
stop the stealing and the wastage that are taking place there and you’ll see how
instantly it can change this industry. You don’t need to go and lobby any
National Assembly for you to do that.
There are some areas, of course, you may need to change the laws, but it is not
difficult; it is not controversial. Even the National Assembly will not have
any issue with these areas. The National Assembly will be so prepared and happy
to pass any law that will improve transparency and accountability in the
industry. I have no doubt about it.
But will that be the end of the
road for the report? Is there no way government can be compelled to implement
it?
Well, to be honest I don’t know. It is their own government; it is the
president’s government. They’re the ones who appointed this committee, and they
said they wanted to improve the industry and the revenue of our country through
the task force. They have taken it themselves and they’re sitting on it. I
don’t know what anybody can do. The only thing is that Nigerians will continue
to talk about it and ask and not to allow it to just die down or be forgotten. 
You know here in our country, someone told me at that time, that look, it’s a
matter of two weeks, that Nigerians will move to another issue and everybody
will forget about it; that’s why I feel pained. I felt really sad that it is
the truth.
However, I will first appeal to Mr. President and respectfully ask him to
please implement this report; it is good for him; it is good for government; it
is good for the country; it’s good for Nigeria. I will also speak to Nigerians
directly and tell each and every one of us, please let’s not be quiet; it’s our
own country. Let’s continue to talk, and maybe through that, change will come
and hopefully including of course implementation of such report.
Many of the convictions you
secured as EFCC boss have been upturned, how do you feel?
It’s very painful, but it’s not even about my own personal disappointment, it’s
actually about Nigeria, and those things were done with the best interest of
the country. Honestly, it was a very difficult work. We suffered and even made
enemies, some paid dearly for them. Take for example the James Ibori matter, by
the time we took on James and brought him to justice, he was   in
Kaduna prison. When I was asked to leave the EFCC to go to the NIPSS, and while
I was in NIPSS, they released him, of course, they killed the case literally
and turned it upside down.
For us to take   Ibori to court, we went through difficult process,
and for you as an individual, as a Nigerian, right there and then, in front of
everybody, you’ll be kicked out of the office and then such a person will be
set free. You know it is a very painful thing. I looked at it as I’ve done my
own bit; I’ve done my own part, and I moved on.
Luckily for us, justice will always prevail, and whatever evil tried it will
never defeat justice. There’s no way the bad thing will win ultimately. We had
a strong case; we had good evidence in the case of   Ibori. We even
took the money that he gave us bribe as evidence before the court, but the
powers-that-be destroyed the case and set him free. But where is he today?
Anyway, those are things that I wouldn’t want to talk about; it’ll look as if
it’s very personal.
So many things were reversed and lives were toyed with in the name of rule of
law and doing things properly and correctly and casting aspersions wrongly and
falsely, claiming that things were not done properly and correctly. Meanwhile,
not a single case anybody ever brought against either me or the EFCC at that
time to any court in Nigeria that we did anything wrong, not even one, but they
successfully destroyed the work that we did and almost reversed most of the
things. 
Alameyesigha’s case  was also a very difficult case to go through such a
powerful, strong individual. He was a governor; we did a very difficult work to
bring him to justice. We got a conviction two years, and we recovered billions
from him. Right now, there are property all over the world that are yet
to   even be claimed; there are outstanding cases all over, but have
not yet been concluded.
You talked about challenges in
prosecuting the cases, what were these challenges?
They were many. Part of it was we were so misunderstood. People were wrongly
accusing you of things that were sad and unbelievable. Those whom you attempted
to bring to justice waged a huge campaign against you and falsely. As a human
being, it’s very painful. Whenever I hear that somebody is telling me that we
did selective thing, it’s very painful; where is the selective? Bring me one
individual that we selected and this is the reason why we selected him, and I
will respond to that man.
Up till now nobody has ever confronted me with such a thing. And I’m still
challenging Nigerians to come forward and say that during the days when we were
in the office, we did this thing because of politics. The same people that we
were fighting successfully turned the table against us and took over the
organization and made money from it, and they’re still there, nothing is
happening to them. A lot of them are still out there.
During that time, we suffered; we lost boys. There were so many people who were
murdered in the work we did. Yes, families were bereaved. Personally, I
survived assassinations, which is okay, I mean that’s fine. Of course, it led
me to even leave my country for about two years. 
In a country like Nigeria, it’s not easy to build an agency that delivers. If
you look at the EFCC, you know that people really suffered to make it what it
is; and to succeed in bringing powerful people to justice is the most difficult
thing. At the time when I was there, almost all the people that we brought to
justice, quote me, almost all, were even members of the ruling political party,
the PDP, just check and see. 
But people believe the EFCC
under you stopped many aspirants in the 2007 PDP primaries…
That’s not true, because we were just doing our things properly and correctly,
people will just ascribe everything to us. Were we sitting down in the board of
the PDP? What was our own business with that? Was the EFCC chairman or
president of Nigeria? How could you do that? How do you even give us that
power? It’s an imaginary thing; it’s not true, absolutely not true. We could
not have done what people are saying we did.
But what we did at that time, and it was the right thing; I’ll still defend it,
was that at the time when we were going to go into the elections, already I had
with me records of convictions of people who were serving in public offices.
But because the public was not aware of it, they were voted not even once, and
against our law, against the constitution of Nigeria.
What happened to the monies
recovered?
When I was there, I did not even take cases and keep. If it‘s recovery, it goes
directly to where it’s supposed to go. Generally if it belongs to state
governments, it goes back to the state, or if it is in a court; it is an
exhibit pending the time the court will give judgment: the moment court gives
judgment, then it is a subject of judgment of court; then it is what the court
says that is going to happen. The court may give directive that the property be
sold and pay the money back to this, or hand over the property to… it’s a
court order normally.
If it is direct recovery, because we did the case of Abacha as well, it goes to
the federation account directly; it did not stop anywhere. It doesn’t go into
any account.
Peter Odili in his recent book
said you were so desperate trying to nail him and…
I’ll be so desperate in trying to do what is right for Nigeria any day, yes,
but never to stop him. I have nothing to do with the PDP convention. They chose
their voters there. I was not the presidential candidate for me to deny him
vice presidential ticket, and how could I have done so? But like I said, if we
had investigated you, we have no apology to make public our findings in respect
of all the cases. And it is the same case that he went to court to stop; he got
a Federal High Court   to stop the EFCC from taking him to court. I
think these are the questions that people must ask, not we that tried to do
what is right for our own country. And Odili is even a PDP man. On one hand,
you said we were doing Obasanjo’s bidding; on another one, you accuse me of
stopping Obasanjo from doing his own bidding. This is what is going on.
There are two issues: plea
bargain and going to court to get injunctions to stop prosecution or arrest.
What challenges do you think they pose to the war against corruption?
At the time when I was there, I didn’t take anything called plea bargain. No.
Not at all, but you have to understand where the powers of the law enforcement
stop. We do investigation; we now take it to court, and then we present our
case to the court. When you go to court, the first thing is that they’ll ask
the accused are ‘you guilty or not?’ The moment he says he is guilty, that’s
the end of the case. The rest is for the court to sentence him. It’s not the
EFCC that sentences.
At the time when we were taking such cases, it was a generally accepted
practice in the world that sometimes when you take an accused to court, for him
to avoid waste of public funds in prosecuting him; for him to say ‘I’m going to
cooperate with you’; for him to say that ‘I’m remorseful,’ all these things now
attract sympathetic sentencing from the judge. That is what people are
mistaking for plea bargain. 
At the time when we were there, when an accused person goes before a judge and
says ‘my lord, I’m prepared to accept my guilt, but please understand that I’m
remorseful; I’ll not do it again, and I’m not going to waste the time of the
court.’ Normally the court will say ok, and it will reflect on the sentence
that will be meted on such a person. At the time when we were doing our thing
in the EFCC, there was one or two cases like that. And there’s no way for you
to stop him from doing that if he likes; you have no power to say that you
cannot go and plead guilty. There’s no way you can stop it.
But sometimes it can be abused, if it will now turn into a conspiracy between a
prosecutor and the defence. In that one, I never agreed; I never participated
in. We never sat by the side to agree on this type of arrangement. Never! If
you come and say that ‘I’m ready to plead guilty,’ it is the court that will
decide. If the court asks our own opinion on that, we make it known to the
court, and normally it is public. That is what has been going on. But as usual
anything in Nigeria, people take it into something different and turn it into
another form of fraud.
The issue of court injunctions,
restraining law enforcement agents from arresting people…
It’s a tragedy. It’s injustice. It’s not right, and I don’t think it’s right
for the court to allow it to continue. Take for example, the reason why we were
able to prosecute so many cases was because simply we – we can claim credit for
it – insisted and we got the National Assembly to make an amendment to the EFCC
law that says when you’re going to go into trials involving our own cases,
there will be no interlocutory injunctions; there will be now straw for
prosecution until when we have completed the case, like what is happening all
over the world.
If you go to UK now, the moment they start prosecution, nobody can stop it
until when it is over. That will ensure there will be justice that will be
expeditious. The courts will not have any waste of time including the appeal
court. We got that in our law, but the case of Ibori was what overturned it.
The Court of Appeal gave a ruling saying it was unconstitutional, and I don’t
think it’s true. The Supreme Court may have to look at it again critically,
because it has not in any way interfered in the right of appeal of the accused
person.
What it says is that for the purpose of getting things done properly and
correctly, put it all together and then you can appeal. 
There is this notion that
Nigeria is full of corrupt people. But during the presidential debate, you said
something that Nigerians are not corrupt; how do you reconcile that?
It’s true I said so, and I will say it again. I will not want to call all
Nigerians corrupt. It’s wrong, partly because I’m a professional law
enforcement agent. I know when it comes to crime, particularly organized
crimes, it does happen. At a point we had problem of 419, so many people were
involved in it, but it would be wrong for you to call everybody 419. Anyone who
says it is being very unfair to us. At times, not many Nigerians were involved
in drug trafficking. It will be wrong for anybody to come and say all Nigerians
are drug pushers.
We still do have problem of kidnapping. It will be wrong for you to call
Nigerians kidnappers. Today, we do have extremists; we have boys who are
committing acts of terrorism. It will be wrong for you to call all Nigerians
terrorists or suicide bombers. It’s exactly in that sense that I say that it’s
wrong for you to call all Nigerians corrupt people.
Corruption happens when the environment allows it. Corruption takes place when
the system collapses. Corruption happens when leadership is not doing very
well, and you’re unable to come out with systems and structures to be able to
make sure that you stop it or not allow it. Or where there is impunity or
lawlessness, corruption will take over.