Former Delta State governor, James Ibori, got an unsolicited advice on Monday from community elders, who asked him to confront reality and stop claiming that his money laundering cases in the UK and Nigeria are politically motivated.
Speaking through the leader of the elders and stakeholders’ forum in Delta State, Edwin Clark, also a former information minister, the community elders dismissed Mr. Ibori’s claim that his trials were orchestrated by former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, because of his stance for a more just fiscal federal principle that favours the Niger Delta states.
“Ibori has no reason to accuse anybody for his travails. If he did not commit a crime, will Obasanjo manufacture offences against him?” Mr. Clark demanded, saying, Mr. Ibori’s comments at a Lagos press conference on Friday that Mr. Obasanjo sought to punish him for his opposition to the former president’s bid to get a third term in office and his struggle for a 13 per cent derivation on oil proceeds, was untrue. “There is nothing to show that Ibori was against Obasanjo for the third term. After the third term, he and Obasanjo were hobnobbing; they were meeting together from time to time,” the community elder said angrily.
Mr. Ibori lied when he said he was the one who championed the move for 13 per cent derivation, according to Mr. Clark, who explained that the demand for a 13 per cent derivation was a collective effort by the elders and all the state governors at the time. He said rather than being at the forefront for resource control, Mr. Ibori “merely stole the money to enrich himself”.
Mr. Clark insisted that the former governor was only cooking up excuses; and wondered how Mr. Ibori could possibly blame others for the problems he brought upon himself. “All the houses he bought in London, was it Obasanjo who told him to buy the Total oil company in Benin; and the purchase of five million Naira worth of diesel every month from Total which came to about 300 million naira; and the shares he bought from Afribank, the five billion naira spent in Afribank, was it Obasanjo who was responsible for that?” he asked rhetorically.
In the same breath, the elder statesman accused the former president of fraternising with Mr. Ibori and of imposing the current governor of Delta State, Emmanuel Iduaghan, on the people of the state.
“There was romance between the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, and Ibori. Ibori was frequenting Aso Rock almost every day and it was Obasanjo who imposed Ibori’s first cousin, Emmanuel Iduaghan, as governor of Delta State. We said that Iduaghan was going to be made to cover up the misdeed of Ibori; Obasanjo said no. So I was surprised to hear that Obasanjo was the one who caused his present travail,” he said.
Also Mr. Clark asked the former governor to justify some of his acts of abuse of office like the “signing of a supplementary budget of N120 billion into law on the 14th of June 2004, and that from 2001 to 2004 all the supplementary budgets didn’t go to the House of Assembly but he signed them into law”. He also called on Mr. Ibori to account for state’s fund to the tune of 37 million dollars and the state’s shares in Oceanic Bank, which he claimed has dropped in value from N30 to N3, thereby amounting to a loss of about $15 billion. He also alleged that Ibori tried to acquire Wilbros with the state’s shares as collateral, and that he bought NAFCON with money from the state’s coffers. Mr. Clark added that Mr. Ibori bought a custom-made aeroplane in Canada also with money gotten from the state’s treasury.
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