Soyinka Founds New P' Party, Politicians Laundered $10B - Ribadu

PHOTO: R-L: LAGOS STATE GOVERNOR, MR BABATUNDE FASHOLA, NOBEL LAUREATE, PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA AND MR NUHU RIBADU ARRIVING FOR THE LECTURE AT THE MUSON CENTRE ORGANIZED FOR SOYINKA BY THE SEADOGS ON HIS 76TH BIRTHDAY, TODAY JULY 20, 2010.

LAGOS, July 20, (THEWILL) - The Nobel Laureate, Professor Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka today announced the birth of a political party named Democratic Front for People’s Federation (DFPF) which he co-founded with few others.

The Nobel Laureate called on progressives and positive thinkers to join the party, which he said, would provide a viable political platform for its members. Soyinka disclosed this at the thirteenth lecture which National Association of Seadogs organized to mark the Nobel laureate’s 76th birthday held at the Shell Hall, Muson Centre, Lagos, where pioneer Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu was quest Speaker.

Soyinka added that the party was set up despite "opposition from different quarters. The party has been denied registration for long. But at last, we registered the party. It was set up by a group of people working together with me in the last years. The party will have its convention on September 25."

Speaking at the lecture, the former anti-graft czar described how public officials illegally transferred about $10 billion from the country to different foreign bank accounts around the world in 2005 to the detriment of the poor masses.

Ribadu added that huge sums always flowed from the country two or three days after revenue from the federation account was shared, a trend, which he said, the commission noticed and tracked in order to end the continued outflow of resources to the foreign countries.

The lecture was graced by Lagos State Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, Ambassador Olusegun Olusola, Dr. Kayode Fayemi and major actors from the civil society, human right community and the media.

Ribadu explained that immediately the flow of public funds to foreign countries were noticed, the commission reached out to the international community apparently to stop the illegal transfer of public funds by different cadres of political office-holders.

"By 2006, those laundering the public funds became uncomfortable because they were no longer entertained. They started transferring the funds back home. That is the money they used to recapitalize capital market. It was the money that fuelled the capital market and growth in the banking sector.

"Initially, we traced $10 billion transferred illegally from Nigeria. When they were repatriating the money, more than $15 billion was brought back to the country. We did it then, even though they were not happy about our service to the country. We need to do it again for national development.

"There is nothing personal. We are all citizens of Nigeria. We can make mistakes due to the fault of the system. But the good thing is that we can also make amends of what we have done wrong. Let us come together and fix our country including those who made mistakes," Ribadu explained.

Quoting a former High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Dr. Christopher Kolade, Ribadu described the fifty years of Nigeria’s independence as celebration of decline considering the manner the country’s petro-dollars "have been converted to sources of easy personal wealth, through graft or undeserved compensation for political office holders."

The former EFCC boss acknowledged that the people of the Niger Delta "have been abused so badly in the last decades through a failure so shocking in its magnitude that it seems to rank among the world’s highest index of abuse in the literature of social and economic rights. Nowhere is the shame of our nation more visible than in the Niger Delta. Corruption has made it difficult for the country to give adequate protection to its only source of revenue: petroleum and gas."

Ribadu acknowledged that corruption and bad leadership "have been the bridge in the differentiation of performance between our law enforcement men and women who travel abroad on many international missions and return with praises and laurels, with their under-equipped and underperforming peers at home.

"Nigeria has more hours of darkness than any other country on earth because of our failure in 50 years to achieve energy security for our factories and our homes. Only last year, our Federal Minister of Education said publicly that over 80 percent of our graduates are unemployable in a merit-based market.

"And many of our leaders are acting as if things are okay with the country over 80 percent of secondary school students are unable to pass their secondary school exit examinations. In both the last WAEC and NECO examinations, less than 15 percent of candidates obtained grades that can make them eligible for admission to tertiary institutions," the former anti-graft czar explained.

He thus called on the young generations to rise up to the rescue of Nigeria if the country "must take its place in the international community in the decades ahead. The time to do something is now. No other time will be right. The time to get it right has come. We do something to save our country" adding that the younger generations "have solutions to numerous challenges confronting Nigeria in all facets of life."

He mentioned energy security, human capital development, public-private partnership, maternal health, infrastructural development and security of lives and properties among others as areas that needs be taken seriously to ensure Nigeria’s socio-economic transformation.