President Bola Tinubu yesterday appointed the former boss of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Nuhu Ribadu as National Security Adviser.
Both men make strange bedfellows. In 2006, as then governor Bola Tinubu was approaching the end of his second term as Lagos State governor, Ribadu, as EFCC boss, was trying to prosecute Tinubu and said before the Senate: “Governor Tinubu’s criminal case is of international dimension”. In February 2007 Ribadu’s EFCC published a list of indicted public officials that included Tinubu.
Ribadu would later forget all these and join Tinubu at the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) that would later merge with others to form the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Ribadu’s chameleonic moves have finally earned him the position of NSA for someone he called an “international criminal”. One Nigerian asked on social media whether the former police officer was a good pick for the security role. Nigerian police officers have a reputation for collaborating with armed robbers. We also have a situation in which the looting of public funds has severely degraded the capacity of the security agencies to fight crime and insecurity. The outlook is not one of improved security but one of continued looting, as the joke goes “Alooter Continua”.
So the only security Ribadu is going to ensure in his new role will be his financial security as he aids and abets the crimes of someone that has moved from turning Lagos State into his personal fiefdom to getting his snout in the national trough.
