Pressure from abroad may stall suspended governor's return
From Martins Oloja, Abuja Bureau Chief
PROMINENT Nigerians may not achieve their quest to have suspended Plateau State Governor, Chief James Chibi Dariye, return to the office from which he was forced out under an emergency rule six months ago. The Federal Government imposed the emergency regime on the state on May 18, 2004 to check sectarian crisis in Plateau.
In recent times, there have spirited campaigns by eminent Nigerians to restore democratic structures to the state and to bring back Dariye to his office.
But feelers from the Presidency yesterday pointed to the fact that the Federal Government is a "catch 22 situation" in the bid to return the embattled governor to office.
A top government official, who briefed media executives yesterday in Abuja on the emergency situation in Plateau, said that the return of Dariye was not more crucial to the Presidency than the core issue of how to save him from prosecution by the London Metropolitan Police over alleged money laundering and corruption.
The most critical element in the report of collaborative investigations by the British Metropolitan Police and their Nigerian counterparts, according to the top official, was that it was how to safe the suspended governor and make the international community believe that the Federal Government was serious about its anti-corruption war.
The government is reportedly miffed by the reports, which have punctured Dariye's consistent denial that he was at no time arrested by the police in London.
Documents from the London Metropolitan Police shown to
the press yesterday with some cheques in Dariye's verified signature, indicated that the governor whose fate, will be decided soon has �900, 000 in about five accounts in Britain alone. Two of the British banks that have been named in the deals include Barclays bank, where he once had up to
�800,000 in current, card and others for deposits, according to the London Police.
It was revealed that the no-win situation the government was facing was predicated on the fact that it had been trumpeting the war against corruption as its cardinal programme and cannot afford to close its eye on an alleged money laundering offence involving a governor.
The official said that Britain was watching to see whether Nigeria that has been bruised by the Transparency International (TI) recent bronze medal award on corruption would return an indicted governor to office in a week's time.
The Guardian learnt that very soon the government would base its judgement on the following critical elements as shown by the British authorities that investigation by the United Kingdom authorities based on a fraud involving some Nigerians had shown:
*that Dariye who claimed in his Code of Conduct declaration form "no bank account outside Nigeria" indeed had some accounts in the U.K, which he had opened before he was elected governor in 1999;
*that the accounts, which had less than �60,000
by February 1999 now has about �900,000 while he was in office as governor;
* that contrary to the Nigerian law, Joshua Dariye owned and operated foreign bank accounts;
* that Dariye made a false declaration on oath
that he did not own foreign accounts;
* that witnesses had testified that money in the
U.K. accounts were transferred from Nigeria; and
* that there was a nexus between corruption and
money laundering by Dariye.
The official confirmed that some Nigerian banks that assisted Dariye to transfer the monies to the London through fake company documents would soon be probed.
He said that a bank in Nigeria allegedly helped Dariye to transfer N118, 387, 500 and an associate of the governor through the same bank transfer �430, 746 to the U.K.
According to him, the Metropolitan Police inquiries began in January this year when officers followed Dariye from the hotel rooms to his house in London Regent Plaza, which he had earlier denied.
There was, however, no word on how to restore democracy
on November 18 to Plateau without Dariye.
President Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday briefed the suspended Plateau legislators on the same grave allegations against their governor.
