The same happened while former petroleum Minister, Mr Dan Etete was standing trial in France over the surreptitious transfer of $2.5 million into Swiss bank accounts held by Mr. Etete under a false name between 1996 and 1998. The London lawyer, Mr. Tesler confirmed making the payments but lied to the magistrate that ‘the money was for an investment in offshore oil exploration leases in Nigeria and that he wasn't aware the accounts belonged to Mr. Etete’, according to people familiar with the interrogation. All efforts to get Mr Aondoakaa to confirm that Tesler was lying for Etete, under the MLA treaty proved abortive. When the Germans released the names of the Nigerians indicted in the Siemens scandal what did our AGF Aondoakaa do with it? He only ensured that the various anti-graft agencies avoid the case like plague and all whose name were mentioned walk the street free citizens. Worse still, the criminal communications firm that had earlier been
indicted and punished in Germany was compensated with more multi-million dollar contracts in the power sector that has already been bedeviled with unbridled corruption and gross inefficiency. This therefore confirms the fact that the Yar’Adua administration is hypocritical about its claim to bring the Nigerian
collaborators in the Halliburton scandal to book.

The germane question here now is why an investigative committee is needed now to unravel the details of the Halliburton scandal when all the facts surrounding the evil transaction and dramatis personae in it are already in the national and international public domains. The US investigators had confirmed that Mr. Tesler
paid bribes on behalf of TSKJ to Nigerian government officials in installments: $60 million in 1995, $37.5 million in 1999, $51 million in 2001 and $23 million in 2002.

Why has AGF Aondoakaa not caused the probe and trial of the immediate past Minister of Petroleum and who was also the President, General Olusegun Obasanjo during whose tenure the larger chunk of $101.5 million was paid from the total $180 million bribe money. He would have during his trial been compelled to mention other collaborators in the corrupt deal. It is also during the same Obasanjo days as Nigerian president
cum Minister of Petroleum that the Wilbros scandal broke out. What action has the AGF taken on this and others like them? What about the case of Pentascope where fake consulting firm was allowed to cart away millions of dollars belonging to Nigerians? What did the AGF do in the US he flew into on a
Sunday and left on its Monday under the pretence of searching for the list of Nigerian accomplices in the Halliburton scam? What are the contents of his letters of request for evidence under the MLA treaty? Does the AGF who ignored his obligations under the MLA treaty to cooperate in the Etete and Ibori cases when France and the US requested him to, and wasted all information earlier obliged him expect to enjoy a better deal under the same treaty?

Furthermore, why suddenly did the retiring Police Inspector-General have to be imposed on the EFCC? This is an IGP who cannot make the force’s Special Fraud Unit (SFU) that had been existing for ages before the advent of ICPC and EFCC achieve any conviction in its long life of waste. We boldly say that the police, as it stand today as an organization lacks the credibility to handle high-profile graft cases
because it is a totally inept and an irredeemably corrupt security agency that does not enjoy the confidence or respect of the general public both at home and abroad.If the EFCC needs a supervisory investigative committee to perform its functions, then it does not justify its existence or name as an independent anti-graft commission. CACOL suspects that the Yar’Adua government through the offices of the AGF constituted this lame duck committee only to act as an official brake mechanism to stop the EFCC from going the whole hog of full investigation, revelation and prosecution of the guilty ones in the world-class scam.

By this singular act, the Yar’Adua government is merely engaging in a futile time-buying venture that would only worsen its already bad credibility image as far as the anti-corruption war is concerned. The way the government is going about this Halliburton business is merely making mountain of a mole hill. Nobody set up any committee in France and the USA before their own culprits in this scandal were identified, investigated, arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sanctioned. Why do the rulers in Nigeria behave as if they are governing a pack of idiots who are incapable of identifying deceits when they see such? The Yar’Adua’s government is
treating a few individuals as sacred cows and untouchables who are more powerful than the Nigerian State and government.

The Yar’Adua administration, using the Attorney-General, Barrister Michael Aondoakaa, is unwittingly running a case of simple investigation into deliberate and unnecessary complications in order to look for a legal escape for the thieves of our national treasury. It is a mere investigative merry-go-round and legalistic perambulation orchestrated and informed by self-centered political perfidy that will lead us to nowhere. CACOL therefore demands that the EFCC assert its constitutional mandate and go ahead to redeem its image by doing what is right by speeding up its investigative machinery and expose the masquerades in the Halliburton scandal and
refuse to be teleguided or intimidated by the AGF, the IGP or even the president. Nothing worthwhile will be achieved by the so-called investigative committee. To that extent we demand immediate scrapping of the committee because it is totally unnecessary, futile, wasteful and a mere official window
dressing.

Debo Adeniran
Chairman
08037194969
dadnig@yahoo.com
26 April, 2009