2 weeks Ago By JESUTEGA ONOKPASA
I just read a report credited to my dear brother and presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, stating in an interview with Laolu Akande, that the former Governor of Kogi State, Governor Yahaya Bello, is hiding “under the agbada” of his successor, Governor Usman Ododo. From the report, it appears, Akande had asked Onanuga why the police cannot assist the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to effect Yahaya Bello’s arrest, which then elicited Onanuga’s quite ridiculous reply. Both Onanuga and Akande are seasoned and quite accomplished journalists but apparently neither is a lawyer, hence their advertisement of their crass ignorance of law and the judicial process.
First of all, a person in court cannot be said to be hiding under anything unless one wants to insinuate that it is possible to hide under the law – Yahaya Bello is in court trying to enforce his fundamental human rights and therefore cannot be deemed to be hiding from the same law he is aiming to avail himself of. I can’t imagine what professional incompetence would have induced Akande to frame his query to Onanuga in the manner he is reported to have done but it is most dishonest and disingenuous of him to pretend that he does not know that the same Yahaya Bello had gone to the headquarters of the EFCC, was told to go home, only for the same EFCC to come to a location where he was, at dead of night, and request him to stage a fake arrest for their twisted purposes. Contrary to the rather perplexing insinuations of Onanuga, former Governor Yahaya Bello is most certainly not hiding under “the agbada” of anybody but is firmly under the protection of the law, being a litigant in a pending case in court.
That is quite apart from the fact that the EFCC has clearly decomposed into a political thug for hire to politicians who have scores to settle with their political opponents under the guise of fighting corruption, when the EFCC, itself, is probably the most corrupt agency in the entire country. I don’t know why instead of interrogating how come the EFCC would not interrogate someone they had declared wanted, who then showed up at their headquarters and they asked him to go home wasn’t Akande’s priority but instead he chose to tilt his intervention towards trying to gaslight his audience to buy into nonsense that the same person is howsoever running from the law. I can’t imagine why Bayo Onanuga is so obsessed with Yahaya Bello that instead of leaving his matter for the courts to decide, he keeps tactlessly intervening thereonto with the impression that our President, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, is actually the one behind former Governor Bello’s travails.
Yahaya Bello had hitherto expressed concern for the genuineness of the case against him and had privately voiced deep suspicion that it was just a ruse to harm him. Given the show of shame on the part of the EFCC when he lawfully presented himself at their headquarters and what transpired afterwards, he is perfectly entitled to wait for the judgement of the apex court before taking any other decision. We are a country of laws – Governor Yahaya Bello is in court and therefore before the law, unlike the likes of Bayo Onanuga, Laolu Akande and their cohorts who obviously aim to oust the jurisdiction of the courts and resort to self-help in the court of public opinion.
Onokpasa, a lawyer, is Chairman Tinubu Media Support Group, TMSG, and writes from Abuja..
