OPINION: EFCC & CCT: ROTIMI JACOBS AND DAN LADI UMAR: PAWNS IN THE GAME OF THRONES?

To survive in the game of thrones, you’d constantly have to up your game but failure to do so means that your adversaries takes the centre stage, while you languish in the pecking order as seen in the original battle among the characters from the American medieval fantasy television series.

For Rotimi Jacobs, in the last 5years or so, his career path has been focused more on putting food on his table than exhibiting the tenets of a true professional legal luminary highly demanded of his job. As the Chief Counsel to the Lamorde led Economic and Financial Crimes Commission- Rotimi Jacobs has mastered the art of negotiating corruption cases on behalf of his masters: especially when such cases implicates his boss at the EFCC or a highly placed Nigerian is involved.

There couldn’t have been a better man for the hatchet job, the mirage of cases of alleged corruption investigated by the agency has left Nigerians more disappointed than ever; as those cases are either inconclusive and die a natural death or a u-turn is made to acquit  the suspect of any wrong doing.

We’ve witnessed many of such perfidy from the former Governor of Bayelsa State – Timpre Silva to Murtala Nyako to mention a few.
Obviously, some animals are more equal than others, the EFCC drum is only beaten whenever they seek to embarrass or punish a transgressor that does not conform to their crooked ways.

Rotimi Jacob’s antecedent has not gone unnoticed his highhandedness in handling high profile cases has reduced him to pawn in the fast emerging game of thrones. In 2015, Mr Lamorde was heavily criticised by Chief Edwin Clark for his handling of the interim order by the court to forfeit to the Federal Government Ibori’s $15m received by the EFCC from one of Ibori’s agent as bribe to compromise its investigation.
Rotimi Jacobs in an attempt to distract the court and defend his principal prevailed on the court to pay utmost attention to Edwin Clarke’s statement criticising the EFCC rather than the actual allegations before it.

Similarly, In a December 02, 2011 letter EFCC sent to the Chairman, House Committee on Drugs, Narcotics and Financial Crimes, EFCC stated that the aggregate recoveries from 2004 to 2011 (8 financial years) was  N1,326,754,554,482:80. EFCC did not mention where the N1.3 Trillion recovered was remitted to. EFCC’s claim that it did not recover up to a Trillion is complete false. Mr Goerge Uboh’s exposé on the EFCC further revealed that Mr Lamorde and the agency counsel Rotimi Jacobs may have deliberately distorted the records at Efcc on recovered funds running into billions of naira for their personal gains.

In EFCC’s “SUMMARY OF EFCC MONETARY RECOVERIES 2003-MARCH, 2013” (11 financial years), EFCC stated that the aggregate recoveries for eleven financial years is N497,385,427,485:63; EFCC did not mention where the N497.3 Billion recovered was remitted to.

Now that the Federal Government has ordered the probe of the agency, it will only make sense for the Independent Corrupt Practices (ICPC) to probe the alleged fund mismanagement rather the Efcc and his manipulative barrister of law – Rotimi Jacobs.

In a related competitive game of rent seeking as a major pawn to thwart justice where it is deserved, Dan Ladi Umar is fast climbing up the ladder and teaming up with his partner in crime Rotimi Jacobs to bring disrepute to our once revered judicial system. The many manipulative games of the Code of Conduct Tribunal’s attempt to independently determine and serve out judgement on the trial of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki may have exposed their shoddy dealings of tampering with the justice system that encourages due process.
The Code of Conduct Bureau Chairman, Dan Ladi Umar is currently on an administrative bail with the EFCC on several cases of corruption charges. The EFCC and CCB has united to fight a common enemy in the person of Bukola Saraki who is undergoing trial for alleged false asset declaration being sponsored by one of the South West APC chieftain and a Northern governor. It makes arithmetic sense, that while the Senate is seeking for accountability from the EFCC  based on a petition submitted by a tax payer, the agency in retaliation summoned Saraki’s wife for questioning while the rest of the case file ended up at Dan Ladi Umar’s desk to prosecute Saraki for an event that was lasted visited in 2003.
It is noteworthy that Rotimi Jacobs has always been the preferred counsel to the EFCC on corruption cases involving brazenly corrupt ex-governors, there are a few pointers of “deal negotiations” that puts Mr Jacobs at variance with the efcc creed as regard handling of corrupt cases. It is an established fact that the EFCC is indebted to the federal government in tune of N1trillion non remittance to the federation account recovered by the agency, also, its counsel Mr Rotimi Jacobs is to be investigated for his role in deal “brokering” for corrupt officials while the CCB Chair, Dan Ladi Umar has cases to answer on bribe taking and financial misappropriation.

The question then is, who will probe the Efcc, Rotimi Jacobs and Dan Ladi Umar? These pawns activities deserved to be looked into by an independent panel of inquiry if our broken demeanour justice system is to be reformed in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war.

Written by Kuddi Haastrup, from Baltimore Maryland