A police signal to arrest the former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Nuhu Ribadu, and the former minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nasir El-Rufai, has been issued in Abuja from the office of the Inspector General of Police, Ogbonnaya Onovo, according to authoritative police sources.

However, Emmanuel Ojukwu, spokesperson of the police, in a telephone interview with NEXT yesterday said he was unaware of such a signal. "I am just not aware of such a thing and if it is a warrant it is not the duty of the police to issue a warrant. Our job is to obey court orders." However, Peter Adobamen, a lawyer who spoke to NEXT said the police can indeed issue a warrant of arrest on anybody.

This is indeed what appears to have happenned in the case of Mr. El-Rufai and Mr. Ribadu. NEXT investigations in Abuja yesterday revealed that the warrant was issued on November 5, with the instruction for the arrest of both men "on sight". This is coming against the background of Mr. El-Rufai's planned return to Nigeria after a temporary exile in Europe and the United States of America.

Messrs. Ribadu and El-Rufai's difficulties with the police leading to the issuance of the order of arrest, NEXT gathered, are based on an alleged claim that they are conducting treasonable activities abroad.

The Attorney General of the Federation, Michael Aondoakaa, has consistently made the allegation of treason against both men, saying extradition charges will be eventually brought against them. Sources at the Justice Ministry yesterday told NEXT that "dialogue is already ongoing with security institutions to prepare the extradition process."

Ribadu' challenge

The Code of Conduct Tribunal declared the former anti-graft chief, Nuhu Ribadu, a fugitive of the law two weeks ago, claiming he did not declare his assets. In an angry statement of rebuttal, Mr. Ribadu described the order as another episode of what he called the "relentless persecution against me" and wondered how the court that was fully aware of the circumstances under which he left the country, could tag him as a fugitive.

"I had to leave the country on January 3 this year after a relentless persecution which climaxed in two assassination attempts," he said.

El-Rufai's cross

The Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Aondoakaa, had said, based on the Senate Committee on FCT's report which allegedly indicted the ex-minister, he had commenced extradition proceedings on Mr El-Rufai.

"In invoking the relevant clauses of the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) between Nigeria and Britain to bring El-Rufai to justice, we need to back our request with relevant documents," Mr. Aondoakaa told the media.

Fighting back

Mr. El-Rufai's lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, has taken the attorney general's threat serious and has published a whitepaper dated December 1, 2009 that seeks to highlight the former minister's innocence.

Mr. Amsterdam, the founding partner of the international law firm, Amsterdam and Peroff, said in a 48-page whitepaper which chronicled the former minister's stewardship as a public servant that he is seeking "to present Nasir El-Rufia and his accomplishments to the world, to summarise the motives behind the attack on his reputation, and to provide ample evidence to prove his innocence of all these libel and slander."

According to Mr. Amsterdam, the publication "marks the formal announcement that we are open and willing to defend Nasir on any platform available with all the facts in front of us". While describing Mr. El-Rufai as a man who holds "ambitious dreams for Nigeria's future", the author stated that all the attack on the former minister are "groundless and without evidence" and "manufacture by a hardworking scandal factory".

In the foreword to the whitepaper, the former Attorney General of Nigeria, Kanu Agabi, described Mr. El-Rufai as "fair-minded, hardworking and unrelenting". "The things that El-Rufai has had to do for the nation are difficult things. He has had to tread upon hard and difficult ground and to do for the nation difficult things" Mr. Agabi said.

Kanu Agabi's testimony

Mr. Agabi further added that Mr. El-Rufai and Mr. Ribadu are agents that will lay "the modern foundations of the rule of law in Nigeria", extolling the work done by the former minister to return the Federal Capital Territory to its master-plan which had suffered what seemed then as irredeemable distortions.

Tracing the roots of Mr. El-Rufai's travails, Mr. Amsterdam recalled that Mr. El-Rufai first wrote himself into the bad books of the powers-that-be when he revealed that the Senate's deputy majority leader, Jonathan Zwingina, and deputy senate president, Ibrahim Mantu, solicited a N54 million bribe for an accelerated confirmation as a minister. According to the author, "the Nigerian Senate as an institution never forgot or forgave him."

The whitepaper also gives a detailed account of Mr. El-Rufai's stewardship as the Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE).

According to the author, while at the BPE, Mr. El-Rufai was profoundly successful. His dedication to his work resulted in his raising N40-50 billion in revenue from the privatisation programme. Despite his successes at the BPE, the leadership of the Nigeria parliaments were not impressed. In March 2002, the author of the whitepaper recalled, the speaker of the House of Representatives then brought a defamation suit against the former minister in response to Mr. El-Rufai's criticism of the Speaker's proposal on what to do with NITEL.

The suit was squashed by the Court of Appeal on June 2, 2003. According to the judgment the legislature can only look into cases of corruption and mismanagement of public funds. This judgment is described by the learned gentleman as posing "an unprecedented challenge to the boundaries of the power of the Legislature in the Nigerian Constitution and the role of the Nigerian Judicial system in reviewing its decisions and actions"

Tarnishing El-Rufai

The whitepaper recounted how the House of Representatives failed in its attempt to blame Mr. El-Rufai for the manner in which NITEL was privatised, through public hearings. On May 25, 2005 the House of Representatives placed a ban on Mr. El-Rufai from holding public office for life. When this was challenged in court, the Federal High Court, Abuja on July 24, 2005 discarded the pronouncement of the house committee.

Recounting Mr. El-Rufai's days as the minister of the FCT, Mr. Amsterdam recalled that the mandate given to him, amongst other things, was to reduce corruption in public administration and to enforce the Abuja Master Plan for urban development tasks, which the former minister approached with unprecedented passion. "El-Rufai implemented a Strategic Development Plan designed to halt and reverse the "Lagosification" of Abuja."

In order to restore the FCT to its Master-Plan, the former minister's work involved the demolition of houses "erected along sewage lines and the restoration of parks which had been parcelled out and allocated to men and women of rank." By this action, he invariably crossed the path of some of the country's elite "accustomed to favouritism".

The whitepaper is of the view that with the expiration of the Obasanjo administration and the assumption of office as president by the former Governor of Katsina State, Umaru Yar'Adua, the authorities started going after certain former Obasanjo officials, with Mr. El-Rufai and Mr. Ribadu at the top of the list.

While describing Mr. El-Rufai as a man who holds "ambitious dreams for Nigeria's future", the author stated that all the attack on the former minister are "groundless and without evidence" and "manufactured by a hardworking scandal factory".