T.A. Orji: A mandate detained
By TAIWO AMODU

Not too many things were on the ground to suggest that Chief Theodore Ahamefule Orji was not on the path of history. He was set for a repeat of what happened in Osun State in 2003 where the then estranged Deputy Governor, Otunba Iyiola Omisore won election to the Senate from detention.

Omisore was being held in connection with the murder of Chief Bola Ige, the then Attorney-General and Minister of Justice – a charge from which he would be later discharged and acquitted.
Orji, the immediate past Chief of Staff to the Abia State Governor, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, who resigned his post to contest the governorship of the state – and, indeed, secured the ticket of the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) - has been a guest of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), since February.

He, alongside three other state officials and one Nnanna, is accused of money laundering and having, between March 2003 and December 2005, illegally diverted Abia state funds to their private pockets. They were also accused of transferring N50 million at various times from the state account with Fidelity Bank Plc to the governor's Airline account at Inland Bank.

Beyond Abia State funds
But a curious twist to the whole tale cannot be gleaned from the simplistic argument that the EFCC is looking for money that is not missing. Rather, it comes to the fore in what the commissioner for finance at the centre of the EFCC drama, Moses Agoh, recently told Saturday Sun.

A former deputy managing director of Citizens Bank, Agoh says he is expected to answer for ‘frauds’ and ‘transfers’ from Abia State funds into private accounts several of which occurred while he was yet to join the government.

It was the same laughable development that saw EFCC initially inviting a dead commissioner to appear before it – as if they would have the balls to interrogate him if he does appear.

Well, in the absence of the dead commissioner for local government affairs, the commission is holding unto his permanent secretary.

But Agoh’s puzzlement is: why does the commission keep referring to him as ‘former commissioner of finance’ when indeed he is still the substantive commissioner?

His thinking is: "much as they know that he is not the man they want, they also know that arresting the man they want would not deal any political blow on Gov. Kalu… Moreover, it makes a lot more sensational headline when it is reported that Kalu’s finance commissioner has been arrested and charged to court over the looting of Abia treasury. It makes an even more interesting read when it is revealed that this said commissioner is a former bank director and the crime in question involves illegal transfer of state funds into private accounts.

The tendency is for people to say ‘yes, that’s the man’. But the truth is that I was not even in government when all these allegedly happened’.

He continues: "But government is a continuity and having come in, I have discovered that there is no iota of proof of any such fraud ever taking place".

He shares the view of the key defence counsel, Olisah Agbakoba (SAN) that the case has more to do with politics than fraud. He thinks the targets were both Governor Kalu and T.A. Orji who were running for public office and whom the establishment wanted to stop at all cost.

But all the calculations came to naught, as Orji still went ahead to win his election. The only thing that his detention cost him was probably that it robbed him of the landslide victory he seemed headed for before the EFCC clamped him in.

Hand of Obasanjo, voice of Ribadu
Nobody, including the ruling PDP, was in doubt that the PPA was the party to beat in Abia State. It’s key promoter and presidential candidate, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, was the incumbent governor of Abia, and given his popularity and mass appeal, it was unlikely that his party would not take Abia.

But the PDP, it seemed, was not ready to just hand over the state it had twice held sway (in 1999 and in 2003 – though through the same Kalu) without a fight. It decided to throw in everything at its disposal behind the party’s heavyweights in the state who had, for nearly seven years, battled to dislodge Kalu without success.

Having hoisted one of their own, in the person of Chief Onyema Ugochukwu, as governorship flagbearer, the PDP then went about undermining Kalu and the PPA machinery. Both Kalu and his Chief of Staff, Chief Theodore Ahamefule Orji, who clinched the party’s guber ticket were indicted in the controversial EFCC list which sought to stop certain politicians from standing election. But both men had obtained court injunctions restraining INEC from disqualifying them based on the list and the resultant government white paper – that was before the courts rubbished both the list and the white paper.

Having failed on the indictment option, the traducers of the Abia duo then fell back on the EFCC option of arraigning them. With Kalu enjoying constitutional immunity, Theodore Ahamefule Orji was left vulnerable, and the authorities went for him, knowing that if he was thoroughly rubbished – and probably convicted – it would surely spell the death knell for his governorship ambition and also deal an appreciable blow on Kalu’s presidential aspiration.

Reminded that they could not continue to hold the men without trial, the authorities hurriedly beat together a motley of charges – totaling 100 in all – and arraigned them.
Of course the bottom-line was to hold unto him on the claim that he would interfere with investigations, if released. Again that exposed another lacuna in the case against the Abia men: if the investigation was not yet complete, why arraign them?

The answer immediately fell into place: the aim, ab initio, was to take him off circulation to frustrate his political ambition – and if the authorities waited until such a time that the commission would have a water-tight case against him, the elections would have come and gone. But since the accused could not be detained indefinitely without trial, they had to be charged on whatever was available. However, since all the offences were bailable, the authorities had to manufacture other means of frustrating bail while meeting the original need of keeping the men away from campaigning.

So, even when all the charges for which the embattled former chief of staff and his group were being held were bailable offences, the authorities fought and frustrated efforts to grant them bail.

The initial claim was that the men would jump bail if granted bail. But when it was made clear to the court that the principal was a favoured candidate in the coming elections and could not possibly run away instead of stand an election he seemed so poised to winning, the story began to change.

When it was put before the court that the accused persons had always presented themselves to the EFCC on every request by the commission and had actually reported to the commission on the day they were eventually arrested and put into custody, the prosecution began to argue that most of the accused persons were working under a principal who could get to intimidate them and alter the cause of justice if granted bail. The court ruled in favour of the prosecution. The court refused the bail application on the ground that they could influence and intimidate the witnesses who are civil servants.

Consequently, they were ordered to be remanded in prison. But Agbakoba insisted that what the court did not know was that all the desperation to keep the accused persons in custody was, first and foremost, to stop T.A.Orji from campaigning for the election he was contesting in.

Even while he remained in custody, agents of the authorities continued to sponsor reports that he had indeed been disqualified from standing election because he had been indicted.

But it would seem the antics of Kalu and Orji’s opponents further galvanized Abians behind the PPA candidate. With only posters and a few radio jingles sponsored by his friends and party, Orji fell back on the goodwill he and the governor had garnered over the past eight years. But it was enough to check the rampaging federal might of the PDP. At the end of balloting, a literally absentee Orji polled 265,389 votes to beat Ugochukwu’s 136,858. The ANPP was a distant third with 36,374 votes.

New game plan
With the Abia election now won and lost, the permutations have shifted to whether or not the winner would be allowed to go exercise his mandate, given the immunity he will begin to enjoy with effect from May 29, 2007.

While establishment lawyers have since gone back to the books to see what clause that can be dusted up to frustrate Orji and PPA taking over at the Umuahia government house, others insist that it is already too late to stop the governor-elect, as even a conviction at this point in time would have to wait until the end of his tenure as governor before he can serve the sentence. There has even been talk of breaking the ranks of the PPA by swearing in the deputy governor-elect.

Increasingly, it is becoming clear that it is only a matter of time before the governor-elect is left to go claim his mandate.

But, nowhere else is the futility of his continued detention more underscored than the very premises of Kirikiri Medium Prison where Orji is being detained alongside Moses Agoh, Elder S. O. Iheke, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Local Government and Mr. James Udeogu, former Director of Finance and Supply, Government House.

Every step of Orji’s is greeted with reverence of ‘Your Excellency’ from both inmates and warders. Like in Abia, everyone here feels it is only a matter of time before the chosen of the people is released to his people.

Irrespective of what happens in the court next week ( the determination of the bail appeal comes up 30th of April), Orji and his co-accused remain hopeful that their people’s will would prevail in the end.

How much did they steal?
Surprisingly, the total amount said to have been stolen from Abia State, according to the 100-count charge filed before Justice Tijani Ahmed by the EFCC counsel, Mr. Rotimi Jacobs, is about N4 billion.

This is a huge difference from the original figure of about N50 billion which the EFCC had initially peddled about as the total looted from Abia. That figure was drastically scaled down when the state government drew attention to the fact that all the money that accrued to it over the last seven or so years was just about N85 billion.

The figure of alleged looted funds soon came down to N35b and later, N27 billion. When the BBC requested the exact figure that was stolen from Abia by Orji Kalu, the EFCC figure suddenly came down to below three billion.

On the infamous EFCC indictment list, N3’145billion was entered against Kalu’s name while T.A. Orji was asked to account for N2.643 billion. Incidentally, T.A. Orji was initially accused of stealing over N5 billion.
The figures keep swinging up and down like a pendulum, and Agoh says, he’d like to now how much is exactly involved.

Vicar General of the Kaduna Archdiocese of the Catholic Mission, Reverend Mathew Kukah yesteray accused leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of killing democracy in the country by deliberately subverting opposition parties through blackmail and planting of moles in their ranks.
Kukah while addressing a gathering of PDP leaders, governors and legislators-elect at the policy retreat organised to prepare them for the challenge of governance said, “for the better part of its life, the PDP set up to obliterate the opposition parties by blackmailing and planting moles into the opposition parties.”
In his paper titled: Yes, Another Nigeria is Possible", the Cleric said, “the result is that we have seen near elimination of such parties like the Alliance for Democracy and the All Nigeria Peoples party. I call on the new administration to make politics a live and let live affair, because only the living can play politics.”
According to Kukah who said PDP cannot claim to have honestly won up to 90 percent of the National Assembly seats said “PDP did not make competition easy for other parties."