•Chief James Ibori Photo: Sun News Publishing

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The arrest and arraignment of former Delta State governor, Chief James Onanefe Ibori, appears to have sent serious shivers down the spine of the Yar’Adua presidency.

Saturday Sun gathered Thursday that there were frantic efforts to manage the situation - as it relates to what the ex-governor might say in court - without appearing to be slowing down the anti-corruption war.

Although the presidency is said to be fully in the know about the goings on in the Ibori case, the reality of his arraignment has suddenly dawned on Aso Rock insiders who now fear that the ex-governor might begin to sing anytime soon and bring down the roof on everybody.

Ibori who is believed to have a fearsome security/intelligence background, it is said, has a dossier on virtually everybody that is anybody in the presidency – including the sleaze, the scams, the scandals.
In fact, a few months ago when the heat was high on Ibori, he was said to have threatened that if he is pushed to the wall, he would have no other choice than to fight back.

“Fighting back”, Saturday Sun gathered, would entail releasing the information and damning documents he has on key players in the present and immediate past governments to the public. At one time, it was even speculated that the ex-governor, popularly called James Bond, had in fact wrested a signed receipt for one of the huge ‘donations’ made to both party and government people.
“All Ibori has to do is depose to an affidavit and the whole system would come crashing”, one of his close confidants boasted.

It is believed that it was the fear of what Ibori might say in the dock or in a sworn affidavit that had made presidency insiders to try to put his prosecution on the hold.
Government, in fact, soon began to do business with Ibori. He was said to have introduced a group of consultants who helped to head-hunt for some of the best hands working with President Yar’Adua today. It was the same consultants that he was said to have put at the service of the current Delta State governor. They, it was, who sieved through the heap of CVs of prospective appointees, and even looked beyond the CVs to recommend an few other good hands from outside the system.

Ibori was also said to have nominated at least two ministers to the administration and had penciled one of his ex-commissioners for a key appointment in the presidency until things began to fall apart, when some three or so weeks ago, the former governor who visited the villa was prevented from seeing President Yar’Adua.

In fact, it is speculated that it was during this time of closeness to Aso Rock insiders that the plot to kick out Nuhu Ribadu as chairman of the EFCC was hatched. Unfortunately for Ibori, the EFCC headship has yet to be convinced that it was not the former Delta governor who spearheaded the plot to kick out Ribadu. And they had promised to make him pay some day sooner than later.

But the perceived Aso Rock shielding of the ex-governor proved a huge handicap.
However, it became more difficult to continue to shield the former governor, with the reports coming in from the British Metropolitan Police. The presidency, therefore, had to play along in order not to appear to be paying only lip service to the war against corruption.

And now, that Ribadu’s EFCC has gone for broke, the fear in the Presidency now is that Ibori might begin to sing very soon. And it could turn out to be the messy situation that was exposed with the case of former Jigawa Governor, Saminu Turaki, when it was revealed that a good chunk of the money he was accused to have stolen may indeed have been funds channelled through him to the presidency.