What is Deputy Senate President afraid of?

According to the man, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is cooking up a plot to set him up by planting totems of corruption in his home.

Ekweremadu read a letter purportedly written by someone who works with the anti-graft agency.

The letter, according to the man who read it, was titled: 'Please Treat This With Utmost Secrecy by Protecting the Identity of the Source.’

The letter, as read by Ekweremadu, contained some of the following:

“Distinguished senator, there is a grand plan from the cabal in the Presidency, using EFCC as an anti-graft agency, to indict and remove you from office. This cabal in the Presidency has mandated the EFCC chairman to carry out this evil operation within two weeks.

“The plan and the trap goes like this: On the 6th of May 2017 – Saturday night stroke Sunday morning – the EFCC, alongside local and international media, both print and TV and radio, will raid an apartment under the guise of whistle blowing policy of the Federal Government with a search warrant already obtained in the magistrate’s court to search an apartment alleging to be one of your guest houses in Enugu State capital or any suitable available apartment in your senatorial district that will serve this evil purpose.

“EFCC (will be) claiming to have received a tip-off from a whistle-blower in your state alerting the agency of a ‘large huge’ amount of money of different currencies in the said apartment belonging to you, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, the Deputy Senate President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a proceed of which is likely to be (considered as) illegally obtained and acquired, which constitute abuse of office and corruption.

“The things to be discovered in said apartment are a huge amount of money with different currencies such as British Pound Sterling, United States dollars, Indian rupee, South Africa rand and Malaysian Ringgit; documents alleging to be yours such as 2015 campaign memo and logistics, a list of names, chairman local wards of party men and women that benefited from your empowerment program; and other cooked documents bearing your signature”.

The questions to be asked here are that, does the (dis)honorable Senator have all of these monies in his Enugu guest house?

If the answer to the question above is ‘No’, then he’s got absolutely nothing to worry about.

Is Ekweremadu concealing Pounds, Dollars, Rupees and Rands in any of his apartments across Nigeria?

If no, then one should think that he’ll go to bed with both of his eyes closed.

If the argument is that the security agencies will plant all of these items in Ekweremadu’s apartment, then it behooves on the Senator to employ round the clock security round this Enugu guest house during the period his friend has alerted him that this would happen, in order to prevent the EFCC from going ahead with the plot.

This all sounds like a red herring or a kite flying exercise from the Senator.

Ekweremadu has absolutely nothing to worry about if his hands are clean.

By reading that letter on the floor of the Senate, he not only wasted the nation’s time, he probably let us into what he is hiding.

And if the EFCC weren’t looking in his direction, here was an invitation to begin doing so.

The response from the EFCC, delivered through its spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, was spot on.

The EFCC told the Senator to sleep easy if he hasn’t got his fingers soiled.

Please do indulge me as I reproduce a few sections from the EFCC’s statement.

“The commission wishes to state in very strong terms that it is not aware of any plot to set up Ekweremadu for any arrest. If any agency is plotting to plant monies and guns in Ekweremadu’s residence, it is certainly not the EFCC as such antics are alien to the commission.

“Nevertheless, the commission is worried by the alarm and the fact that the highly-regarded deputy president of the Nigerian senate would go public with such unverified information without first double-checking with the commission.

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“This is not only very strange but smacks of a scripted propaganda campaign to distract the commission by putting it on the defensive.

“It must be emphatically stated for the benefit of Senator Ekweremadu and others who share similar misconception and jaundiced views of the EFCC that the commission does not need any grand plot to arrest and prosecute him if he is found to have violated any law that EFCC enforces.

“He does not belong in the category of public officers that enjoy immunity from arrest and prosecution by law enforcement agencies.

“Once again, the alleged plot by EFCC to raid Senator Ekweremadu’s house on May 6, 2017, exists only in the very fertile imagination of the Distinguished Deputy Senate President’s questionable ‘source’, whom he claims is ‘close to the EFCC’.

“Let it be known, however, that there will be no amount of scare-mongering that will dissuade the EFCC from vigorously enforcing its mandate to rid Nigeria of corruption.”

That was some brilliant, succinct statement right there!

Ekweremadu’s outburst had propaganda and scare-mongering written all over it and the nation should ignore him.

The Senator was on some sort of defensive tactic. It's the oldest trick in the book.

If he’s got nothing to hide, he’s got absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

May the 'ayes' have it.