- They want to nail me – Ex-MEND leader
- It’s FG vs Tompolo, not Tompolo vs me —Festus Keyamo
ON January 17, ex-MEND leader, High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, who a Federal High Court, Lagos bench warrant is hanging on his head, wrote President Muhamadu Buhari an open letter, outlining lengthy reasons why he had not showed up in court to answer the charges against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
TompoloPart of the reason was that some All Progressives Congress, APC, chieftains in Bayelsa and Delta states, one of them an EFCC lawyer, have conspired to besmirch his name. He said the lawyer was at the vanguard of prosecuting him because “I refused to buy property from him.”
His words: “The truth of the matter is that I do not know anything about the 34 billion naira EFCC is talking about. First, it was 13 billion naira issue, now it is 34 billion naira. I am not a signatory to any of the companies mentioned in the said 34 billion naira case, so I do not know where this one is coming from. I know that God in His infinite mercy will see me through in this critical moment.”
It’s not between me and Tompolo— Keyamo
This writer contacted the EFCC lawyer in question, Festus Keyamo, weekend, he laughed, saying, “As a prosecutor, I cannot make statement on a matter I know is in court, but I want to say that it is not a personal matter between Keyamo and Tompolo, it is the matter between the Federal Government and Tompolo. “I think, however, that if anybody is invited by the court to answer to a criminal charge, he should appear, all the explanations and letters he had been writing in the newspapers, he should explain them to the court, which will consider them.
Keyamo added, “I hope he gets a good legal advice, for me, there is no issue to comment about and my duty is to prosecute the matter that is before the court, not to talk on the pages of newspapers.”
Tompolo’s valid fear
I tried reaching Tompolo at the weekend but it was not possible because of the present situation, while the response from the cell phone of his media consultant, Mr. Paul Bebenimibo was, “The line is currently switched -off.”
However, I know from my previous communication with the ex-militant leader, adored by many Gbaramatu people for his uncommon zeal and contributions to the development of the kingdom and Ijaw nation that his actual trepidation is the humiliation the EFCC would cheerfully subject him to because of the rumored influence he wielded in the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. The other is the shame of it all to him.
He stepped on many toes during the Jonathan government and some APC leaders and top government officials forewarned him that they would deal with him if he did not do their bidding, but thought they were merely bragging. However, he made efforts to contact some powers-that-be on his predicament.
What his opponents cannot ignore
However, Tompolo means diverse things to different people depending on the perception. To some persons, he is a bloody militant, oil bunkerer and criminal and to others, he is one man that the Ijaw gods have used to fight the cause of his people and Niger Delta at large. Besides the hundreds of Ijaw students on the scholarship of Tompolo Foundation, his intervention in ill equipped health and educational institutions in the three Warri local governments, Patani, Bomadi and Burutu Local government areas, his biggest pull to Gbaramatu kingdom is the Nigerian Maritime University, Okerenkoko.
However, the existence of the university is now wobbly by virtue of the recent declaration on its existence by the Minster of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi that the Federal Government had scrapped it. Others are the Gbaramatu Deep Sea Port component of the Export Processing Zone, EPZ, Ogidigben, both in Warri Southwest local government, which he flexed muscles to grab for his people, as well as the NIMASA Dockyard in Okerenkoko.
Falling into enemy plot
Even those who hate his guts, cannot but think highly of his zeal for the development of his people, but he played into the hands of his professed enemies by refusing to honor the EFCC invitation, which culminated in the issuance of bench warrants against him.
Endangering his people
Available information showed that Tompolo did not most likely execute the most recent bombing of crude oil and gas pipelines in Delta state as many thought. However, he is jeopardizing the life of his very people that he has fought for all his life if he continues to keep himself away from court in the face of a bench warrant for his arrest.
The bench warrant is incontrovertibly a stand-by license for security agencies, especially the Joint Task Force, to invade anywhere in Gbaramatu Kingdom in search of him and considering what happened when soldiers bombarded Okerenkoko, Oporoza, Kurutie and other Ijaw communities in 2009 while hunting for him, it would be morally wrong to put them through such an experience again.
Already, the people are running helter-skelter out of fear and here lies the excruciating decision Tompolo must make. Should he give up his peace to salt away his people from another trauma of military barrage and hardhearted treatment by appearing in court or make himself a fugitive to their inconvenience?
Awe-inspiring endorsement
Ijaw national leader, Chief Edwin Clark, hit the nail on the head when he stated in an open letter to Buhari, last week that he did not think that Tompolo was party to the recent bombing of pipelines and urged him to “intervene in this matter for the maintenance of peace and stability in the Niger Delta.” Last week, the powerful Izon Okosu-Otu (Izon Council of Elders), Delta State, led by Chief Bare Etolor, called for a political solution to the “ongoing Tompolo saga as it relates to the recent pipeline vandalization and corruption allegations for which a warrant of arrest was reportedly issued by a Federal High Court.”
According to the elders, “we are afraid that events in the polity do not make attractive submission of self to arrests, which may have informed Tompolo’s decision to be at large.” If it is the understanding that Tompolo seeks in the pipeline vandalization saga, he has obtained it in plethora, not just from Gbaramatu people, but other Nigerians, who have read between the lines.
However, the matter of money laundering cannot lawfully be determined in the court of public opinion. He has to make up his mind as a leader whether to surrender his own peace for the peace his people or not.
The apogee is confinement for some weeks perhaps months but undoubtedly not years, because the charges are bailable. Under the contemporary scenario, one may not rule out maltreatment and probably handcuffing as meted out to the national publicity secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Olisa Metuh. Indeed, there is no new thing that will ever happen again on the face of the earth.
Doing the needful
However, the Presidency reacting through the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, to the call by Clark, Ijaw elders and youths to do a volte face, insisted that Tompolo having been charged to court for money laundering, must do the needful, which is face the law.
Vanguard
