Powerful Nigerian politicians are seeking to derail attempts to fight high-level corruption by weakening the main anti-graft agency and hounding Nuhu Ribadu, its former head, officials within the unit have warned.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, say that the new leadership of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has removed dozens of senior investigators from cases against seven former state governors charged last year with looting public funds.
�The view is that of a total takeover of the levers of control by the people who are supposed to be on trial,� said one EFCC official.
Mr Ribadu, who led the EFCC after its establishment in 2003 under Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president, is regarded at home as the first Nigerian to have struck fear into a political class estimated to have stolen billions of dollars of public funds accrued mainly from the country�s oil wealth.
Abroad he is respected for having led an unprecedented campaign to prosecute theft of government money and for collaborating with foreign police forces to curtail the e-mail scams and fraud for which Nigeria had become infamous.
But the softly-spoken police officer, whose modest lifestyle contrasted with that of many of his targets, also attracted fierce criticism. A widespread perception that Mr Obasanjo was using him as a tool to persecute political opponents and exclude them from running at the polls cost Mr Ribadu some of his credibility.
The EFCC is one of several institutions, promoted by the former government as the face of a new Nigeria, to have been shaken up since Umaru Yar�Adua became president in May last year.
Mr Ribadu is now attending a mandatory training course at an institute in central Nigeria. He was replaced by Farida Waziri, a career police officer who was plucked from retirement to take over the EFCC in June.
Officials who worked with Mr Ribadu until he was removed from his post by the new government, say he has been subject to increasingly public harassment designed to discredit him and his operatives.
Femi Babafemi, the EFCC spokesman, rebuffed the claims and said the new leadership�s decision to charge suspects including two former state governors, one of whom was arraigned on Tuesday, proved it was still committed to fighting corruption.
�No fewer than five or six big cases have been tackled and are already in court,� Mr Babafemi said.
This week the Police Service Commission demoted Mr Ribadu, along with 139 other officers, on the grounds that their advancement had contravened rules. Mr Ribadu, who moved rapidly through the ranks while chair of the EFCC, was demoted to deputy commissioner from assistant inspector-general and summoned for questioning by the state security service. Motives for the summons were unclear.
Police also this week detained Ibrahim Magu, the former head of the economic governance team at the EFCC, who led many of the investigations against state governors and is a key witness in money-laundering cases in both Nigeria and the UK.