Bode George, the former Nigeria Port Authority (NPA) board Chairman and a Chieftain of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), was sentenced to two year jail-time by a Lagos High Court over fraud.

Ogbeni Lanre Banjo congratulated Mallam Nuhu Ribadu first and foremost for building the case against the convicts while his former boss General Olusegun Obasanjo was in power. Without Ribadu’s boldness and grim determination to fight corruption in our society, the Court would not have had any basis to convict Bode George and the rest.

In the case of Nigeria, once a case is built, one needs a brilliant and bold lawyer to present his case. It is for this reason that Ogbeni Banjo also congratulates Barrister Festus Keyamo who defeated all the SANs hired by the felons. The verdict of the Court hinged basically on the preponderance of evidence gathered by Mallam Ribadu, argued by Keyamo and this compelled the SANs to bless the lordship’s judgment. It further forced the SANs representing Bode George to express in their allocutus that the Court’s “pronouncement on all the defendants today, while it offers inspiration for the timid and timorous, has driven home the point that anyone that takes a public office must carry the load.” Kudos again to both Ribadu, Keyamo and, of course, the current leadership of the EFCC who could have chosen to discard the case.

The EFCC must not stop at this conviction. Ogbeni Banjo advises the Commission to head on back to Court to ask for the confiscation of all the properties acquired with this ill gotten wealth, and pray that all of them should be banned from public service. This is one of the ways sufficient firmness could be demonstrated and corruption could be deterred in our society. If exhaustive criminal background were to have been conducted on Bode George, his records in Ondo State, where he blatantly and contemptuously emptied the Ondo State treasury, should have beckoned any political party that wishes its people well to reject his services. With his records, there is no positive service such a looter could render to the country.

Ogbeni Banjo also commends Justice Olubunmi Oyewole who, given the Nigerian judicial modus operandi, would have rejected bribes from the prisoners to maintain his reputation. His statement that “when public office is abused, the entire populace is assaulted” lifted Nigeria in the eyes of the world. It gave us hope. When he continued that “this must not be condoned or treated with kid gloves, and if the quality of service in our public life is altered to the appreciable standard of the civilised world, the right deterrent should be given”, this statement strikes the nerves of people with conscience and sends fear into the inner spines of looters. Ogbeni Banjo doffs his hat for the Judge.

Ogbeni Banjo believes in freedom of speech, and that freedom of speech should not include any action that violates persons rendering his or her professional services. He therefore denounces the supporters of Bode George who threatened Journalists not to take pictures and actually harassed prosecutors and Journalists in the court premises. He therefore calls on the Lagos State Legislators to review the State law and firm it up to make it unlawful for anyone to violate the rights of others in Court premises while rendering their professional services. In a case like this, enforcement must always be in place. We must rapidly begin the shift from “people acting under the influence of pittance” to principled oriented society. The giant triplets of materialism, thuggery, and publicly hauling abuses on those genuinely rendering services to the nation because of the pittance given to people must be conquered. This is an act the State must embark on quickly to awaken the dozing soul of Nigeria before it is too late.

By Lanre Banjo, Ogun State Governorship Candidate of the NCP 2003 & 2007.