Farida Waziri denies writing Obasanjo, threatens legal action

Mrs Waziri says she never wrote Mr
Obasanjo seeking help to extend her
tenure.
Former chairperson of the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission
, Farida Waziri has disowned a letter she
purportedly wrote asking former President
Olusegun Obasanjo to intervene to allow
her secure a second term.
Mrs Waziri said the letter was “total
forgery” and threatened legal action
against those responsible for the forgery.
“The letter is a total forgery. I had no
such contact or communication with
former President Obasanjo,” she told
PREMIUM TIMES. “I might consider legal
action against them because what they
have done is criminal.”
In the letter, printed on a purported EFCC
official headed paper, Mrs Waziri
allegedly promised to reward the former
president by turning the EFCC against his
opponents and critics if he would prevail
on President Goodluck Jonathan to
approve a fresh term for her.
The letter was distributed to media
organizations on Friday and has been
published on several outlets. PREMIUM
TIMES did not publish its contents
because it could not immediately confirm
its authenticity.
The emergence of the letter, said to have
been written in the dying days of Mrs
Waziri’s tenure, followed recent
exchanges between former President
Obasanjo and Mrs Waziri over her
credibility and performance as the head of
the EFCC.
In separate interviews in Zero Tolerance,
a magazine published by the EFCC media
unit, Mr. Obasanjo seriously questioned
Mrs Waziri’s competence for the anti-
corruption top job, and accused her of
slowing the gains made by her
predecessor, Nuhu Ribadu.
He also suggested that Mrs Waziri was
appointed on the recommendation James
Ibori, former governor of Delta state,
currently in jail for stealing state funds.
The former EFCC boss denied the
allegations and insisted she did well as
head of the commission. She threatened
to expose Mr Obasanjo’s shady past.
The sender of the letter she allegedly
wrote to Mr Obasanjo made it clear the
note was in response to the threat to
expose Mr Obasanjo. He did not respond
to further mails.
In the memo, Mrs Waziri purportedly said
she could not telephone the ex-president
for security concerns due to the nature of
her request. She then asked Mr Obasanjo
to “compel” President Jonathan to allow
her continue in office, promising to go
after former governor of Ogun state,
Gbenga Daniel, for insulting Mr Obasanjo.
To press her point, she recalled the
treatment of former House of
Representatives speaker, Dimeji Bankole,
by the EFCC purportedly as a reaction to
Mr Bankole’s disrespect for the former
president.
Mrs Waziri disclaimed the content of the
letter and accused a “corrupt US-based
lawyer and a UK-based blogger” of
colluding to forge the letter and
circulating it on the Internet.