‘’Tony Bliar did extremely well for Africa. When he was Prime Minister I could remember some of the basic things that he did. He supported this commission for Africa and he did extremely well in terms of articulating the problems of Africa. He did many things than any other British PM for us. At the time when I was working as the chairman of the EFCC, we got the greatest support from his administration.’’

The former Chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) told the ‘Tea Break’ program on United Nations Radio in Sierra Leone earlier on Tuesday from US were he is living in self exile.

Ribadu served Nigeria as the Chairman for the EFCC, a body which is set up to fight corruption in one of Africa’s most corrupt nations. He was later declared wanted by the Nigerian Police for related corruption a charge he still continues to deny.

He left Nigeria for self exile abroad and has not been showing up in public for quite a while. Ribadu said he hopes to return to Nigeria very soon “I look forward to going back to Nigeria. I’ve been away for well over a year now. My hope and my prayer everyday is for an opportunity to get back to my country” he said.

Making a comparison between Africa and the West in terms of corruption, Ribadu said: “You would see what resources can do for a country. Most of the developed countries used their own resources both human and capital in their best interest. The entire money that was pump into Europe at the end of the Second World War is just a fraction of what you could say Nigeria earn but look at what is happening there today” he charged.

He continued: “In our own case, Money that went into wrong hands, money that went into wrong direction and end up creating more problems for us. We never used it for infrastructural development; we never use it to ensure that we have a strong educational background to help us move forward. We never used it to address fundamental issues like health, like power and up till now Nigeria is struggling to address basic needs like electricity, water and things like that”.

Ribadu said further “they don’t have corruption here my Brother, not at all. They do not have people who steal as their own senators and even if they have one or two from time to time, their system has been able to pick them out and bring them to justice. What are we talking about corruption? Resources and public money belonging to states is diverted for something different apart from being used for the common good of all.

You don’t tell me there is any American president who has taken billions. You will not tell me that any American president has gone to the treageri to take money and converted to other use. No! Please for God sake.”

You don’t see those things happening in their own state or even their local government. When it comes to Africa go and see what officials are doing, go and see…Anybody with an opportunity will make it into a private thing, people turn governments into a private enterprise.”

Explaining the Nigeria’s Take Back Petition, Ribadu said they want to “Take back Nigeria from those who mismanage it, the very few people who refuse to allow us develop. Nigerians are saying that enough is enough we want a change, we want to take our own destiny into our own hands, we want to start writing our own history. We will not continue to allow few individuals to do what they like with our lives.

Everybody is taking about it, people are tired. We want to start doing things properly and correctly, we want to have law and order, we want to stop the killings, we want to stop this conflict, we want to bring justice to our own people, we want to start living like the rest of the world were things are working. Everybody is talking about it and that is how it is going to happen. It looks like we are waking up now, we are saying that enough is enough we can’t just continue like that.”