LAMORDE'LL GO THE WAY OF WAZIRI IF… -BABATOPE

Chief Ebenezer Babatope, former Minister of Transport and Aviation and PDP chieftain, has said that the new helmsman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde, would go the way of his predecessor, Mrs. Farida Waziri, if he failed to learn a lesson from her fall.

Speaking to journalists at a function organized in his honour in Lagos, Babatope who also spoke on the reason he believed the erstwhile, chairman of the EFCC was sacked unceremoniously, said: 'I have nothing personal against Mrs. Waziri.

'But I detest the way the EFFCC, under her, paraded politicians who they say are corrupt. That is the only thing I don't like about her administration.

They were making holding of a public office as a crime. Holding of a public office should not be a crime, if any one is guilty, go through the gamut of the law and deal with them rather than parading them as if they are common criminals when the law presumes a man innocent until he is proven guilty.

'I think in that respect, she made a mistake and that is the only thing she has to blame herself for.'

In what could pass like an advice for the new helmsman of the EFCC, Lamorde. Babatope said: 'He must make sure that EFCC does not embark on assaulting the means of leadership and authority. He must ensure that he organizes better and save methods of parading people who are summoned before the courts. If he goes the way of humiliating those people, he himself will go the way of Farida,' Babatope said.

The PDP stalwart also spoke on the implication of the death of the Ex-Biafra war-lord, Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu. He said: 'The implication of his death is that he laid a solid basis for the integration of the Igbo nation in Nigeria. And I can assure you that we won't have that kind of disintegration again.'