By Ochereome Nnanna
MALAM Nuhu Ribadu is back on a familiar terrain. His appointment to head the Petroleum Revenue Task Force (PRTF) brings him back to the centre of governance, where he and his 21-member team can now monitor the oil revenues accruing to this country both in the upstream and downstream sectors.

If everything works according to plan, gone would be the days when Nigerians were in total darkness about the ways our oil industry works.

Ribadu’s team was one of two committees set up in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, the other being the panel headed by former Minister of Finance, Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu to oversee the repair of our refineries and ensure adequate investment in our local refining capacity. These two bodies coming straight on the heels of the recent petrol subsidy national strike seem to show how serious the Goodluck Jonathan regime takes the sentiments expressed by the people of Nigeria over the rot in the oil industry as a whole.

When the Ribadu appointment was announced, the engines of the marketplace of opinions roared into life. Everything about Ribadu, the public figure, commands abundance of public comments. Since his brief stint in the camp of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) the furore was bound to take on a more politicised dimension. Some are calling him a deserter or betrayer. Let us dwell briefly on this before getting on.

When President Umaru Yar’ Adua died, Ribadu and Malam Nasir El Rufai, who had fled to America on self-exile, returned to the country. People had expected that their godfather, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, would persuade President Jonathan to plug them into his new administration. Jonathan was equally a beneficiary of Obasanjo’s handpicking of his successors. For reasons yet unclear this did not happen.

As the general elections of 2011 rounded the corner, these two Arewa hotheads lost their patience and joined opposition parties. While El Rufai took to the far right Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in support of Major General Muhammadu Buhari (the man who, as the Chairman of the defunct Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) under the General Sani Abacha regime, empowered him (El Rufai) tremendously) Ribadu surfaced in the ACN.

In  fact, the first time we heard he was now with the ACN he was already handed the presidential ticket of the party! It turned out that the leader of the ACN, Chief Ahmed Bola Tinubu, saw him as the handiest tool to launch his party into Northern Nigeria and to help douse its image as a regional party when it was set to reclaim the South West from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Ribadu was a pawn in the hands of the most successful chess master, Tinubu, during the last transitional politics.

At a point when Tinubu and General Buhari were discussing the still-born alliance of North West and South West against the rest of Nigeria, the calculation was that Buhari would be the presidential candidate while Tinubu or Ribadu’s deputy, Fola Adeola, would present Nigerians with yet another Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket. Ribadu and Buhari’s running mate, Pastor Tunde Bakare, were going to be dumped.

Ribadu went along with the whole arrangement with stoic silence even when the ACN did not seem committed enough to the presidential poll as it was with the gubernatorial.

There was this notion that Tinubu was more interested in recapturing the South West and grabbing as many states as possible, than in the presidency. That was probably why, of all the ACN states in the South West, Ribadu won only in Osun State .

Instructively too, during the campaigns, Ribadu wisely stayed away from insulting the president as some elements in his party and the CPC freely did. This must have counted in his favour when the choice was being made.

At the end of the contest, while the ACN openly criticised the presidential election that Jonathan won Ribadu stayed mute. He simply went home, shut the door and was never seen or heard again in ACN circles. It was a marriage of convenience which ended as all such marriages often do – uneventfully.

I went into all this to make the point that the ACN really cannot accuse Ribadu of “disloyalty” or “desertion” since he never really belonged to them and they never really reckoned with him. When he withdrew from among their company they never really felt his absence.

He has gone back where he belongs. It was on this platform that he ruled the roost as the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in the Obasanjo era. During those days, he was often mentioned along with Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Prof. Dora Akunyili, El Rufai, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo and Dr. Oby Ezekwesili as the people  who  made the Obasanjo regime tick.

Okonjo-Iweala made a persuasive sales pitch for the drafting of Ribadu to head an assignment that would see to the unmasking of the operations of the oil sector. This is a mission that entails taking upon local and international cabals. It is a job for the bold and the brave such as Ribadu. Many members of the Committee (such as Chief Olisa Agbakoba, SAN) have long standing track records of advocacy for transparency and anti-corruption.

After his travails at the hands of Yar’ Adua, Nuhu Ribadu’s rise to fame was truncated. Had he not been demoted during his forced posting to the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) Ribadu would have remained in the Force to vie for the Inspector General of Police posting along with Mohammed Abubakar the current IG. And public opinion would have been on his side.

Ribadu’s new job is, indeed a big break. The sky is now his limit, politically. He can straighten the oil industry and stand in front of the queue whenever the presidency returns to the North. It is to his type that Nigerians will turn when that time comes. Not the Boko Haram sponsors and supporters or the cowards overdressed in babanriga and talking as if high on hashish!