By Wale Adele, Seyi Gesinde and Kunle Olayeni - 16.09.2006

IBB Vision 2007 national chairman, Alhaji Adekunle Makama, speaking to Saturday Tribune on phone, said Chief Fawehinmi could not claim to be a saint, while he dubbed every other leader as corrupt, adding he has been evading tax payments.

But, while reacting, Chief Fawehinmi debunked the allegation and instead, insisted that it was the former military president who looted the nation’s treasury in a monumental proportion while in office.

Makama said “we make bold to ask Chief Fawehinmi to make publc how much tax he pays to the coffers of government from the sales of his weekly law reports and such other incomes if he is that clean”.

He said while IBB was in power, he allowed Fawehinmi to monopolise the publication of the high selling weekly law reports, adding “even when he was in various detentions, his books were not stopped from being sold.” IBB campaigner insisted that Chief Fawehinmi’s support for the Malam Nuhu Ribadu led Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was niformed by his agency job for the commission, saying he was only rendering service for the money he collected.

His words: we are not affraid by intellectual anarchists like Chief Fawehinmi, we have all it takes to march him. Makama also challenged Fawehinmi to electoral soap box to test his popularity, saying even in his home town, Ondo, a Babangida backed candidate would floor him in a local government contest.

He said when the chips were down, the likes of Chief Fawehinmi could not stop IBB from emerging the next president in 2007.

Fawehinmi also described IBB’s ambition to succeed President Olusegun Obasanjo in the 2007 elections as a ruse, saying as a result of the Pius Okigbo Panel which allegedly indicted the Minna General of misappropriating the $12.5 billion Gulf Oil windfall, he was not eligible to contest in line with the provisions of the 1999 Constitution.

According to Fawehinmi, “every government has always looked at my tax because that was where they felt they could blackmail me, but they were stunned that I’ve been above board with no default in my tax whether at the state or national level.”

“I was the only presidential candidate who had proof for tax for 37 years when I contested election in 2003, though they did not demand for it,” he added.

The Lagos lawyer explained that “in view of the Okigbo report, IBB is not qualified to contest election because, according to the section 137, subs section 1(i) of 1999 Constitution which states that no candidate is qualified to contest presidential election if he has been indicted for fraud by a commission of enquiry or tribunal or arbitrative panel of enquiry, then Babangida cannot contest”.

On the purported missing of the Okigbo report which allegedly indicted General Babangida, Chief Fawehinmi said that he can produce a copy of the report which, according to him, was in 352 pages.

“I have a copy of the report and I am not the only person who have it,” he stated.