The day after we had been castigated by the CEO for running unbalanced stories, we ran a story on the front page from a press statement from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission chief, Nuhu Ribadu. He claimed that a conman had been going around telling governors that they could buy protection from investigation for N1million (about £4000).
Ribadu said one governor, Ahmed Sani Yerima of Zamfara state paid the money, and another Mohammedu Bafarawa of Sokoto called the EFCC and arrested the man.
Now, we couldn't reach either for comment.
Governor Sani's people said he'd travelled to his village and was out of telephone reach. Bafarawa's people couldn't be reached.
But we went ahead anyway.
No writ in the post this week from Gov. Sani's people, so it might have been true. The editor's line on it was "If Ribadu says it, its reliable". But I'm sure he must have a political agenda too.
Oh well.

Talk is still of the Funsho Williams murder. "He's dead and buried" said Charles. "Lets forget about it." But I'm still not sure about it. I'm told that the PDP has virtually no chance in taking Lagos state in the next election. Charles and Labaran told me that the feeling at the last election was that large scale political violence would break out if the PDP were announced to have won either Lagos or Kano.
"It would have been a death sentence for the winner," said Labaran. So the losing PDP candidates retired happy, having squeezed some money out of it. If that is the motivation for getting the candidacy of Lagos, not to win but to squeeze all you can out of it, the murderer must have been someone who had relatively little power in the PDP, or they would have just pushed Williams out by the back door.