This is mind-boggling. Nay, mind-numbing.

A year after being demoted from Nigeria’s top corruption watchdog to a lesser police position to a lowly student - at a policy institute at which he once taught - Nuhu Ribadu was apparently barred from graduating from said institute. The reason? Now that he had been demoted, he should not have attended the school in the first place! Not only that, he and his family were manhandled by security agents to make sure there was no way he could graduate.

Every time I think Nigeria has thrown me every possible curveball, it throws another.

And with each successive shenanigan, the powers that be in Abuja are making it harder and harder to deny that Ribadu really was Nigeria’s Elliot Ness, especially if these reports prove true.

I have many questions, but chief among them: Why would the country’s Attorney General be present at such a meaningless graduation ceremony?

When I met Ribadu last spring, he was serene and introspective. He said he was not concerned about death threats or conspiracies to ruin him. I asked him what he planned to do after his stint at the institute, the poetically acronym-ed NIPPS. “Once I graduate, if they don’t give me my job at the EFCC back, I’ll leave. I’ll take my family and leave Nigeria.” Well, then. So long, Mr, Ribadu. Who knows what you could have accomplished…