Former state governors are plotting to
infiltrate the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission by influencing
the postings of some security operatives, who once worked with them
during their tenure as governors, to the anti-graft agency, naijatonic can report.
Majority of the former governors are
either currently undergoing investigations or had been arraigned by the
anti-graft agency for alleged corruption.
The former governors, it was gathered,
having failed to get the commission to either drop the cases against
them or to frustrate the cases in courts, had come up with another
strategy to make sure that they got hold of key aspects of the
commission.
It was learnt that the ex-states’ chief
executive officers had started lobbying the police authorities and the
Police Service Commission to post their former police aides to the EFCC
as investigators.
The Acting Chairman of the commission,
Mr. Ibrahim Magu, was said to have been surprised to discover that a
former Aide-De-Camp to an ex-governor from a North-Central, who is
undergoing trial for alleged corruption, was working at a sensitive
position in the commission.
The aide, a Superintendent of Police (name withheld), was posted to the commission and was made an investigator.
When Magu was said to have learnt of the
officer’s past, and since his immediate boss was undergoing trial for
alleged corruption, the chairman was said to have ordered that the
affected officer be transferred to the Police for reassignment.
Though the operative was not queried for
any misconduct, the commission was said to have been worried that the
police officer could be used by his immediate boss to truncate the case
against him.
A very reliable officer at the
commission said, “The commission was surprised to know that such
officer, who was just leaving such a position, would find his way to
such a sensitive post.
“There’s no way your former boss, whom
you have probably been loyal and still loyal to, could be undergoing
trial for corruption and you will help in nailing him.
“That’s why we have to send the officer packing and we have no regret in doing that.”
Because of the discovery, it was
gathered that the commission was planning an overhaul of its
investigators by carrying out discreet investigations about their past.
“We are investigating them in order to
make sure that our officers and investigators are above board and have
nothing to do with those being prosecuted or investigated for now,” a
source at the commission said.
One of our correspondents gathered on
Monday that the anti-graft agency was working on the theory that since
there were many former governors still being tried by the EFCC, many of
the accused persons might have influenced the postings of their
loyalists, especially security operatives, to the commission.
It was learnt that the agency, after
detecting the SP planted by a former governor of one of the states in
the North-Central, had begun discrete investigations into its
operatives, with a view to uncovering some who might have been used to
infiltrate the agency by suspected looters.
Meanwhile, the Abuja Division of the
Court of Appeal will, in October, after resuming from its annual
vacation, hear the appeals filed by Senate President Bukola Saraki and a
former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.).
While Saraki is challenging his trial
before the Code of Conduct Tribunal, Dasuki had instituted a suit at the
Federal High Court, Abuja, in connection with his trial for alleged
money laundering and illegal possession of firearms.
The Justice Abdu Aboki-led five-man panel of the appeal court on Monday fixed October 6 for hearing in Saraki’s case.
The panel, however, said it would fix
hearing date for Dasuki’s appeal after the Court of Appeal resumed from
its annual vacation late September, when all the processes in respect of
the cases, should have been filed.
When the appeal by Saraki was called on
Monday, his lawyer, Chief Kanu Agabi (SAN), urged the court to adjourn
the case till after vacation so that the justices would not have to be
bothered about writing a judgment during their vacation, beginning next
week.
Counsel for the prosecution, the
respondent in the appeal, Mr. Rotimi Jacobs (SAN), opposed the
application for adjournment, saying he was ready to proceed with the
hearing subject to the convenience of the panel members.
He said with Monday making the third
time Saraki’s lawyers would ask for adjournment in the hearing of the
appeal, it would be in the interest of justice to stop granting the
appellant the indulgence of further adjourning the case.
Jacobs, however, agreed to the
adjournment after he saw that the Justice Aboki–led panel was more
disposed to hearing the appeal after the court’s vacation.
The lawyers to the parties later agreed on October 6 for the hearing.
Saraki is being prosecuted before the
CCT on 16 counts of false and anticipatory declaration of assets which
he allegedly made between 2003 and 2011 when he served as Governor of
Kwara State.
Saraki is, by his appeal, challenging
the jurisdiction of the CCT to try him, on many grounds, including that
he was not invited by the Code of Conduct Bureau to deny or clarify the
discrepancies in the asset declaration forms before he was charged
before the CCT.
Dasuki, on his part, appealed against
the ruling of Justice Adeniyi Ademola of a Federal High Court in Abuja,
dismissing his complaint that his detention was a violation of the
ruling of the court granting him bail.
Dasuki is being prosecuted before the Federal High Court on four counts of illegal possession of firearms and money laundering.
Before adjourning the case, the court
granted an application moved by Dasuki’s lawyer, Mr. Adedayo Adedeji,
for the regularisation of his client’s appellant’s brief of argument.
The court struck out the respondent’s
brief filed by the prosecution following an application by its lawyer,
Chief Okoi Obono-Obla, to withdraw it.
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