By Our Reporters
There is growing concern in Ogun State that operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) who investigated a whistleblower’s tip-off on a grand scheme of financial fraud and forgeries allegedly masterminded by the Speaker of the Ogun State House of Assembly (OGHA), Hon. Olakunle Oluomo, may have compromised to sweep the matter under the carpet despite uncovering evidence which indicted Oluomo and others.
In April last year, the EFCC received a tipoff by a Member of the OGHA, Hon. Dare Kadiri, on the financial misappropriation of funds at the Ogun Assembly through multiple forgeries in which the name of former President Olusegun Obasanjo was vicariously mentioned because several receipts purported to have been issued by a petrol station belonging to President Obasanjo in Abeokuta were used to claim millions of naira from the Assembly’s budgetary allocation.
Following this, the EFCC launched an investigation into the allegation by via a letter it wrote to the OGHA in which the anti-graft agency demanded full financial disclosure from House.
The OGHA sent a reply to the EFCC sometimes in May, 2021.
In June 2021 and further to its investigation of the alleged crimes, the EFCC invited Kadiri, who is a former Deputy Speaker of the OGHA, to its Lagos Office where Hon. Kadiri inspected the documents submitted by the OGHA to the EFCC.
During this inspection, the whistleblower lawmaker found that Oluomo and others in the Assembly used Kadiri’s name and forged his signature to siphon millions of naira from the OGHA monthly budgetary allocation under various fraudulent pretexts.
Kadiri was also shown several purported receipts of the Obasanjo petrol station among the documents supplied to the EFCC by the OGHA, which receipts proved to be fake after further investigation.
Alarmed over this revelation and its ramifications since it also involved the name of a former President, Kadiri clearly told the EFCC operatives that he had nothing to do with the forgeries and the millions of naira stolen through them by the Speaker and his accomplices in the Assembly.
Therefore, Hon. Kadiri urged the EFCC to get to the root of the fraud and prosecute everyone the EFCC would find culpable in the matter.
Having been convinced of his innocence, the EFCC operatives told a shell-shocked Hon. Kadiri to calm down, assuring him that they would investigate the matter, with a view to prosecuting everyone involved in the fraud and clearing both the name of President Obasanjo and Kadiri’s.
As part of the anti-graft agency’s investigation, the EFCC arrested a member of staff of the OGHA and invited a former accountant of the House for questioning. The EFCC operatives also interviewed officials working at the Obasanjo-linked petrol station who confirmed as forged and therefore fake the receipts for petrol purchase supplied to the EFCC by the OGHA.
In September 2021, anxious to clear his name and having waited in vain for the EFCC to take decisive action over their findings, Hon. Kadiri made enquiries at the Lagos office of the EFCC where he was reliably informed that Chairman, EFCC, Mr. Abdulrasheed Bawa, had ordered that the investigation be concluded and indicted persons charged to court.
Kadiri was also informed that the EFCC operatives had concluded their investigation of the matter.
However, the lawmaker was also tipped off that the team handling the case might have been compromised, hence the delay by various subterfuge to charge the indicted persons to court as instructed by Bawa.
Inundated with false accusations by his political detractors in his constituency, including from other lawmakers in the OGHA who continued to insist that he was part of the Oluomo alleged forgeries and fraud, Hon Kadiri instructed his lawyers, last month, to petition the EFCC and urge the anti-corruption agency to charge the case to court so that his constituents would be convinced that he was innocent.
Consequently, in a letter dated 24June, 2022and addressed Bawa by the law firm of Owolabi Dawodu & Co. and entitled “Botched Investigations and Lethargy of Investigation Team CMU, Lagos”, Kadiri’s lawyers wrote:
“We are solicitors to Hon. Dare Kadiri, a member of the Ogun State house of Assembly, Abeokuta, Ogun State; Our client, and the one who passed the original information leading to the commencement of investigation into the sleaze and financial scam that the Ogun State House of Assembly accounts have become.
“Our Client was the immediate past Deputy Speaker of the Assembly and as a principal officer became aware of the several financial infractions being perpetuated by the Speaker, Clerk and their cohorts in the Assembly.
“Consequent to the lead, the commission wrote to the house to ask for its financial records. This did not come until sometime in February 2021. Our client came to the Ikoyi office of the commission in April 2021 only to discover that four (4) full bags of documents were furnished the Commission by the Assembly.
“Our Client reportedly inspected the pile of documents with one Mr. Otitoju, the team leader, Usman Adamu and Other team members.
“Our Client immediately noticed that his signatures on several of the vouchers, receipts and authorizations were forged. Also, several nonexistent and or fake receipts, fake vouchers were raised for trainings and travellings that never happened but were concocted.”
Kadiri’s lawyers urged the EFCC chairman to order a trial of those indicted by his men in their investigation of the grand larceny at the OGHA.
Though the petition has been received officially at the EFCC Headquarters in Abuja, it is unclear if the EFCC bureaucracy has put it before Bawa whose clear directive on the Ogun Assembly fraud case appears to have been taken for granted by his charges.
Sources also said former President Obasanjo kept tab on the case since his business entity was inadvertently dragged into it wrongly.
Obasanjo established the EFCC during his first term in office as president and much of the credibility the EFCC has today were built under the Obasanjo administration, particularly through the dogged efforts of his appointee, Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, who transformed the EFCC into a globally respected anti-graft agency dreaded at home by the corrupt in public office.
Many Nigerians, especially in civil societies, and indeed the country’s international partners in the fight against corruption believe that the EFCC has not lived up to its Ribadu era reputation in the war on corruption since President Obasanjo left office.
A source privy to the inner workings of the anti-corruption agencies who does not want his name in print lamented: “The EFCC is a shadow of its former self. This is not the EFCC we saw under Ribadu; God bless that man. The Nigerian factor has caught up with the EFCC. All they do now is chase around small-time criminals like the yahoo-yahoo boys. The big criminals in government are having it their way under the nose of the EFCC, if you ask me. The cases they charge to court are stuck there for years and people just lose interest, including some of us in civil society.
“I am not making excuses for the EFCC but maybe they have also been demoralized by recent results too, you know, in big cases like that of Orji Kalu (a former governor of Abia State and current senator charged to court for corruption by the EFCC and convicted but recently set free by an appeal court) and that former NNPC group managing director (Mr. Andrew Yakubu charged to court by the EFCC after a whistleblower led the anti-graft agency to a shocking discovery of millions of United States dollars stashed away in a nondescript house in a Kaduna suburb) who were freed by the courts.
“And, personally I also find the pardon President Buhari granted (Joshua) Dariye and (Jolly) Nyame (former governors of Plateau and Taraba respectively successfully prosecuted by the EFCC and jailed by the court) very demoralizing. These things are demoralizing. The EFCC operatives are human too. I mean, how do you work so hard to get such high-profile convictions in court and the President just free them with a stroke of the pen? A President elected on anti-corruption slogan and integrity for that matter!”
There appears to be a slowdown in the anticorruption fight of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, especially since he assumed his second term in office.
Recall that on Friday, 23 July, 2022 Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, alongside the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed and Chairman, Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission, (ICPC) Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, declared that the anticorruption fight had lost steam.
The government officials stated this in Abuja at the launch of the Partners United/Whistleblowing Reporting Portal, organised by the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy, AFRICMIL, in collaboration with the Shehu Musa Yar’adua Foundation.
While the Federal Government blamed Nigerians for losing interest in the anti-corruption fight, members of the civil society movement in the country insisted that compromises on the party of anti-graft officials as now seems the case in the Ogun Assembly fraud investigation have been the bane of the whistleblowing policy of the Buhari administration.
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