Crime

EFCC Begged us  out of   Detention, Say Arrested   Ekiti  Officials

….Fayose blast agency, says ‘it is a senseless body’


The arrested Ekiti State  Commissioner for Finance, Mr Toyin Ojo and the Accountant General, Mrs Yemisi Owolabi, have disclosed that they could not be charged to court by the anti-graft agency because the petition written against them lacked substance.

They said the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) practically begged them to leave detention when the agency knew that they committed no offence to have warranted arrest, saying “we yielded after much pleadings from top EFCC  staff”.

The duo said the petition written by a former labour leader , whose name was not mentioned,  claiming that the state mismanaged the Paris Club and bailouts allocated to it by the federal government was bereft of substantial evidence that could be used to prosecute them .

They said  the petition  was written basically to tarnish the government of Chief Ayodele Fayose, who had  directed the workers to observe yesterday as a half work day in honour of the freed officials
.

Speaking at a reception organized for them by Fayose after being freed from the EFCC net, Ojo said : “I want to thank our governor and Ekiti people, especially the workers for their prayers. The EFCC found it difficult to prosecute us because they lacked evidence.

“Fayose by his conduct boxed EFCC to a corner, because you need not fear when you committed no crime.  By our arrests, it was clear that EFCC has become an instrument of oppression.

“Some states took more than the bailout taken by Ekiti but nothing was done, what is their interest in Ekiti?

“They asked us to sign so that we can leave the detention but we refused. They started begging us before we left”, he said.

The Speaker of the House of Assembly, Hon Kola Oluwawole and the Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Com Ade Adesanmi , alleged that the EFCC was still planning to arrest more officials, saying the state will resist such attempt with the last drop of their blood.

Oluwawole described EFCC as a meddlesome interloper, saying Sections 126 and 127 of the 1999 constitution empowered the assembly to perform oversight functions on state finances and not the statutory duty of the agency.

Fayose, who described EFCC as a ‘senseless’ organization, promised to buy  new cars for the two officials in appreciation of their loyalty to the state.

“EFCC is senseless body, because if they are not senseless , it should have known that the man who wrote the petition had been sacked because he didn’t  deserve to be called a civil servant. The arrest was  orchestrated by Ekiti indigenes in collaboration with  the EFCC.

“I will never go and beg EFCC, it will  rather beg me. I won’t negotiate anything because I am not afraid of them. There was a subsisting court that barred them from arresting any official of this state, but they breached the law.

“By the grace of God, I will restructure the EFCC when I become the president of this nation. I will reorganize EFCC and make it looks responsible. They detained me in 2008, but I won  them in court , because the most high God was  on my side.

“They said the NNPC Group Managing Director awarded $25b contracts illegally, the EFCC did nothing. Even the presidency has been the one defending him now. What is their interest in Ekiti? Whose interest is EFCC protecting?”, Fayose asked.

Fayose  accused  President Muhammadu Buhari of punishing the citizens of this state illegally, saying : “he has not tarred one kilometer of road since he came into office.

“This was the way the DSS  arrested Hon Afolabi Akanni . They even stopped the state allocation at a time, but whatever they do, Ekiti shall put them to shame”, the governor said.

 

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