The Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission ( EFCC ) has filed a 10-count charge against Babachir Lawal, former
secretary to the government of the federation.
The charges were filed at a high
court in the federal capital territory (FCT).
Charged alongside Lawal were
Hamidu David Lawal; Sulaiman Abubakar; Apeh Monday; Rholavision Engineering
Limited, a company owned by him, and Josmon Technologies Limited.
The agency also filed four counts
against Ayodele Oke, director-general of the National Intelligence Agency
(NIA), and his wife, Folashade, before the federal high court in Lagos. They
were charged over a huge sum of money found in an apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos.
The development comes one week
after Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo said President Muhammadu Buhari had
prevailed on anti-corruption agencies to prepare criminal charges against Lawal
and Oke.
Lawal’s travails began on
December 14, 2016, when the senate ad-hoc committee on “mounting humanitarian
crisis in the north-east” indicted him of fraud in a contract awarded for the
clearing of “invasive plant species” in Yobe state, through the Presidential
Initiative on Northeast (PINE).
PINE, which was under Lawal, was
at the time unable to account for N2.5 billion allocated to it for the
alleviation of the IDPs’ suffering.
Lawal’s crime, according to the
ad-hoc committee, included his alleged spending of N570m to cut grass.
Rholavision Engineering Ltd was
also said to have got suspicious payments of N200m from the contract.
Rholavision’s bank statements and
other documents obtained at the time had shown how Josmon
Technologies Ltd, a company that got the contract from PINE to clear grass for
N248, 939, 231, made cash deposits of N10m into Lawal’s company’s account 20
times from March 29.
Although the former SGF had
claimed that he resigned from his company on August 15, 2015, and as a result
was not a party to whatever business it contracted, TheCable had also confirmed
from a document from the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) that he was a
director of Rholavision until September 16, 2016, when he wrote to the
commission informing it of his intention to relinquish 1,500,000 ordinary
shares.
Buhari had sacked Lawal on
October 31, 2017.
Too late to cry when d head is off.playing to the gallery will not sooth any nerves now. It is clear that he his is being used as a "sacrificial lamb". Sacrifice not accepted.
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