The chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, says Yahaya Bello, the embattled former governor of Kogi State, moved $720,000 from the state’s treasury days before leaving office in January.
At an interactive session with media executives on Tuesday, Mr Olukoyede said Mr Bello used the money to pay his child’s school fees in advance.
“A sitting governor, because he knows he’s going, and moved money directly from government to bureau D. Change, used it to pay the child’s school fees in advance in dollars; the total is over 720,000 in anticipation that he was going to leave government house,” said the EFCC boss, who decried that the money was withdrawn from “poor” Kogi State.
He added, “In a poor state like Kogi State, and you want me to close my eyes to that under the guise that I am being used? Used by whom at this stage of my life?”
Mr Olukoyede also disclosed that he had invited the former governor to address the charges against him at the commission, but Mr Bello declined and insisted the EFCC interrogators travel to his village in Kogi State to question him.
He said Mr Bello claimed he could not visit the office over fear of harassment, adding, “I said ‘okay, if that is your fear, I would allow you to pass you through my own gate and accord you that respect and invite my operators and interrogate you in my own office.’”
The EFCC boss, who said he had recovered about N120 billion and secured over 1,600 convictions since assuming office, said he inherited Mr Bello’s alleged fraud case.
“I assumed office here and inherited the case; I didn’t initiate it. But I called for the case file and said there are issues here,” he stated.
“We need the EFCC and this institution to survive. So many people, we have wiped tears off their eyes, people that they have swindled in their millions,” said Mr Olukoyede.
Peoples Gazette reported last Wednesday that officers of the EFCC, alongside armed security personnel, barricaded Mr Bello’s Abuja home, blocking both entrances to his residence at Benghazi Street, Wuse Zone 4, at about 9:00 a.m.
However, the commission’s efforts to pick up Mr Bello were frustrated by unforeseen events. The incumbent governor, Usman Ododo, arrived at the scene and took him away a few hours later with his predecessor.
Mr Bello absconded trial at the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, and the counsel for the EFCC, Kemi Phinro, informed the court that Mr Bello’s absence in court was a strategy to frustrate his hearing.
