Atika Balal, Turaki A. Hassan and Ronald Mutum
8 June 2011
Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, who is in detention of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has been charged before an Abuja Federal High Court for fraud amounting to N894 million.
In the 16-count charge filed by EFCC lawyer, Festus Keyamo, Bankole is alleged to have breached the Public Procurement Act while awarding contracts in 2008, by inflating contract sums.
He is alleged to have conspired with some other persons who are now at large, to inflate the sums used to purchase bullet proof vehicles, television sets, DSTV systems, desktop computers and digital photocopiers amongst others, in the House of Representatives.
Bankole was arrested by the anti-graft agency on Sunday at his residence in Abuja. The former speaker was said to have failed to honour invitations by the EFCC.
EFCC lawyer, Keyamo said the agency intends to file two separate charges concerning the N10 billion loan for the upward review of allowances of the members of the House and the purchase of N2.3 billion Peugeot cars.
Meanwhile, Bankole’s Media Aide, Idowu Bakare, has accused the anti-graft commission of putting intense pressure on the former speaker, who is in its custody, to implicate the new Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal over the alleged N10 billion loan.
Bakare, in a statement he issued yesterday, also accused the anti-graft agency of subjecting the former Speaker to “psychological torture.”
Tambuwal was the House Deputy Whip when Bankole was Speaker for three and half years until last week when their tenure ended.
The statement reads in part: “Information at our disposal indicates that pressure was mounted on him throughout Sunday night to get him to write a statement implicating some members of the House of Representatives.”
Bakare also alleged that, the anti-graft agency has denied members of Bankole’s family and his lawyers access to him since his arrest on Sunday.
While accusing EFCC of “selective persecution’, Bakare said the manner the EFCC has gone about the invitation of the former Speaker and the subsequent media trial and prosecution “with EFCC feeding unsuspecting public with such fiction of the former speaker resisting arrest, under house arrest and attempting to flee the country even as No. 4 citizen of Nigeria shows that the agency is engaged in political witch hunting and vendetta against the former Speaker.
“EFCC went to search his house where his wife and two children were domiciled and harassed the wife, a trend that is now common with EFCC. We believe that the agency should have isolated the wife from such treatment of a man who is still presumed innocent.”
However, EFCC spokesman Femi Babafemi had insisted that the arrest of the former speaker was not politically motivated to implicate other members of the House of Representatives.
He said that “the fact that the investigation that led to the arrest of Bankole could implicate other members of the House is not enough to describe it as politically motivated.”
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