Ike Abony
16 June 2011
The luxury of receiving all kinds of visitors which the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Dimeji Bankole, had enjoyed since being remanded in the custody of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has been curtailed by the commission.
THISDAY gathered in Abuja Wednesday that the new development is a fallout of the alarm raised by the former speaker’s father, Chief Alani Bankole, that he got intelligence report that plans were underway to kill his son.
Investigations at the EFCC revealed that under the new security arrangement built around the former speaker, close family members, who had enjoyed unfettered access to him prior to his father’s security concerns, now have a herculean task wading through several layers of checks.
Besides, it was also gathered that family members who prepare his food now have to eat with him as an assurance that such food did not come with poisonous substances that could endanger his life.
An EFCC source, who explained the development, said the commission does not want any harm on any of its guests and it also wants to prevent alarmists doing funny things to blackmail it.
The father of the former speaker, Chief Bankole, had on Monday raised the alarm over the safety of his son.
He had alleged that “he has it on good authority that a plot is being perfected to ensure that his son does not come out of his present ordeal alive.”
The senior Bankole made the allegation in a statement by the former Speaker’s Special Adviser on Communications, Chief Kayode Odunaro.
He said: “Unanimous intelligence sources both within and outside the country have contacted him (the father) to reach out to anybody that can help safeguard the ex-speaker while in detention,” adding that his son’s case was “not a judicial matter, but political”.
The father of the embattled former speaker claimed that his sources had pointed out that “the desperate attempt of the EFCC to ensure that the erstwhile speaker remains in detention as even when he secured bail from a Federal High Court, EFCC lawyer, Mr Festus Keyamo, quickly filed other charges and opposed bail while asking the court for a long adjournment to hear the new bail application.”
He called on well-meaning Nigerians to come to his aid in ensuring that his son, “who served the nation meritoriously and has pleaded not guilty to all the charges brought against him so far, is not harmed while in detention”.
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