The Director of Media and Publicity of the Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Organisation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, has vowed to defend the corruption allegation against him.
Fani-Kayode, who is a former minister of aviation, was reacting to the statement by a Lagos lawyer, Mr. Festus Keyamo that he was not qualified to be in President Jonathan Goodluck’s campaign team because of a pending fraud case against him.
Fani-Kayode is currently being prosecuted by the EFCC for alleged corruption while in office.
Keyamo, who is the prosecutor in the matter, in the statement, which he issued on Sunday, said with Fani-Kayode’s appointment, President Jonathan had shown that he was not interested in fighting corruption.
He, therefore, asked Nigerians to reject Jonathan during the February 14 presidential election.
But in his reaction in Abuja on Monday, the ex-minister, in a statement signed by his Special Assistant on Media, Mr. Sufuyan Ojeifo, said he was waiting for the next adjourned date of his trial to clear himself.
Ojeifo said, “They initially claimed that he (Fani-Kayode) stole N19.5bn of the Aviation Intervention Fund but this was thrown out by the courts for want of evidence.
“After that, in 2008, Keyamo filed a bogus 47-count money laundering on behalf of the Farida Waziri-led EFCC in which he claimed that Chief Fani-Kayode had laundered N200m.
“In 2014, he reduced it to a 40-count charge and reduced the amount that was allegedly laundered from N200m to N99m. Earlier this year, 38 of those 40 counts, which collectively represented N97m, were thrown out by the court for want of evidence.
“The remaining two counts, which represent N1m each, will be defended on February 23rd and 24th. Chief Fani-Kayode looks forward to that date because he is innocent and he has every confidence in God and the Nigerian judiciary”.
Fani-Kayode said that what people like Keyamo failed to appreciate was that the days of prosecuting people on the pages of newspapers without any hard evidence and trying to intimidate innocent people with the EFCC, were long over.