The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has dismissed former Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello’s recent visit to its office as a stunt, claiming he was not genuinely prepared to surrender himself.
EFCC Director of Public Affairs, Wilson Uwujaren, made this assertion during an interview on Arise TV’s The Morning Show on Thursday.
Uwujaren noted that Bello had another chance to appear before Justice Emeka Nwite at the Federal High Court in Abuja on Wednesday, where his ongoing money laundering case was adjourned to October 30, 2024, for a ruling.
“That is enough to convince Nigerians that his presence at the EFCC on the 18th of September was more of a stunt not really that he wanted to abide by the rule of law.
“When EFCC officials went to the Kogi Governor’s lodge to ask him to come back, he would have followed them if he had no issue presenting himself to the commission.
“If he had done that he would have complied with the decision of the court of Appeal which mandated him to formally present himself. That as I am concerned exposed his insincerity in appearing at the car park of the EFCC on the 18th of September,” he said.
He said when the information of Bello’s visit to the commission went viral, the former governor had not even arrived at the office.
“Even before he arrived at the car park of the EFCC, he had already sent out media information across all the platform that he had presented himself to the EFCC and they were even saying he had been detained and that was not true.
“That alone showed us that he had a gameplan. And that gameplan can only be explained by him alone,” he said.
Bello’s media office released a statement last Wednesday that he had honoured an invitation by the EFCC months after he was declared wanted by the commission.
Shortly, pictures of Bello and the current governor of Kogi State, Usman Ododo, at the car park of the EFCC started circulating on social media.
The EFCC, however, denied that Bello was in its custody in a statement by its spokesperson, Dele Oyewale, adding that Bello remains wanted with a subsisting warrant of arrest.
Later that night, operatives of the EFCC besieged the Kogi State Government Lodge in Abuja in an attempt to arrest former governor, Yahaya Bello.
“If he wanted to comply with the law, what he should have done immediately after he arrived at the premises is to go to the security post and tell the security on guard that he has come to present himself. They would have known what they should have done,” Uwujaren stated.
The EFCC preferred 19 charges against the former Kogi governor alongside, Ali Bello, Dauda Suliman, and Abdulsalam Hudu, for money laundering offences amounting to N80,246,470,088.88.
Punch
