*Photo L-R: Mr Ola Olukoyede, EFCC Chairman and Alhaji Yahaya Bello, former Governor of Kogi State*
The tango between the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the former Governor of Kogi State , Alhaji Yahaya Bello has continued to grab the headlines.
It also remains a subject of heated debate among Nigerians of varying professional callings and social classes.
As it has now almost become the norm in Nigeria whenever an individual vacates the office of Governor- thus losing the immunity attached to the office- the EFCC is desirous of taking Yahaya Bello before the court of law to answer to allegations of graft it levelled against him.
That ordinarily should not raise eyebrows since the EFCC is a creation of the law and could be said to be operating within its mandate in that quest. For the accused persons also- Yahaya Bello in this instance- appearing before the court would be an apportunity to clear their names since they always claimed innocence. Like the EFCC which has the protection of the law, those accused a graft by the agency are also presumed innocent until proven otherwise by a legally constituted court of law.
This is the crux of the matter in the ongoing melodrama between the EFCC and Yahaya Bello on one side and the Nigerian Jurisprudence on the other.
The current conduct of the EFCC suggests that it wants to be the acusser and the judge in the case. In doing that, the agency is brazenly engaging in media trial of the accused person. To be sure, Yahaya Bello’s case is not an isolated one. This has always been the style of the EFCC. What is most distressing is that after all its hullabaloo, the acussed persons are in most cases let go by the courts due to lack of due diligence in prosecution by the agency.
Take the case of a former Governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, for instance. The former Governor was harassed and publicly defamed by the EFCC. At the end of it all, the court absolved Daniel of all allegations. He is not just walking around freely today, he is currently representing his Senatorial District in the Nigerian Senate.
There are so many other former governors in this class and one would have expected the EFCC do an introspection, talk less and focus more attention on gathering unassailable evidence against acussed persons before dragging them to court.
The agency is however hell-bent on toeing the same path in its prosecution of Yahaya Bello which some have termed persecution. Or how can one describe the recent press conference by the Executive Chairman of EFCC, Mr Ola Olukoyede, during which he alleged that the former governor transferred $720,000 to the school of his child, American International School, Abuja (AISA), a few weeks before he left office.
The school has since confirmed that the advance fee payment was made in 2021. Yahaya Bello left office on 27th January 2024, after eight of being Governor of Kogi State. How a payment made in the year 2021 could be referred to as “a few weeks before leaving office ” in 2024 certainly suggests that the EFCC is a desperate mood to “nail” Bello by all means. And for those who may feel the receipts of school fees payment paraded by the EFCC was a product of its investigation, the Yahaya Bello Media Office indeed said “Now, let it be known that, contrary to misleading narratives by the EFCC, all the documents published online i.e. receipts and letters, that the EFCC has released online, in furtherance of its unrelenting persecution of the former Governor, are documents filed by lawyers in the suit instituted on behalf of Alhaji Yahaya Bello and others who paid fees for their wards under the Advance Fee Payment Agreement with AISA.” The EFCC has since reconciled into its shell following the revelations by the school and Yahaya Bello on the matter as it has not countered those responses.
The scandalous act of referring to an event of 2021 as “a few weeks before leaving office ” in January 2024 is akin to a previous sloppiness in the original case filed in court against Bello by the EFCC in which the date it claimed he stole a humongous amount from the coffers of the state was months before the man was declared the candidate of his party to contest the election that brought him into office. In another instance, EFCC again claimed gave another date that Bello allegedly stole N80.2 billion just three weeks after he assumed office. This looked bizarre as all the income of the State in the first year of Yahaya Bello in office was N50 billion!
More surprising is the fact that the EFCC has not sent any formal invitation to Yahaya Bello despite all its noise to the contrary. What the agency is banding about as an invitation was a phone call the EFCC Chairman, by his own admission, put across to the former Governor on a case of alleged “stolen” N80.2 billion !
By not extending a formal invitation to Yahaya Bello, EFCC was obviously trying to shield itself from contempt of court as the former governor had a subsisting court order against the anti-graft on this.
Even so, it would be interesting if the EFCC Chairman, who is a lawyer would honour an “invitation” of that format from an agency that had publicly usurped the role of a court and pronounced guilty by itself.
