EFCC lines up Ogun ex-Speaker, Oladunjoye against Daniel

Posted by admin EFCC Politics, Ogun, State News Monday, October 10th, 2011

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has concluded arrangement to enlist the former Speaker, Ogun State House of Assembly, Mr. Tunji Egbetokun, as a star witness in the trial of the former state Governor, Gbenga Daniel, who is to appear in court in the Ogun State capital, Abeokuta on Monday (today).

Daniel is currently being detained by the anti-graft agency on allegation of mismanaging about N58bn, belonging to Ogun State while he was in office as the state governor between 2003 and 2011.

Investigations by THE PUNCH on Saturday, however, revealed that in order to have a veritable ground of ensuring that the former governor did not wriggle out of the legion of allegations against him, the EFCC had contacted Egbetokun to testify against the governor.

The former Speaker led the group of 15 state legislators, which engaged Daniel in a long drawn battle between 2008 and 2010 while Egbetokun himself was purportedly impeached by a group of eight legislators and 14 of his allies were suspended in September 2010.

A source told THE PUNCH that since some of the allegations against Daniel had to do with diverting, borrowing money and spending huge sums of state funds without the approval of the House of Assembly when Egbetokun was the Speaker, the former Assembly helmsman had been considered as critical in the testimony against the ex-governor.

The source said, “If you remember very well, the House of Assembly passed a resolution, directing the state government and the former governor from making further deductions from local government allocations, which the lawmakers described as illegal, but the deductions still continued. That was when all the local governments in the state were being paid N36m each month.

“On account of that, the House of Assembly wrote a petition to the Federal Ministry of Finance, the House of Representatives, and the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission, alleging sharp practices in the state local governments’ allocations and how the then governor was taking several loans without recourse to the legislature.”

A member of the G-15, who did not want his name mentioned as a result of the sensitive nature of the case, confirmed that Egbetokun and another “influential member” of the group had been contacted as “star” witnesses.

“The anti-graft initially wanted to know if the G-15 is still intact since some of the members of the group have defected from the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) to the ACN (Action Congress of Nigeria) and some are still members of the Assembly in the current dispensation.

“So, the EFCC believed that its case against Daniel will be better prosecuted with the help of the leadership of the former Assembly and the G-15,” the source said.

It was also learnt that the EFCC had contacted former Chairman, Ijebu East Local Government, Mr. Tunde Oladunjoye, who fell out of favour with Daniel over the ex-council boss alleged romance with a state PDP financier and the ex-governor estranged former ally, Mr. Buruji Kashamu.

Oladunjoye, who later emerged as the running mate of the state PDP governorship candidate in the April election, Chief Adetunji Olurin, was suspended from office in 2010 following the report of a panel which investigated the December 5 communal clash in Ijebu Ife, where several lives were lost.

It was, however, believed that the ex-LG chairman, who used to be a die-hard loyalist of Daniel, was removed from office, among others reasons, for his insistence that the deductions from the local government allocations by the state government should be stopped.

A source told THE PUNCH that Oladunjoye’s petition actually formed a major source of the ex-governor’s “sins” before the EFCC.

When contacted, the former council boss said, “The EFCC has the right to arraign anyone that it has investigated and discovers that there is a ground to prosecute such a person, but I don’t know if the petition that I wrote has anything to do with the arrest of the former Emperor.”

-Punchwp_posts