THE Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is expected to take the Speaker of the Ogun State House of Assembly, Olakunle Oluomo, to court today on an 11-count charge bordering on allegations of fraud and forgery.
The EFCC arrested Oluomo on Thursday, September 1, 2022 at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, and took him to its Lagos office, where he was detained until he was released over the weekend on administrative bail.
The ICIR gathered from a reliable source in the EFCC that the agency had invited Oluomo five times over the last one year for questioning on allegations against him and the Ogun State House of Assembly on issues of, initially a N1 billion fraud, and forgery of documents.
The source said EFCC investigations uncovered that the sum involved in the alleged fraud could actually be as high as N2.5 billion.
The Ogun House Speaker had written to Oluomo late last year reauesting him to avail it of information on all budget appropriations and allocations of the House from May 30, 2015.
But the House instead filed a suit dated January 14, 2022 against the EFCC at the Federal High Court, Abeokuta.
In the suit, the Assembly accused an impeached Deputy Speaker of the House, Oludare Kadiri, of “using an official of the anti-graft agency to get information given to the agency under confidentiality leaked with the purpose of smearing the image of the House in the media.”
The Assembly said it had evidence that Kadiri was using an official of the agency to implicate the House at all cost, saying he was “arranging clandestine meetings” between an EFCC agent and the invited officials of the House.
The Assembly stated that since the EFCC refused to provide it with a copy of the petition submitted to it accusing the House of fraud, it was left with no other option than to sue the EFCC and Kadiri “for bias and conspiracy to impugn the House.”
The Assembly requested an order of interlocutory injunction pending the hearing and determination of its substantive suit restraining the EFCC from taking further steps, including but not limited to “inviting, interrogating, imposing obligations and demanding or requiring attendance of the plaintiffs/applicants in connection with the criminal allegation made by the 2nd defendant/respondent against the plaintiff.”
The Assembly also sought alternatively an interlocutory injunction directing the defendants (EFCC and Kadiri) to maintain the status quo as at December 1, 2021; and to stay all actions relating to the criminal investigation pending the hearing and determination of the substantive suit it had filed.
But the EFCC source said no court had stopped the anti-graft agency from arresting and prosecuting Oluomo, and after inviting him to answer some questions on the allegations many times, but he refused to honour the invitations, the agency had no option but to arrest him.
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