Ikoyi cash: EFCC fails to arraign ex-NIA DG, Oke, wife

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Friday failed to
arraign the sacked Director General of the National Intelligence
Agency, Ambassador Ayodele Oke, and his wife, Folashade.

The anti-graft agency had on Wednesday filed four charges
against the Okes before the Federal High Court in Lagos.

They were scheduled to be arraigned on Friday before Justice
C.J. Aneke in connection with the sums of $43,449,947, £27,800 and
N23,218,000 (totalling N13bn) removed by the EFCC from Flat 7B
Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos linked to them.

On Friday, however, the EFCC failed to produce them in
court.

The EFCC prosecutor, Rotimi Oyedepo, who came to court without
the defendants, asked the court registrars to reschedule the
arraignment till Wednesday, February 6.

There had been online reports suggesting that Oke and his wife
may have left the country.

When contacted on phone, the spokesman for the EFCC, Tony
Orilade, said he was on his way to the office and would get back to
our correspondent on the situation of things.

Orilade, however, noted that as of Wednesday, the EFCC had still
not been able to get the Okes.

The charges against the Okes and the sacked Secretary to the
Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, filed in Abuja last
week, were believed to have come as a response from the President
Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to allegations of selectivity in
its anti-graft war.

Though a presidential probe panel headed by Vice-President Yemi
Osinbajo, had since 2017 indicted Lawal and the Okes in its report,
the Federal Government failed to act on the report, until last week
when defendants were charged to court.

The charges came only days after a civil society organisation,
Human and Environmental Development Agenda Resource Centre, wrote
the Attorney General of the Federation, demanding that Lawal and
the Okes be equally speedily prosecuted in the manner the Federal
Government was treating the case of the suspended Chief Justice of
Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen, who was charged with
non-declaration of assets.

In the charge sheet marked FHC/L/499/19 filed against them, the
EFCC alleged that Oke and Folashade of “indirectly concealed the
sum of $43,449, 947, property of the Federal Government of Nigeria
in Flat 7B, No. 16, Osborne Road, Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos,
which sum you reasonably ought to have known formed parts of
proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust.”

The Okes were alleged to have committed the crime on April 12,
2017, contrary to Section 15(2)(a) of the Money Laundering
(Prohibition) Amendment Act 2012.

In the second count, they were alleged to have between August
27, 2015 and September 2015 “indirectly used $1,658,000,” belonging
to the Federal Government, contrary to the law.

In the third and fourth counts, the defendants were alleged to
“directly retained the sum of $160,777,136.85,” belong to the
Federal Government.