?Former governors on the corruption list of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, would, on conviction, be clamped in jail and would not be granted the reprieve of plea bargaining, the commission has declared.
The commission has, meanwhile, confirmed that it has placed former Gombe State governor Danjuma Goje on its “watch list”. It also confirmed that ex-governors of Oyo, Ogun and Nasarawa states Adebayo Alao-Akala, Gbenga Daniel and Aliyu Akwe Doma might be arraigned in court tomorrow.?
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The watch list, by implication, is a collaborative call on all security agencies to man the borders to ensure that former governor Goje, who is a currently a senator, is nabbed and prosecuted for alleged official graft.
The spokesman of the commission, Mr. Femi Babafemi, confirmed the development to LEADERSHIP SUNDAY in a phone interview.
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The arrest of former governor Akwe Doma, LEADERSHIP SUNDAY learnt, was prompted by an earlier petition by the present governor of Nasarawa state, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, alleging that the ex-governor had stolen over N17 billion, which was a part of an intervention fund shared between Plateau and Nasarawa states.
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Al-Makura had, in an earlier interview with newsmen, alleged that the said “share” of the state from the fund was later discovered to be too high and a refund of part of it to Plateau State became necessary, which may have prompted the petition against his predecessor to the EFCC.
According to him, the state has been paying the balance due to Plateau State government from its meagre N2.1billion monthly federal allocation. ? ? ??
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But on whether the commission would grant the former governors a plea bargain, as they did in the case of others in the past, Babafemi responded in the negative. ?“No, there will be no plea bargain for the former governors,” he said.
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The EFCC spokesman explained that “the watch list is a security code name for getting other security agencies on the alert to prevent the accused ex-governors from going out of the country through the borders”. ?“When you are placed on a security watch list, it is to enable other security agencies within the country or at the borders to be on standby and alert, so that they can look out for such suspect for possible arrest,, he explained.?
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In his reaction to the issue, a lawyer, Mr. Sebastine Hon (SAN), hailed the decision of the EFCC, calling on trial judges not to frustrate the anti-graft agency’s chairman Farida Waziri’s efforts to prosecute the former governors.
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“ I will commend the EFCC for taking those proactive steps of arresting those governors and placing the former governor of Gombe State, Danjuma Goje, on the watch list,” he said. “Those that have been critical of Mrs. Waziri’s EFCC should know that she is not there for a tea party. It has been my position that security should be on alert to stop these ex-governors from going out of the country. Before she carried out this action against the ex-governors, I believe, she would have carried out very thorough investigations.”
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He, however, warned judges who may want to frustrate the trial of the former governors to give justice a chance. “I would want to see a situation where the justice system will harp on this ground-breaking decision of the EFCC under Mrs. Farida Waziri to ensure these alleged thieving ex-governors are served justice”, he said.
He, however, warned that the EFCC must not return to the Nuhu Ribadu-led EFCC that, according to him, was a mere witch-hunt agency that was given more to sensation than concrete results. “I don’t want us to go back to the Nuhu Ribadu era of just arresting suspects without due process.”
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