A non government organisation (NGO) has petitioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate the immediate past Anambra State governor, Mr Peter Obi, over a money laundering scandal which broke out on Sunday, May 31, 2009, in Lagos.
In a petition dated June 19, 2006, and addressed to the EFCC chairman Mangu, the Oriental Ethics Initiative based in Nnewi, Anambra State, said that despite the fact that the matter was investigated by the Lagos police State Command then headed by Marvel Akpoyibo who was to retire as a Deputy Inspector General, the police authorities have failed to this day to make the findings public, thereby compromising the integrity of the report.
The NGO, therefore, requested the EFCC to investigate the case.
Providing a detailed account of how the scandal broke out, Mr Chibuike Afamefuna Ezeoke, Executive Director of the Oriental Ethics Initiative, stated that one of the police escorts attached to the Government House in Awka, Anambra State capital, suspected that a case of money laundering was going on because the same amount of money was taken in a government House vehicle at the end of every month to the Lagos office of a business established by the former.
According to the petition, the money was religiously taken to Ndibe Obi, the younger of ex governor Obi, at Number 12, Aerodromme Road in Apapa, Lagos, headquarters of Next International, a trading company.
The police officer, continued the petition, suspected that the money was diverted illegally from the state security vote and consequently alerted the state police command which arrested the sport utility vehicle (SUV) carrying the money in the premises of next International.
The NGO claimed that the then governor, on getting the report of the arrest, aborted his official trip to Abuja by Arik Airline and rushed to Lagos where he personally took charge of measures to release the vehicle and the passengers.
“In spite of the governor’s conspicuous role in the drama”, noted the NGO in the petition to the EFFCC, “his government in Awka kept on announcing that he did not visit Lagos on May 31, 2006, but was rather in Abuja”, referring to media publications of Saturday, June 6, 2009, in which the then Commissioner for Information, Chief Maja Umeh, made the claim, describing it as “highly suspicious”.
The NGO recalled that in response to the arrest, the state government claimed that the money was for the payment of a contract for vehicles awarded to one Ejike Onwusogbolu who turned out to be the brother of the wife of the younger Obi.
“It would seem that Mr Onwusogbolu, who is like a family member, accepted to play the role of what is called in modern parlance ‘a fall guy’ by purporting to be the owner of the N255m seized by the police”, observed the NGO.
“It beats the imagination why such a colossal amount of money would be paid to a contractor in raw cash by a government headed by someone who has been the chairman of a new generation bank and a director of another new generation bank”.
Besides, continued the petition, the then state Commissioner for Transport, Mr Emeka Ojukwu, who is the second son of the late Biafran leader, was not aware of such a contract in his ministry, leading to his voluntary resignation on September 3, 2009.
The younger Ojukwu stated that he resigned “in a desperate effort to save the family’s name from being soiled by a serious corruption scandal”.
