Former president, Goodluck Jonathan, may be arrested before May 29, considering the level of investigations conducted on his administration, by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission.
An EFCC source said Jonathan may be arrested before the current administration clocks its first year in office.
The source disclosed that the arrest, two weeks ago, of the Managing Director of Kakatar
Engineering and Construction Company Limited, Mr. Azibaola Robert, whom the official described as “closest kinsman of former president Jonathan so far,” was a clear indication that “we are inching close to making former President Jonathan our guest.”
The official dismissed as reckless recent comments by another former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, dismissing the anti-graft agency as a “toothless bulldog.”
The EFCC chief predicted that “unfolding events in the next few weeks will actually confirm whether the EFCC has indeed become a toothless bulldog.”
Said the official:-
“We arrested Mr. Azibaola Robert on March 23, 2016 when he came to honour our invitation. We also arrested his wife, but she has since been granted bail. The following day, we arrested Dakoru Atukpa, Executive Director of his company. As we speak, both men are in our custody and are helping with vital information needed to nail the former president.”
According to the official, Robert and Atukpa were arrested in connection with what he described as “ongoing investigations” into a $40 million oil pipeline security contract, which emanated from the Ministry of Petroluem, but was paid for by the office of the equally detained former National Security Adviser (NSA), Retired Col. Sambo Dasuki.
The EFCC official said the commission was working on a lead that One-Plus Nigeria Limited, Kakatar’s sister company which secured the oil pipeline security contract, may have been a front of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
He said, “Even though One-Plus appeared to have successfully executed the contract, we are interested in details of how the company executed the job, including those who got paid from the $40 million sum.
“Even though we are still investigating, there is sufficient suspicion that both men used One-Plus as front of the former President. The Managing Director of One-Plus has constantly maintained that the company was incorporated well before Jonathan became Vice President, and that it wasn’t a crime to come from Otuoke,” offered the official.
The EFCC official said the commission was unsettled by former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s recent description of the agency as a toothless bulldog, and was committed to taking on persons considered sacred cows just to prove Obasanjo wrong.
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