in a statement on Thursday, Yahaya Bello’s media office accused the EFCC of persecution, while accusing the anti-graft agency of filing the same charges in three different courts.
The statement read in part, “The attention of the Media Office of Yahaya Bello has again been drawn to another chapter in the series of the ongoing persecution of the former Governor by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
“Having failed woefully to achieve their motive of national embarrassment with the critical questions that greeted their earlier allegations that the former governor converted over N80bn Kogi State funds to personal use in September 2015, even before he became governor, masterminds of this unending persecution have hurriedly repackaged their script, this time dragging the name of the EFCC further in the mud.
“In a miscalculated bid to satisfy their paymasters at all costs, some desperate politicians have pushed the EFCC to approach another Federal High Court in Abuja, with the same set of questionable allegations without waiting for the determination of the two preceding cases they’ve filed in two different courts simultaneously.
“In this particular one, they tried to correct their initial blunder by saying that about N80bn was now stolen in February 2016, arguably less than three weeks after he assumed office for the first time as Governor of Kogi State on January 27, 2016.
“Looking at the curious and endless scenarios of duplicated charges, cross-charges, counter and frivolous charges, it has become crystal clear that the whole onslaught is nothing but a desperate political witch-hunt of the immediate past governor.
“We want to draw the attention of the President to the fact that the abuse of court processes and prosecutorial powers by the EFCC is assuming a dangerous dimension that the head of the commission might not even have paid attention to. We still want to assume that he is being misled into political persecution, rather than diligent prosecution by bad eggs within the system, working with criminals masquerading as politicians.
“The desperation to nail a man that has done nothing but to raise the bar of governance in his state and provide visible dividends of democracy to all, irrespective of religious or ethnic leaning, has beclouded the rational thinking of masterminds and pushed them into a consistent pattern of raising extremely frivolous and indefensible allegations against their target.”
