Peoples Gazette
A police prosecutor that worked with the disgraced police chief appeared before a legal practitioners’ disciplinary panel on Wednesday.
Abba Kyari, Nigeria’s disgraced police commissioner, ordered the immediate diversion into private custody all cash and assets seized from slain abduction lord Collins ‘E-Money’ Ezenwa in 2018, Peoples Gazette can report based on police internal memo and testimonies of a police prosecutor.
The police prosecutor Nosa Uhumwangho disclosed this to the NBA Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) on Wednesday, as controversies have continued to trail how the police managed Mr Ezenwa’s assets since he was killed in 2018.
Gift, the wife of the late kidnapper had accused Mr Kyari and his team of attempting to take over her late husband’s businesses and property as well as withdrawing money from his accounts into their private pockets.
Mr Kyari who is currently under investigation for fraudulent activities had in 2019 denied any wrongdoing after Nigeria Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International in separate petitions accused the Intelligence Response Team headed by the suspended police chief of illegally depleting the asset of the kidnap kingpin.
But Mr Uhumwangho, the IRT legal officer in a 131-paragraph affidavit submitted to the NBA-LPDC on June 30 this year and seen by Peoples Gazette, said he diverted N3,075,300 generated from Mr Ezenwa’s De-Ingrid Hotel and another property at Edingurgh, Enugu into his private account on the orders of Mr Kyari.
The order that the funds be diverted into his personal Zenith Bank account was for “reasons best known” to Mr Kyari, according to the police prosecutor.
Mr Uhumwangho also alleged that Mr Kyari ordered a notorious cultist, Tochukwu Okeke, to obtain rents from Mr Ezenwa’s properties on his behalf. Mr Okeke is currently detained at the 82 Division of the Nigerian army over alleged ties with IPOB gunmen in the southeast.
The lawyer’s testimony followed a petition by a lawyer and human rights activist Justice Ijeoma who accused him of “conduct unbecoming of a legal practitioner”.
Mr Ijeoma in his petition to the NBA-LDPC also accused Mr Uhumwangho of conniving with other officers to illegally convert Mr Ezenwa’s properties.
Mr Kyari had in a letter…
