DAILY TRUST
The fresh drama that surfaced on Wednesday between the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and a former governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, is yet to find a landing spot, Daily Trust reports.
The development followed the EFCC operatives’ failure to arrest the ‘wanted’ immediate past helmsman of the Confluence State on Wednesday night when they surrounded the state government’s lodge located in Asokoro in the nation’s capital where Bello was hiding.
Before Wednesday night, when the gun-wielding anti-graft operatives laid siege to the lodge, the former governor claimed that he had finally honoured the invitation of the EFCC over some allegations, arguing that he had nothing to hide.
Our correspondent, who is monitoring the development as it unfolds, confirmed that Bello had since returned to the State Government House in Lokoja, Kogi State capital, where he had been hiding before he came to Abuja to “honour EFCC invitation”.
Sources familiar with the development told Daily Trust that after several hours of laying siege to the Asokoro government lodge, the operatives still failed to achieve their mission of arresting the ex-governor.
Officials from the security agency, while speaking with Daily Trust anonymously last night, because they were not authorised to speak on record, lamented that his arrest proved difficult because of a sitting governor shielding him.
“If not because of his successor, a sitting governor that is providing him cover, we would have arrested him since. This is still in line with a subsisting arrest warrant at our disposal,” one of the detectives of the agency confided in Daily Trust.
When asked to provide more insight, the detective said, “The chairman of the commission, Ola Olukoyede, is cautious of rule of law. He does not want to flout some laws, particularly the law that confers immunity to Governor Ododo. So, that is why there has been restraint.”
The official, while revealing how the former governor escaped again, said the strategy used when he first escaped, was the same method used to evade fresh arrest by the anti-graft agency.
An official in Kogi government house, while speaking to our correspondent via phone, berated the EFCC for trying to arrest Yahaya Bello in a gestapo manner after he had submitted himself to the anti-graft agency for cooperation.
He said, “There is no need for all these gestapo arrests. That is why Oga Yahaya was rescued through the governor’s convoy from gun-wielding operatives that had shot sporadically in the air for several hours at a time he wanted to rest after a hectic day.”
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