How newly appointed NDDC Managing Director, Ogbuku was arrested for alleged murder in 2014, arraigned by EFCC for multi-billion naira fraud

SAHARA REPORTERS

In 2014, the Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, Dr Samuel Ogbuku, was arrested for alleged murder by personnel of the Bayelsa State Police Command. Ogbuku was picked up on April 24 at about 7 p.m. along the Igbogene axis of the state capital, Yenagoa after attending a burial at Otuasega area of Bayelsa.

 He was accused of being involved in an assassination attempt on the life of Chief Timi Alaibe, where six persons were killed in Opokuma. Ogbuku spent many months in detention until he was granted bail by a Bayelsa State High Court.

Documents seen by SaharaReporters also showed that the new NDDC boss was arraigned in 2012 before a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja over alleged N19.2 billion fraud.

Others accused include former governor of Bayelsa State and Minister of State of Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, Francis Okuburo, Gbenga S. Balogun, Marlin Maritime Limited, Eat Catering Services Limited and Haloween Blue Construction and Logistics Limited.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had in a suit numbered HC/ABJ/CR/23/2012, claimed that Ogbuku, Sylva and the others fraudulently obtained N4 billion loans from Union Bank under the guise of using them to augment workers’ salaries.

The EFCC also alleged that the accused persons had in the same period converted properties and resources of the Bayelsa government amounting to N2 billion to personal use, and another N380 million worth of government property through a Fin Bank account with number 221433478108 belonging to one Habibu Maigida, a bureau de change operator on January 22, 2010.

It further said that Sylva, Ogbuku and his accomplices on February 5, 2010, converted N50 million of the state’s funds through a First Bank account with number 6152030001946 of Enson Benmer Ltd.