News broke yesterday that an aide of Ekiti governor Ayodele Fayose, Abiodun Agbele, had been arrested by the Economic and Financial crimes commission EFCC over an alleged N4.7bn fraud.
The EFCC are accusing Agbele of collecting the cash from former minister for Defense Musiliu Obanikoro and giving it to Fayose.
The aide was arrested in Lagos and is being detained at the Lagos office of the EFCC.
In a statement, governor Fayose has given his response to the matter.
He said, Our attention has been drawn to the arrest of Mr Abiodun Agbele by the EFCC and we wish to say that we encourage the EFCC to carry out its investigations without politics as it is being done now. It must be pointed out that at no time was Mr Abiodun Agbele invited by the EFCC, and if he had been invited, he would have honoured the invitation. Therefore, there is nothing to celebrate in his arrest if it is not political.
As already pointed out, Governor Ayodele Fayose does not have anything to do with any fund from the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA). He has stated how his election was funded and Zenith Bank that he said funded his election has not denied doing so.
Also, the person said to have been arrested is an adult and will defend himself when the time comes. Subjecting him to media trial as EFCC has been doing since the inception of this government will only give our adversaries momentary sense of joy.
We await reports of EFCC investigations and we hope that the anti-corruption agency will be civil enough to allow an open and transparent trial in competent court of law and not media trial just to get at Governor Fayose because of his uncompromising stance against the misrule of the APC/Buhari led federal government.
Whatever stories being circulated by the EFCC and its political allies can at best be regarded as rumour as we were all in Nigeria when Nigerians were told that $700m cash was found in the House of Mrs Diezani Allison Madueke and the story turned out to be lie.
Finally, like we have maintained, Governor Fayose will remain resolute in making his opinions known on national issues and will not be intimidated.