A lawyer for the Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, Uyiekpen Giwa-Osagie, has been apprehended by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
It was gathered that Giwa-Osagie was arrested by EFCC operatives on Monday night for allegedly laundering $2m.
He had reportedly been undergoing interrogation in the custody of the anti-graft commission.
EFCC operatives suspect that the $2m might had been budgeted for vote-buying or to compromise electoral officials.
According to source from the EFCC, “We believe the money was earmarked for either campaign financing, vote-buying or to compromise electoral officials but investigations would show what the money was meant for, the sources and why it was routed outside regular banking channels.”
Commenting on the development, a former deputy spokesman of the All Progressives Congress, Timi Frank, accused the APC, the anti-graft agency, President Muhammadu Buhari of witch hunt.
Frank noted that the arrest of Giwa-Osagie a few weeks after Tunde Ayeni, a former chairman of Skye Bank Plc (now Polaris Bank), was also detained, showed that the APC was desperate to “starve the opposition of critical funding for its campaign.”
He asked the the international community to sanction the acting EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu, for allegedly detaining opposition figures illegally in order to frustrate their efforts towards the forthcoming elections.
“Magu cannot claim to be fighting corruption when the only people he finds to be allegedly engaged in fraudulent activities are key members of the opposition. This is a witch-hunt and highly selective,” Frank added.
“Today, the EFCC is clearly an arm of the APC; no thanks to Magu who has officially pledged his support to Buhari by wearing his re-election campaign brooch on his suit lapel.”