The embattled former Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs Service, NCS, Alhaji Abdulalahi Dikko Nde will be arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission as the Federal Government may have placed security agents at the nation’s airports and borders on red alert to that effect.
The alert was to place former CG under arrest as soon as he is sighted.
It will be noted that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had trailed the ex-customs boss to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. On Friday, at about 10am, EFCC operatives in two buses had stormed Dikko’s residence at Jabi in Abuja and conducted a thorough search.
Sources within the anti-graft agency said the search took several hours and only ended at about dusk. However, the agents did not meet Dikko at home. The EFCC was reported to be looking for huge amounts of money, in dollars, believed to be stashed in a residential building owned by the former customs chief.
It was not clear whether the EFCC had found anything incriminating in Dikko’s residence. On Saturday, the EFCC had relaxed the siege on the residence of the former Comptroller General of Customs. But a senior official of the commission on Saturday said the EFCC had learnt that Dikko had travelled to Dubai. He said that the former CG of customs would be arrested on his arrival back into the country as security agents at airports had been alerted to do so.
The source did not give the reason for Dikko’s trip to Dubai. He also refused to speak on the specifics of the investigation or the reason for the high-profile raid. It was also gathered that a high-powered delegation of top operatives of the commission was billed to travel outside the country for a mission connected with the ongoing investigation.
The source said, “The commission has information that the man is in Dubai. I can’t say precisely why he is in the UAE; you know that most of our leaders have one problem or the other, medically, which makes them travel out. But we have informed airport authorities in Lagos and Abuja to pick him up as soon as he arrives.