The Kogi State Government has described the fraud allegation against the immediate past governor Yahaya Bello, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as being politically motivated to tarnish his reputation.
The EFCC, in an amended charge filed against the Chief of Staff to the incumbent Governor, Alli Bello, had indicted the former governor, who was alleged to have diverted about N100bn months before he assumed office as governor in September 2015.
However, the state Commissioner for Information, Kingsley Fanwo, in a statement sighted by The Herald insists that its funds were not missing, and accused the EFCC of being politically motivated to tarnish Bello’s reputation.
The statement read in part, “As an administration, we inherited the zero tolerance for corruption policy from the immediate past administration of Governor Yahaya Bello.
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“A few years back, we witnessed a worrisome trend and torrent of witch-hunt by the EFCC unrepentantly striving to force corruption claims on our government and its officials. The commission started with claims that it discovered a non-existent fund in an alleged fixed deposit account.
“It eventually shot itself in the foot with a badly scripted skit of conniving with the now discredited (Godwin) Emefiele-led Central Bank of Nigeria to claim that the money was returned to the central bank. This is the height of a witch-hunt and unprovoked attack on the integrity of the government and people of Kogi State.
“For the records, we wish to make it clear that Kogi’s funds are not missing, and that the EFCC is trying so hard to find what is not missing. We, therefore, call on the EFCC to desist from mentioning the name of Kogi State in its ongoing persecution, orchestrated by some political actors in and around the Presidency bent on destroying Bello’s image.
“The amended charges in which the name of the former Governor was mentioned are false, frivolous, fictitious, and far from the truth. They are cooked-up charges that signpost their desperation to give a dog a bad name to hang it. The intention was to sensationalise the whole scenario and promote a media war against the former governor and other officials of the government.”
Fanwo also called on President Bola Tinubu to order a special probe into what was happening in the state to prevent the EFCC from ‘being used as a hired gun by political hawks’.