Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has reopened money laundering cases involving N853.8bn against 13 former governors and former ministers.
Sources familiar with inner workings of the agency told Punch Newspaper that the cases are some of the high-profile cases that had gone cold in the past which the President Bola Tinubu-led administration had vowed to resurrect, including the recent allegations of money laundering in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.
The affected former governors and ministers, according to the EFCC, include former Ekiti State governors, Kayode Fayemi and Ayo Fayose, former Zamfara State governor, Bello Matawalle, two former Enugu State governors, Chimaroke Nnamani and Sullivan Chime; former Nasarawa State governor, Abdullahi Adamu, former Kano State governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso.
Others are former Rivers State governor, Peter Odili, former Abia State governor, Theodore Orji, former Gombe State governor, Danjuma Goje, former Sokoto State governor, Aliyu Wamako, former Bayelsa State governor, Timipre Sylva, and former Jigawa State governor, Sule Lamido.
A breakdown of the level of involvement of the suspects indicate that Matawalle, who is currently serving as the Minister of State for Defence in the administration of Tinubu, is being probed for alleged N70bn money laundering, while Fayemi, who served as Minister of Solid Minerals Development in Buhari’s cabinet, is being investigated for an alleged N4bn fraud. Fayose, a two-term governor of Ekiti State, is being investigated by the anti-graft agency for an alleged N6.9bn fraud.
Nnamani is being probed for an alleged N5.3bn fraud, Chime is being investigated over an alleged N450m campaign fraud as part of the N23bn allegedly shared by a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, while Adamu is under probe for alleged N15bn fraud.
Kwakwanso is being probed for alleged non-remittance of N10bn pension fund, Orji is being investigated over alleged N551bn money laundering, while Odili is being investigated for alleged N100bn fraud.
Goje is being probed by the commission for an alleged N5bn fraud, Wammako is being investigated for allegedly diverting N15bn; Sylva, a former Minister of State for Petroleum under Buhari, is under probe for alleged N19.2bn money laundering, while Lamido is being investigated over an alleged N1.35bn fraud.6 Diezani is being probed over several alleged money laundering cases running into several billions of naira and millions of dollars.
EFCC sources say that the agency Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, was reviewing all the high-profile cases, and had since his assumption of office reappointed investigators to take up the several probes without prejudice to the suspects’ social or political status.
“The chairman is reviewing all high profile cases, and he has ordered the investigators not to treat anyone differently, especially politically exposed persons, such as former governors and ministers, who were indicted for money laundering,” an insider source told a Punch correspondent.