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Bello described the EFFC’s onslaught against him as“nothing but a desperate political witch-hunt” of the immediate past governor of Kogi State.” The full statement reads:“The attention of the Media Office of His Excellency, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, has again been drawn to another chapter in the series of the ongoing persecution of the former Governor by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
“We still want to assume that he is being misled into political persecution rather than diligent prosecution by bad eggs within the system, working with criminals masquerading as politicians.” Bellos’s Media Office stressed that the former government has done nothing wrong but rather has raised the bar of governance in Kogi State high.
“But the desperation by the frustrated political forces and ethnic chauvinists in the State and other unpatriotic elements outside the State, who are so determined to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it, couldn’t make them care about facts and figures in their contrived compendium of falsehoods and fake allegations.
“The same Okutepa SAN is EFCC’s Lawyer in the civil suit filed against the EFCC by H.
E Yahaya Bello and is aware of the interim order of the Court issued against his Client restraining it from arresting, inviting and prosecuting him pending the determination of the suit before the Court.
“Looking at the curious and endless scenarios of duplicated charges, cross-charges, counter and frivolous charges by the EFCC against former Governor Yahaya Bello, it has become crystal clear that the whole onslaught is nothing but a desperate political witch-hunt of the immediate past Governor of Kogi State.
“Having failed woefully to achieve their motive of national embarrassment with the critical questions that greeted their earlier allegations that the former Governor converted over N80bn Kogi State funds to personal use in September 2015, even before he became Governor, masterminds of this unending persecution have hurriedly repackaged their script, this time dragging the name of the EFCC further in the mud.
“In a miscalculated bid to satisfy their paymasters at all costs, some desperate politicians have pushed the EFCC to approach another Federal High Court in Abuja, with the same set of questionable allegations without waiting for the determination of the two preceding cases they’ve filed in two different Courts simultaneously.
The statement obtained by Channels Television added:“The desperation to nail a man that has done nothing but to raise the bar of governance in his State and provide visible dividends of democracy to all, irrespective of religious or ethnic leaning, has beclouded the rational thinking of masterminds and pushed them into a consistent pattern of raising extremely frivolous and indefensible allegations against their target.
“The team of ‘Almighty Strategists’ obviously had to change the initial September 2015 date to avoid the backlash the initial cooked-up charges brought on the Commission, but they again failed to cover the blind conspiracy of vendetta in the so-called allegations.
“Beyond these, the EFCC is aware of a restraining order on it by a Court of competent jurisdiction against any arrest, persecution, prosecution or any form of harassment against the former Governor, which has not been vacated, yet the agency persists in the same prohibited acts.
“In this particular one, they tried to correct their initial blunder by saying the about N80 billion was now stolen in February 2016, arguably in less than three weeks after he assumed office for the first time as Governor of Kogi State on January 27, 2016!.
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