The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) has filed a 10-count charge against the immediate past Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal at the high court in the Federal Capital Territory, Igberetvnews reports.
Igberetvnews gathered that the anti-graft agency also filed a 4-count criminal charge against a former Director -General of the National Intelligence Agency , Ayodele Oke, and his wife , Mrs. Folashade Oke at the Federal high court in Lagos on Wednesday. They were charged over a huge sum of money found in an apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos.
Charged alongside Lawal were Hamidu David Lawal; Sulaiman Abubakar; Apeh Monday; Rholavision Engineering Limited, a company owned by him, and Josmon Technologies Limited.
The development comes one week after Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo said President Muhammadu Buhari had prevailed on anti-corruption agencies to prepare criminal charges against Lawal and Oke.
Lawal’s travails began on December 14, 2016, when the senate ad-hoc committee on “mounting humanitarian crisis in the north-east” indicted him of fraud in a contract awarded for the clearing of “invasive plant species” in Yobe state, through the Presidential Initiative on Northeast (PINE).
PINE, which was under Lawal, was at the time unable to account for N2.5 billion allocated to it for the alleviation of the IDPs’ suffering.
Lawal’s crime, according to the ad-hoc committee, included his alleged spending of N570m to cut grass .
Rholavision Engineering Ltd was also said to have got suspicious payments of N200m from the contract.
Rholavision’s bank statements and other documents obtained by Igberetvnews at the time had shown how Josmon Technologies Ltd, a company that got the contract from PINE to clear grass for N248, 939, 231, made cash deposits of N10m into Lawal’s company’s account 20 times from March 29.
Although the former SGF had claimed that he resigned from his company on August 15, 2015, and as a result was not a party to whatever business it contracted, Igberetvnews had also confirmed from a document from the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) that he was a director of Rholavision until September 16, 2016, when he wrote to the commission informing it of his intention to relinquish 1,500,000 ordinary shares.
President Muhammadu Buhari had, in October 2017 , sacked Lawal and Oke following a report of investigations by a panel headed by Vice- President Yemi Osinbajo, into allegations of fraud leveled against them.
The charges against the duo are coming over 15 months after they were sanctioned by the President.
