EFCC refuse to pay Ikoyi money whistle-blower, calls him mad boy – lawyer

Yakubu Galadima, the lawyer to the whistle-blower who helped the Economic  and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) to recover $43.5 million, £27,800 and N23.2 million at No. 16 Osborne Road, Flat 7B Osborne Towers in Ikoyi, Lagos, has revealed that his client is yet to be given his reward five months after a court ordered a final forfeiture of the money.

Meanwhile on Wednesday this week, Ibrahim Magu, the EFCC acting chairman, said the individual who helped uncover the Ikoyi apartment money had become a millionaire.

Magu spoke at the 7th session of the Conference of State Parties to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption in Austria.

“We are currently working on the young man because this is just a man who has not seen one million Naira of his own before,”Magu told the participants at the conference.

“So he is under counselling on how to make use of the money and also the security implication. We don’t want anything bad to happen to him after taking delivery of his entitlement. He is a national pride.”

However, the whistle-blower’s lawyer told Premium Times on Friday that his client has not received a dime and several efforts to get the money have been unsuccessful.

The moment the final forfeiture was made, I wrote a comprehensive letter to Magu, attaching the judgement, and said court has made a final forfeiture, where is the reward and commission of the whistleblowers?”

Galadima said. “In fact, the letter was addressed to the Acting President then through the Office of the Acting Chairman since the money was recovered by the EFCC. That was the first letter.

“A month later, I wrote a reminder. It was after that reminder that they said we should bring the boy to Abuja. We took the boy to Abuja, he had one on one interface for the first time with the acting president. We went together with the acting chairman.

“The acting president congratulated him for a job well done and that with the money they’ll pay him, he’s now a millionaire. We all laughed.”

Galadima lamented that instead of paying the whistle-blower, EFCC had branded him a mad boy and took him to psychiatric hospital.

“The day we went to the office of the acting president, they gave him a number that he can reach them at any time. So he has been communicating with the acting president. Following the threats, they detailed some SSS to be working around him,” the lawyer said.

The whistle-blower was later taken to the SSS facility at Shangisha, Lagos, and given an apartment.

“Because the guy had always been looking forward to seeing this money and it wasn’t forthcoming, he started shouting. When he started shouting, they said he’s mad, that he’s having a mental problem.

“The SSS people called me and said I should come and carry my luggage. They brought him to the EFCC and abandoned him there. The EFCC people called me that I should come and carry my client.”

On getting to the Commission’s office, Mr. Galadima said he was informed of his client’s mental illness and plans to take him to the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Yaba.

“I said he’s not mad, that it’s because you people are holding his money that’s why he’s reacting this way. They insisted the guy is mad, that theyhave to take him to a psychiatric hospital, they bundled this man. I said ok, if that’s how to prove that he’s not mad, no problem, we went to the psychiatric hospital in Yaba.

“They injected him and said they have to monitor him for a month. They monitored him for a month. The day they were going to release him, the EFCC called me again to come and carry my “critical asset.” This was a boy I never knew from Adam….. I said ok, I went to the EFCC the guy said he’s ok there’s no problem anymore, they handed him over to me three weeks ago. Ever since then, I pay money into his account on a weekly basis for his upkeep.”

Galadima said that contrary to media reports that his client’s commission is N350 million, the correct figure is N850 million

“Because the money discovered was about N17 billion and not N13 billion that is being declared. It was calculated as at the time the money was recovered.”

The Federal Government had in December 2016 adopted a policy on whistleblowing to encourage citizens to report financial and other related crimes to relevant authorities.

According to the policy, whistle-blowers whose revelations lead to the recovery of money are entitled to as much as five percent of the recovered sum.