Nigeria News
EFCC Refutes Claims Of Yahaya Bello Facing Media Trial
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has refuted allegations that its Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, subjected the former governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, to a media trial.
Naija News recalls that Olukoyede had organized a press conference where he revealed that Bello had transferred $720,000 from the government’s account to a bureau de change before leaving office to pay his child’s school fee in advance.
The EFCC Chairman also alleged that the former governor invited the anti-graft agency to his village for interrogation.
However, a former Vice President of the ECOWAS Court of Justice, Prof. Nwoke Chijioke, criticized Olukoyede’s press conference approach, arguing that it was improper and unjust for a trial.
Chijioke said, “The EFCC chairman’s press conference of yesterday was really uncalled for. That is an unfair trial. All these challenges are because of what I would call a media trial.”
In response, the EFCC spokesperson, Dele Oyewale, asserted that Olukoyede’s revelations did not violate any rule.
Oyewale said, “There is nothing the chairman said on Tuesday that was not already in the public domain.
“Also, we have filed our processes, and everything is before the court, so the chairman did not say anything that is not already in public domain.
“The chairman himself is a lawyer, and he knows his onions. Everything he said was within his rights as the Chief Executive Officer of the EFCC.”
Meanwhile, a former spokesman for the defunct Atiku-Okowa Presidential Campaign Council, Daniel Bwala, has berated the EFCC for giving special privileges and respect to the former governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, unlike the Nigerian crossdresser, Idris Okuneye, popularly known Bobrisky, who was recently convicted and sentenced for publicly abusing the naira.