Posted by Horatius Egua on
What has become the biggest scam case in the world is set to join the long list of unresolved high profile cases in Nigeria following the manner in which a principal witness in the case, Mr. Oladipo Ogunseye, was kidnapped by officials of the Prisons Service on the premises of an Ikeja High Court.
What has become the biggest scam case in the world is set to join the long list of unresolved high profile cases in Nigeria following the manner in which a principal witness in the case, Mr. Oladipo Ogunseye, was kidnapped by officials of the Prisons Service on the premises of an Ikeja High Court.
A senior staff of the commission who spoke to our correspondent on Tuesday, in Lagos said he was not convinced that the abducted banker was assaulted and kidnapped by the prisons court duty officer merely for taking the photograph of the principal suspect in the $242million case, Chief Emmanuel Nwude.
"We are suspecting a foul play in the whole thing. We are not going to rest our investigations of the case until we get to the root of the whole incident. If we do not handle this case properly, I can tell you that nobody would like to come forward to stand as witness in our cases. So this is a test case for us," said the official.
The Group Managing Director of the United Bank for Africa, Mr. Tony Elumelu, in a three page letter to the EFCC, said, "It will be appreciated if adequate machinery is put in place to bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice while also noting for your records and retrieval action on the documents collected under duress from our staff."
Explaining the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping of Ogunseye to the EFCC, in a letter dated September 14, with reference number 5/Vol.3/523, entitled Conspiracy, Kidnapping, Assault and Obstruction of Justice, the prisons authorities said the principal witness was not kidnapped as alleged by EFCC but apprehended by the court duty officer and the police for taking an unauthorised photograph of Nwude.
In the letter signed on behalf of the Deputy Comptroller of Prisons by an Assistant Comptroller of Prisons, Mr. Micah Kogi, the service said Ogunseye was "apprehended" and not kidnapped and the document in his possession were "kept in safe custody," and not confiscated.
Part of the four-paragraph letter read "I am directed to refer to your letter of September 13, 2005 on the above subject and to state that this came at the nip of this office's effort to intimate you about one Mr. Oladipo Ogunseye mentioned in your letter whom our court duty staff apprehended at the court premises while taking photograph of one of the inmates, Emmanuel Nwude.
"As we later found that he claimed to be working for EFCC, he was allowed to go for us to verify officially.
"A camera phone and some documents in his possession were however retained for safe custody as he claimed they were for the EFCC."
EFCC confirmed to our correspondent that the original copy of the mandate cared (containing the signature and passport photograph of the customer), account statements and SWIFT Advices in respect of the foreign exchange inflow received by Crystal Bank of Africa in favour of the customer, the personal handset and the passport photograph of the principal suspect from the mandate card confiscated from Ogunseye had been returned.
The source that spoke to our correspondent on the issues said, "We are going to continue to investigate the case until we get the truth behind the kidnapping."
The PUNCH, Wednesday, October 12, 2005