Posted by Jude Owuamanam, Jos on
The Plateau State House of Assembly has finally bowed to pressure to investigate allegations of money laundering against the Governor, Chief Joshua Dariye.
The Plateau State House of Assembly has finally bowed to pressure to investigate allegations of money laundering against the Governor, Chief Joshua Dariye.
The House, at its sitting on Tuesday, set up an eight-member committee headed by the Deputy Speaker, Alhaji Zumunta Musa, to investigate the charges against the governor.
The committee has two weeks to submit its report.
Although the House had rebuffed previous attempts to probe Dariye over the incident, our correspondent gathered some courts in Abuja and Kaduna made a U-turn following a letter to it by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
The letter was a follow-up to an earlier one on the subject by the former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Akin Olujinmi (SAN).
However, in a reply to the minister, the lawmakers dared him to bell the cat by releasing the assets and liabilities of the members of President Olusegun Obasanjo's cabinet.
The Speaker, Mr. Simon Lalong, who presided over Tuesday's session, however, told members that the EFCC's letter contained the same allegations of money laundering against the governor by the Metropolitan Police, adding that the decision to set up the committee was based on the powers vested on him by the constitution.
Though he said he would read the contents of the letter on the floor of the House, he refused to do so on the grounds that the authenticity of the letter was in doubt as the contents were incomplete.
Lalong said that seven pages were missing from the document, which was torn before it got to him, while the seal of the letter had also been broken.
Following the flaws in the letter, the House unanimously recommended that while the members should take the report seriously, it should probe the report.
All efforts to get a copy of the EFCC's letter from the Chairman of the House Committee on Information, Mr. Gambo Mbilamut, who was mandated to make copies available to the press, failed as he left immediately the House adjourned.
Following the spate of ethnic crisis, which had rocked the state since 2001, Dariye was on May 18, 2004 suspended from office and a six-month state of emergency clamped on the state.
However before the emergency rule could be lifted, Dariye travelled to London where the Metropolitan Police arrested and interrogated him over money laundering charges.
Dariye was alleged to have £10,000 on him as at the time of his arrest
Another £80,000 was allegedly found in his hotel room, while £920,000 was said to have been traced to his London accounts.
Attempts by both the EFCC and the Code of Conduct Bureau to try the governor for money laundering had failed, as some courts in Abuja and Kaduna ruled that because of the immunity he enjoys under the constitution, he could not be tried until after the expiration of his tenure.
THE PUNCH, Wednesday, November 30, 2005