6 months after, Jonathan's ex-aide still in detention

Six months after he was de­tained for alleged money laundering, and theft of pub­lic funds, former Special Adviser to the immediate past President Goodluck Jonathan, Waripamo-Owei Emmanuel Dudafa, is yet to be freed.

 

Dudafa was arrested for the offences by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) last May and has re­mained in prison custody even though a court of competent ju­risdiction had granted him bail.

 

His associates and family members see Dudafa’s ordeal as a breach of his fundamental human rights as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

 

Already, the EFCC has fro­zen the accounts of the four companies linked to him since May when the first suit was filed against Dudafa.

 

Justice Mohammed Idris of the Federal High Court, since May granted bail to the accused per­son but till date the prosecution has not forwarded their report to court.

Dudafa and his four companies are accused by the EFCC of laun­dering various sums of money for former First Lady, Mrs. Patience Jonathan.

 

A twist was however added to the case a fortnight ago when Mrs. Jonathan claimed that the $15.6 million in Dudafa compa­nies’ accounts frozen by the EFCC belonged to her. She therefore sued the anti-graft agency and de­manded N200 million compensa­tion.

 

Mrs. Jonathan alleged that the directors of the four companies named by the EFCC were fake.

The directors are Friday Da­vid (Pluto Properties and Invest­ment Company), Agbor Obaro (Sea Gate Property Development Company), Fredrick Dioghowori (Trans Ocean Property Ltd), and Taiwo Ebenezer (Avalon Global Properties Ltd).

 

The EFCC had arraigned them in the prosecution of companies in court for the forfeiture of the frozen $15.6 million domiciled in Skye Bank Plc.

 

After the charges were read to the accused, they each pleaded guilty to the offences.

But Mrs. Jonathan, in a state­ment issued by her media aide, Chima Osuji, said that the anti-graft agency presented four un­known persons as representatives of the companies, all of whom did not show letters authorising them by their respective boards to rep­resent them in the case.

“It was the former first lady who went to court for the repatriation of her confiscated money when she realised that the EFCC and its co-travellers were playing politics with this issue after she had come out publicly to say that the said money belongs to her and that she has all evidence to prove the sources of her money.

“Till this moment, the EFCC has refused to interrogate or invite her for questioning. This is a clear evidence of the desperation of the prosecution to pull down the for­mer First Lady and confiscate her hard-earned money,” Osuji said.

Mrs. Jonathan expressed doubt on the authenticity of the rep­resentatives of the four compa­nies who pleaded guilty to the 15-count charge of money laun­dering before the Federal High Court in Lagos headed by Justice Babs Kuewumi.

“The biggest twist in court on Thursday last week was that the fourth to seventh defendants pleaded guilty to all the 15-count charges. It is clear that these un­known faces were agents of the EFCC, who have been stage-man­aged and tutored to come to court to complicate the case as a strategy to confiscate her money,” Osuji added