In our review of high profile corruption trials today, two former governors, late Prince Abubakar Audu of Kogi State and Chief Timipre Sylva of Bayelsa State, faced trial for allegedly collectively stealing N12.45 billion from the respective states.
Abubakar, who was facing a N10 billion fraud charge, however, escaped the hammer when he died suddenly barely hours after winning a governorship election in his state.
Meanwhile Timipre Sylva, who was arraigned in a N2.45 billion fraud case, was suddenly exonerated after President Muhammadu Buhari, who he supported in the build-up to the 2015 presidential election, won and became the president.
Read on:
Audu Abubakar – N10 billion fraud
Prince Abubakar Audu was a former Governor of Kogi State who was taken to a High Court in Lokoja, capital of Kogi State, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Monday, December 4, 2006, on 80-count charge.
He was also paraded on July 9, 2007, over corruption charges preferred against him by the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT).
In the CCT charge, Audu was tried on a six-count charge of corruption, abuse of office, conversion of public property to personal and family use.
He was re-arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Monday, March 18, 2013, alongside a former Director General of the Directorate of Rural Development in his administration, Alfa Ibn Mustapha.
They were arraigned before Justice A.O. Adeniyi of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
The duo were arraigned on a 36-count charge bordering on criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of public funds to the tune of N10,965,837,040 (ten billion, nine hundred and sixty-five thousand, eighty hundred and thirty seven naira, forty Kobo).
Audu and his co-accused pleaded not guilty to the charge when it was read to them, prompting the prosecution counsel, Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, to request for a date for the commencement of trial.
He was the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the November 21, 2015 election in Kogi State and was very close to becoming the governor when he died suddenly.
No update is available as to whether the death of Audu signaled end of the case.
Timipre Sylva – N2.45 billion fraud
Chief Timipre Sylva is a former Governor of Bayelsa State who was slammed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) with a six-count charge concerning his alleged mismanagement of N2.45 billion while in office.
The accused is alleged to have committed the offences through proxies under the false pretense of using the amount to augment salaries of the Bayelsa State Government.
The alleged offences are contrary to Sections 14(1) and 17(a) and punishable under Section 14(1) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition Act) 2004.
However, EFCC dropped both cases in 2015 after court dismissed it while Sylva recovered his 48 properties earlier confiscated by the anti-graft agency in September 2017.
In her ruling on the case, Ahmed Mohammed, the presiding judge, described the charge as an abuse of court process because the charges were based on the same set of transactions involved in the N2.45 billion charges.
In April 2015, he was appointed to represent the incoming administration of Muhammadu Buhari in the Inauguration Committee that ushered in the new government on May 29, 2015, co-chairing the committee with Anyim Pius Anyim, then secretary to the government of the federation who represented the Jonathan administration.
Case closed.
Read also:
High profile corruption: Diezani in $20b fraud that dazed even the devil
[This Publication includes part of a compendium by Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA) covering corruption cases as at 22nd of November, 2019.