We still hold that it is possible the named huge sums and similarly planted others were planted to rope in enemy target(s). It is also possible that the Ikoyi Osborne Towers’ planted money miraculously missed its target(s).
In all, we make bold to say that the deliberate refusal of the present Federal Government to allow for independent, impartial and expert criminal investigations to be conducted or carried out by the office of the Deputy Inspector General of Police for Criminal Investigations and its Fraud and allied departments in the three high profile simulated “looted funds discoveries”; have thrown up the following five critical questions:
(1) Who planted the sum of $2million in the sleeping abode of Hon Justice Ademola Adeniji in the night of 8th October 2016 and where is the money?
(2) Who planted the sum of $9.8million on 3rd February 2017 in the Kaduna house of Mr. Moses Yakubu (former MD of NNPC) and where is the money?
(3) Who planted the total sum of N13.3billion on 12th April or eve of it in one of the flat apartments in Osborne Towers at Ikoyi Lagos and where is the money?
(4) What are the sources of the planted monies or who are the lenders of same?
(5) Do their sources have to do with CBN, presidentially/CBN linked or controlled forex dealers or hired commercial Bank(s)?
We have also identified the following fundamental errors and blunders in the appointment of Osibanjo’s civil probe team:
• The unanswered question: who is the Presidency? thrown in the direction of the current Federal Government by the suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) has messed up and made mockery of the independence, impartiality, genuineness and credibility of the Osibanjo’s probe team and raised a high risk of one being a judge in one’s own case (i.e. possibility of the same or allied planters of the funds and their accomplices being asked to probe themselves).
Demystification of the suspended SGF (Babachir Lawal)’s unanswered question (who is the presidency?) has further thrown up the following possible facts:
(a) the president of Nigeria may be in office but not on seat;
(b) the president is not on seat because he is medically indisposed;
(c) the office of Nigeria’s president is not vacant but its seat is vacant;
(d) there is no Secretary to the Government of the Federation/Federal Government who is the administrative symbol of the presidency; and who statutorily issues appointment letters to such probe teams and who should have specifically and statutorily issued a valid letter of appointment to Osibanjo’s probe team;
(e) the Vice President is not acting as President occasioned by the absence in seat of the president;
(f) the Presidential Special Adviser on Media and Publicity can never and cannot direct the Vice President or constitute a probe team headed by him;
(g) the presidency is currently run by a cabal;
(h) the Vice President arrogated to himself the responsibility of constituting the probe team which he is heading;
(i) due process was not followed in the said appointment of Osibanjo’s probe team.
• The issue under civil probe (Ikoyi planted or stashed funds) must not be treated alone. Other planted funds such as those found in Justice Ademola and Moses Yakubu’s houses and others should be taken together in any government credible criminal investigation.
• The Osibanjo’s civil probe team is an anathema and unknown to Nigeria’s Criminal Justice System and amounts to gross usurpation and undermining of the statutory functions of criminal investigative agencies in the country particularly the Force CID and its DIG-FCID in matters of this nature that borders on fraud and related others.
• Prof Yemi Osibanjo and barely knowledgeable AGF know little or nothing about expert, intensive and extensive criminal investigations and their modern methodologies. Their being senior lawyers notwithstanding.
• Appointment of Osibanjo’s probe team is a sign of total failure of the Nigerian criminal intelligence and investigation system under the present dispensation.
That is to say that these energy wastages and allied costly expenditures would not have arisen if Nigeria has fully or substantially embraced electronic security including footage or LCD/screen/CCTV, camera and computer detective security; which can easily expose the planters of such funds; and give a forensic room for their criminal interrogations to ascertain or establish their criminal intents or otherwise.
• The Osibanjo’s civil probe team can never establish in the course of its civil probe the seven core elements of crime or criminal investigation outcomes: guilty act (actus reus), guilty mind (mens rea), causation, concurrence, harm, legality and punishment.
• The best Osibanjo’s civil probe team can achieve is to establish the act itself, which is already known to Nigerians; but it can never establish the guilty intent or mens rea parented by the guilty act, because it gravely lacks fundamental ingredients of modern criminal enquiry.
For instance, it can merely question, but cannot interrogate!