NIA to sell Ikoyi apartment EFCC discovered $43.4m

The Nation reports that apartment 7B in Osborne Towers where the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)discovered $43.4m may be sold.

NAIJ.com gathered that a Presidential Investigative Committee is probing the suspended Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Amb. Ayo Oke, over the cash and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, for a N200million contract awarded to a company, Global Vision Limited, linked with him.

It was learnt that a directive had been given to the agency to put the apartment in the property market.

The outcome of the Osinbajo Committee’s report will determine whether or not the EFCC has any further role to play on the seized $43.4 million and the N200 million alleged contract scandal.

A source in the anti-graft agency said: “Once the report is submitted to President Muhammadu Buhari, whatever we should do will be communicated by the Presidency through the committee.

“If any public officer will further be investigated or prosecuted, it is the committee which will determine the next step.

“So far, it is becoming clearer that more public officers might have cases to answer.”

However a court in Lagos state has ordered that the $43,449,947, £27,800 and N23,218,000 recovered by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) from an apartment in the Ikoyi area of the state be temporarily forfeited to the Nigerian government.

In a ruling on Thursday, April 13 afternoon, Justice Muslim Hassan of the Federal High Court in Lagos ordered that the funds be handed over to the Federal Government for now.

Oke had claimed that the NSA was in the picture of the seized $43.4 million, which he said was part of a $289 million Special Intervention Funds.

A source said: “When Oke appeared before the committee, he repeated all these official procedures in the presence of the NSA who did not make any comments.

“It is on this basis that Oke told the committee that the NSA knew about the $43.4m cash. And there has been pressure on the committee to ask NSA to step aside.”

The source said: “Some forces are just eager to drag the NSA into this crisis without taking note of the fact that he had nothing to do with it.

“The NSA can even be described as the whistle-blower. He was mandated by President Buhari to raise a committee to probe arms procurement. It was the committee which actually detected that $289 million extra-.budgetary cash was allocated to NIA.

“The NIA DG wrote the NSA after the arms probe panel made the discovery. It was not as if it was a willing thing.

“The President put the NSA on Osinbajo panel because he has a comprehensive report and deep knowledge of the funds disbursed through the Central Bank of Nigeria, NNPC accounts and other agencies.

“When the government read the report of the NSA/NIA DG ‘clash’, it was strange because NSA was never a party to the cash haul at Osborne Towers.

“And what is being investigated is not the $289 million per se but $43.4 million found in the apartment in Osborne Towers.

“The Presidency has made up its mind that the NSA will serve on the Osinbajo panel to the end.”