EFCC continue to question Ekweremadu over the choice properties he owns at home and abroad

DEPUTY senate president Senator Ike Ekweremadu is still being grilled by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over corruption allegations surrounding several properties he owns as the ongoing drama between the legislature and executive escalates.

In March, anti-graft officials asked an Abuja court to temporarily seize some properties including two houses in the UK belonging to Senator Ekweremadu. According to the Okoi Obono-Obla Special Presidential Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property, Senator Ekweremadu failed to declare of the said properties in his assets declaration forms dated June 1, 2007 and June 1, 2015.

Before then, in February, it had been revealed that Senator Ekweremadu owned two choice properties in the UK with a combined value of £3.73m.  According to the news outlet, UK land registry documents list the addresses of the properties as 52 Aylestone Avenue, London, NW6 7AB and Flat 4, Varsity Court, 44, Homer Street, London, W1H 4NW.

Over the last week, with the senate and the executive at each others' throats following the defection of 15 senators from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) top the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the EFCC has stepped up its pursuit of Senator Ekweremadu. Throughout yesterday, the deputy senate president was at the anti-graft agency's Abuja offices, where it was reported he was taken into custody for severe interrogation.

EFCC spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren, said: “They are asking him about illicit asset acquisitions. We have to make sure he clarified everything."

Apparently, Senator Ekweremadu is being questioned over his failure to explain how he came to own 22 properties in Nigeria, the US, UK and the United Arab Emirates. He failed to declare the properties in his asset declaration form at the Code of Conduct Bureau.

In an affidavit Yohanna Shankuk, a litigation clerk in Festus Keyamo Chambers, stated that from 1999 till date, Senator Ekweremadu had been a public officer and had not earned anything outside his salaries and allowances as a public officer. He therefore, questioned where the lawmaker got the money to acquire such properties.

However, the PDP has decried the alleged harassment of Senator Ekweremadu, opposition leaders and voices of dissent, by the federal government. The party accused the government of misusing the anti-graft and security agencies close to the 2019 general elections, stressing that such posed a grave threat to the nation’s democracy.

Reacting to what it described as Senator Ekweremadu’s witch-hunt by the EFCC, the party called on the international community to rein in the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration before it became too late. Kola Ologbodiyan,  the PDP's publicity secretary, said this is only the newest in the series of attempts to destroy the senator politically in the run-up to the 2019 general elections.

Mr Ologbodiyan added: “It is of grave concern to us that while corruption and corrupt persons abound in the APC, the EFCC prefers to chase after innocent members of the opposition. While the likes of Babachir Lawal, Abba Kyari, Ayo Oke, Kemi Adeosun, Abdulrasheed Maina and his accomplices, Okoi Obono-Obla, and scores of others in the ruling APC, with corruption and fraud-related charges, walk free, the anti-graft agencies have continued in its reckless desperation to harass and dent leaders of the opposition in the name of an anti-corruption war that Nigerians and the world have come to see for what it is- persecution of the opposition.

“We warn the Buhari-led administration to desist from this act of highhandedness and witch-hunt of the opposition so as not to torpedo our democracy. The panicky APC government cannot be allowed to destroy opposition leaders just a few months to the general elections in the name of fighting corruption.”