A United Kingdom-based group, Nigeria for Jutice, Equity and Fairness (NJEF) has alleged that 21 out of the nation’s 36 state governors have foreign bank accounts, even as it condemned allegations of money laundering against the suspended Plateau dtate governor, Chief Joshua Dariye.
Addressing a press conference in Jos on Tuesday, Dr. Jacob Abdallah, who spoke for the group, asserted that they were in the state capital because there are serious issues of fairness and equity at stake in the on-going court cases in Abuja with respect to our governor, Chief Joshua Dariye.”
“I am here to state the facts some of these facts are being compiled in an appropriate legal manner and are to be handed to the appropriate Nigerian authorities in order to assit them in their quest for truth about Nigerian government officials abroad, especially in the United Kingdom.
According to Dr. Abdallah, “the recent shift in the allegations against governor Dariye from being a money-launderer to someone who has not declared that he has foreign account while serving could be due to the fact that the amount found in his account was only about 2,600 pounds.
“Was that lack of declaration sufficient to indict a serving governor to the point o being threatened with arrest, he queried.
Dr. Abdalla said when they heard reports that Dariye had 800,000 pounds in his account and that he was also arrested at the London airport with 1.3 million pound, “we were curious about how such an amount could have passed both the British and Nigerian airports in these days of tight airport security.
“We became curious about how 30 minutes after Governor Dariye left the police station the information was floating in Nigeriaworld.comwebsite. We became curious because the Code of Conduct Bureau invoked its publicity machines at exactly the same time. We became curious about a group calling themselves Nigerians Against Fraud led by one Dr. Deji Afolabi in the UK.”
He said the group decided not only to look into governor Dariye’s case but also other serving governors “if they have accounts, assets and property in the UK and we discovered that of the 36 serving governors, a staggering 21 of them have offshore bank accounts.”
Dr. Abdallah who said the group has also established a direct relationship between the visit of a senator to the UK and the deposits from certain account, disclosed that the group has made available all the information to the Nigerian authorities in London.
He urged the Nigerian government “to publish the list of such accounts and assets just as Gov. Dariye’s bank account details was posted in one of the Nigerian dailies,” in the interest of fairness.
|
|
