PRESS RELEASE
The Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL) has lauded the commencement of the trial of the Speaker, Lagos State House of Assembly, Mr. Adeyemi Ikuforiji and his personal assistant, Oyebode Atoyebi, for alleged money laundering.
Both Ikuforiji and Atoyebi are being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for 54 counts of receiving over N500m from the Lagos State House of Assembly without passing through a financial institution between April 2010 and July 2011.
An Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s prosecution witness, Adeniyi Adebayo, had on Monday narrated before a Federal High Court, Lagos, how the Speaker, collected millions of naira in cash from the House under various headings.
Reacting to the development on behalf of the Coalition, its Executive Chairman, Debo Adeniran commended the court and the EFCC for the commencement of the trial of the embattled speaker.
He said, “We are happy that after a very long delay, the proper trial has started. We urge the court to ensure that justice is not only done, but it must be seen to have been done.
It is a good thing that the breakdown of the amount involved is being examined by the court. This is unlike what CACOL was made to know in the past, when we staged a protest to the House of Assembly over a money laundering offences that was initially said to have involved N7bn, only to be embarrassed later that no N7bn was involved, but a little above N500m.
We hope that the final destination of the amount would be traced, so that the alleged offences will be proven to have been truly committed or to have been successfully refuted.”
The anti-corruption crusader however called on the EFCC to equally beam its searchlight on every arm of the government in Lagos State.
“It is a good job that the EFCC is beginning to wake up to its duties, but we must note that there are many high profile corruption cases that must be unearthed by this commission. As a matter of fact, every arm of the government of Lagos State must be thoroughly investigated as parts of the whole, in respect to the petitions CACOL sent to it.”
Abimbola Adegoke
Media Officer, CACOL
3 December, 2013