By Ken Chiwendu
The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice,Mr Lateef Fagbemi SAN has asked the former Governor of Kogi State, Mr Yahaya Bello to honour the invitation of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC saying the EFCC has statutory powers “to invite any person of interest to interact with them in the course of their investigation into any matter regardless of status.”
Fagbemi made this known in a statement shortly after the EFCC declared Bello wanted for offences bordering on economic and financial crimes.
Bello,according to the Commission, faces N80.2 Bn money laundering charges.
After an unsuccessful attempt to arrest the former governor on Wednesday when it laid siege to his house in Wuse 4 in Abuja, the EFCC arraigned the former governor on Thursday before the Federal High Court in Abuja to take his plea but he failed to appear before the court.
Worried by the development, the AGF Fagbemi, urged the former former to submit himself for trial.
Fagbemi said the EFCC has statutory powers “to invite any person of interest to interact with them in the course of their investigation into any matter regardless of status.”
“Therefore, the least that we can all do when invited, is not to put any obstruction in the way of EFCC but to honourably answer their invitation.
“A situation where public officials who are themselves subject of protection by law enforcement agents will set up a stratagem of obstruction to the civil and commendable efforts of the EFCC to perform its duty is to say the least, insufferably disquieting.
“I therefore encourage anyone who has been invited by the EFCC or any other agency to immediately toe the path of decency and civility by honouring such invitation instead of embarking on a temporising self-help and escapism that can only put our country in bad light before the rest of the world.”
Bello, his nephew, Ali Bello; Dauda Suleiman and Abdulsalam Hudu (said to still be at large) are being accused by the Anti -graft Agency of conspiring to convert the total sum of N80 billion (N80, 246,470, 088.88) in February 2016.
