Hearing in a fraud case preferred against the former Minister of Power, Dr Olu Agunloye on Thursday ran into a hitch at a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja following the presentation of an invalid prosecution witness by the EFCC.
Hearing of the criminal charges against the former Minister actually began today, Thursday, May 30, 2024, as scheduled at the vourt but has to be shited due to the shoddy approach of the EFCC to the case.
The EFCC is prosecuting the case before the court presided over by Justice Jude Onwuegbuzie.
EFCC is prosecuting Dr. Agunloye for : “awarding in 2003 , a $6 billion Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) contract without cash backing, disobeying oral directives of the President, forging his own letter as a sitting Minister and receiving a retroactive bribe of N3.6 million 16 years after.”
To prove its case, EFCC has listed seven witnesses, excluding former President Olusegun Obasanjo who had earlier volunteered to testify at the court.
However, today, in the court, EFCC presented its first Prosecution Witness (PW1), Mr Adewale as “representative of the Guaranty Trust Bank”.
He was brought to testify on a GTBank statement of account presented by EFCC.
But the moment Mr Adewale disclosed that he was not in the employment of GTBank, the defence lawyers quickly pointed out the aberration to the court which immediately halted the presentation of Mr Adewale as a witness.
The court promptly stopped the proceedings and adjourned the hearing till Monday, June 10, 2024 to enable the EFCC to regularise its Prosecution Witness Number One.
It will be recalled that the former Minister, Dr. Olu. Agunloye, has consistently asserted that he did not commit any crime, and that EFCC is prosecuting him to corroborate FGN’s pleas at the arbitration in France hoping to free FGN from liabilities in the Arbitration even though FGN knows that the issues that led to the international arbitration were caused under Buhari’s APC Government and not by Agunloye.
(vitalnewsngr.com)
