EFCC detains Lagos Speaker Ikuforiji over N7b alleged fraud

Adeyemi Ikuforiji, Speaker, Lagos State House of Assembly

EFCC detains Lagos Speaker Ikuforiji over N7b alleged fraud

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Friday arrested the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Hon. Adeyemi Ikuforiji, to verify allegations of fraud of N7billion Naira in the region .

According to a most reliable source at the Commission, it is unlikely that Ikuforiji, who is presently being grilled, will be released; and he will, by extension, spend the rest of the weekend in detention.

Kick Against Corruption, a civil rights group, had, in May, sent petitioned EFCC, asking it to prosecute the Speaker for mismanagement of N7b meant for running the Lagos State House of Assembly.

Property through proxies

“The initial monthly running costs of the House in 1999 was put at ₦20 million and later jerked up to ₦40 million before the end of the Bola Tinubu administration.... The cost had, however, been moved up to ₦500 million monthly in 2010 by the House of Assembly, the petition read. “This was passed into law and made a first line charge so that the amount can be deducted directly from the state revenue account without recourse to the executive, and he has been collecting this huge sum without any corresponding impact on the lives of members or their duties.”

The group accused him of collecting the money and “funneling it abroad to buy property through proxies and his automobile company called Brown Motors, located at 2 Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way, Maryland, Ikeja Lagos.”

Ikuforiji will have his hands full clearing himself of this, and a second allegation of perjury he allegedly committed by “denying his record of conviction in his INEC forms submitted in 2007 and 2011, whereas he has been committed twice in the United States in 2001 and 2005.”

Ikuforiji’s arrest is likely to shake the Lagos State polity, considering his allegiance to former governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu — the supposedly invincible ACN financier whom Jonathan has been consistently under pressure to probe.

It will also heighten tension among Tinubu’s loyalists on the nearness or otherwise of a final onslaught on their principal.

However accelerated it may appear on the surface, the detention of the Speaker by EFCC technically opens debate and permutations on the Lagos State 2015 gubernatorial race, especially considering Ikuforiji’s popularity as a future candidate.

Iheanacho (with agency reports)