Society Gists

A Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Kingsley Obiora, has been allegedly detained by personnel of the Department of State Services.

According to Peoples Gazette, the CBN deputy governor has spent four nights in the custody of the DSS.

The report said the DSS was grilling Obiora in connection with allegations of financial mismanagement under the leadership of the suspended CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele.

Emefiele was suspended by President Bola Tinubu on June 9 following an investigation into the affairs of the apex bank.

“This is sequel to the ongoing investigation of his office and the planned reforms in the financial sector of the economy,” a statement by the Director of Information, Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Willie Bassey, said.

Emefiele was arrested the following day and has been in DSS detention since then despite the court admitting him to bail.

The spokespersons for the CBN, Abdul Isa, and his counterpart in DSS, Peter Afunanya, did not pick up several calls to their lines and had yet to respond to messages sent to them on the matter.

Detains Ogun LG boss, committee denies missing funds 

Meanwhile, the suspended Chairman of Ijebu East Local Government Area of Ogun State, Wale Adedayo, has been detained by the Department of State Security Services.

Saturday PUNCH exclusively gathered that the DSS failed to interrogate Adedayo, who arrived at their facility close to the Governor’s Office, Oke-Imosan, Abeokuta, around 11.45am on Friday following an invitation by the secret police.

Moments after Adedayo’s arrival at the DSS office, the governor was seen driving into the DSS facility and later met with the suspended chairman at the operations desk.

“The DSS has detained Wale Adedayo just now. They asked us to leave, that they’re not ready to interrogate him yet. But they were the ones that kept calling him since morning to come to their office for interrogation, and he arrived around 11.45am, but he was not allowed to go in with his mobile phone,” a family source told one of our correspondents on Friday.

An eyewitness, who simply identified himself as Jide, also said, “The DSS just chased us away from their office here in Abeokuta close to the governor’s office. They said they’re not ready to investigate the chairman for now. But the governor was here hours ago, and he left around 4pm, but he met with the chairman before he left.”

Adedayo had earlier confirmed to Saturday PUNCH that he honoured the invitation of the secret police, adding that he would appear before the House of Assembly over the matter.

The embattled council boss had alleged that local government areas in the state had been receiving zero allocation from the Federal Government purse since 2021, alleging that about N10.8bn belonging to the council areas in the state was missing.

Adedayo, who was suspended by seven councillors in the area on Thursday over about 15 allegations bordering on alleged financial mismanagement to the tune of over N50m, had in a letter written to the National Leader of the party and former governor, Chief Olusegun Osoba, urged him to convince the governor to release money meant for councils.

He also wrote a petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, calling on the anti-graft agency to investigate all allegations levelled against the state government as regards LG allocations.

The state government, however, denied the allegation of financial misappropriation, insisting that the business of managing the LG allocations lay with members of the Joint Account and Allocation Committee in Ogun State.

…no LG allocation missing

In another development, members of the JAAC have denied that local government fund was diverted.

They said every fund approved by the committee during its monthly meeting was always passed through the various local government council accounts.

The committee members appeared before the state House of Assembly to give clarification over the allegation of fund diversion as alleged by Adedayo.

According to a statement from the Assembly, the JAAC members explained that the process of fund administration took place monthly at a meeting.

They added that it was at the meeting that all first-line charges, including primary school teachers’ salaries, LG pension, traditional council, leave bonus and check-off dues of labour unions were aggregated among LG chairmen and payment made.

According to them, there were instances when the state government had to augment the shortfall to allow all the local government councils to take care of all their first-line charges.

However, the Assembly, on Friday, barred journalists covering the state from gaining access to the premises.

The gate leading into the Assembly premises was shut against reporters.

Security operatives of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps attached to the Assembly politely asked for the names of the journalists and informed them that they were not on the list of those expected.

One of the lawmakers who confided in our correspondent said the directive preventing journalists from accessing the Assembly was an “order from above.”