Labour and Employment Minister, Festus Keyamo, has dragged the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to court on the strength of a fraud allegation levelled against the former Vice-President by his estranged Media Aide, Michael Achimugu.
Achimugu had laid alleged Atiku’s private actions that border on corruption opened to the world during his times as Vice-President.
The former released a supposed phone conversation between both of them in which the PDP Presidential candidate gave an account of how his principal then, Olusegun Obasanjo, and him, used to perpetrate frauds in office by proxies.
He(Atiku) in the audio said the financial impropriety was simply called, SPVs, Special Purpose Vehicles.
Arising from the disclosure, Keyamo petitioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), asking them to arrest/invite the former vice president for interrogation for alleged money laundering within 72 hours.
Following the expiration of his ultimatum, with agencies not lifting a finger, the minister on Friday took the matter to the court.
The minister is praying the court to make a mandatory order compelling the anti-graft agencies to invite and/or arrest, investigate and (if found wanting) prosecute Atiku “in respect of a certain bank account belonging to a company named Marine Float and other accounts of two undisclosed companies, which information he disclosed to a certain close aide of his called Michael Achimugu, as to how the said accounts were used as ‘Special Purpose Vehicles’ to secretly divert and misappropriate public funds between 1999 and 2007 when the 1st Defendant served as Vice President of Nigeria.”
He is also asking for a mandatory order of the court to compel Atiku to make himself available to the anti-graft agencies “to aid and investigate the former Vice President on information available to him in respect of a certain bank account belonging to a company named Marine Float and other accounts of two undisclosed companies, which information he disclosed to a certain close aide of his called Michael Achimugu, as to how the said accounts were used as a “Special Purpose Vehicles” to secretly divert and misappropriate public funds between 1999 and 2007 when the 1st Defendant served as Vice President of Nigeria.”
No date has been fixed for the hearing of the suit.
Moments after filing the suit yesterday, Keyamo wrote on his Twitter handle: “I HAVE A RICH HISTORY OF SUCH BATTLES & I AM NOT STOPPING.”
