The suspended Chairman of the
Special Presidential Investigation Panel on the Recovery of Public Property,
Okoi Obono-Obla, has said the planned investigation by the Independent Corrupt
Practices and other related offences Commission would not be fair due to the
closeness of the commission’s Chairman, Prof Bolaji Owansanoye, to
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo.
Obono-Obla stated this in a suit
he filed on Tuesday to challenge the said probe for alleged certificate forgery
and extortion.
Among other things, he contended
in the suit marked, HC/ABJ/CS/980/2019, that the ICPC, had no powers to invite,
arrest, detain, investigate, or prosecute him in connection with alleged
falsification of academic certificates.
Through his lawyer, Mr Faruk
Khamagam, Obono-Obla also filed an ex parte application seeking an urgent
hearing of the suit.
The head of the legal unit of the
SPIP while Obono-Obla held sway as the panel’s Chairman, Dr Celsus Ukpong,
deposed to the affidavit filed in support of the main suit and the ex parte
application.
On Wednesday, sighted the court
papers in which the plaintiff alleged that part of the reasons he was suspended
as the SPIP chairman was that he was not taking instructions from Osinbajo.
He added that with Owasanoye as
the ICPC chairman, the anti-corruption agency would not conduct a fair probe of
his case.
Obono-Obla linked his travails to
the investigations he launched against influential persons and organisations.
Faulting his suspension, said he
“has been investigating many politically-exposed persons and civil servants,
none of whom has been suspended”.
The plaintiff, who detailed his
achievements as the Chairman of the SPIP in terms of recovery of looted funds
and assets, added that he had received death threats and sacrificed his comfort
in assisting the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to fight corruption.
He also faulted the alleged
forgery of a West Africa Examination Council certificate levelled against him.
He added that despite filing a
suit challenging the House of Representatives’ powers to investigate his WASCE
certificate and serving the court papers on the House “they refused to show up
in court and went ahead and conducted a one-sided hearing and produced a report
indicting him of falsifying his WASCE certificate”.
Ukpong, who noted in the
affidavits that he had a telephone conversation with Obono-Obla at about 2pm on August 16 while preparing the
case, stated that the suspended SPIP chairman “is currently living in fear of
imminent arrest, intimidation, harassment, detention, arraignment and/or
prosecution by the defendant (ICPC) on allegation of offences they have no
power to prosecute”.
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