By Gideon Njoku
He is called the white lion. As the Governor of Kogi State, he oozed power. He was an emperor, and thumped his feet where even Angels feared to walk. He also had a thick skin. Hardly moved by anything. But all that has been rubbished by a woman. The fear of a woman has condemned Yahaya Bello to a fugitive in his fatherland.
According to the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ola Olukoyede, a Lawyer, Bello is in the mess he is today because he is scared of a woman.
Speaking to Journalists at the EFCC Headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday, Olukayode said he did not initiate the case against Bello, but inherited the case file. When he read the case file, the Chairman said he, personally, put a call across to Bello, which he admitted, he ordinarily shouldn’t have done, and asked him to come over so they would iron things out.
But the EFCC Chair said Bello said he was afraid of an unnamed woman who he, alleged, already caged him, and ready to embarrass him at tye EFCC.
The Chairman said he reassured him he would be safe, and promised that he would make sure the former Governor would be given privacy and interrogated in a private office on the Chairman’s floor. He revealed that when Bello continued to express fears, he went further and offered to allow him use the Chairman’s private door on arrival to the EFCC Headquarters. But Bello asked the EFCC to come and talk to him in his village.
He, also, revealed that Bello, just before he left office as Governor, dipped his hands into the State treasury, and took the sum of $720,000 to pay his son’s school fees in advance.
Olukoyede: “A sitting Governor, because he knows he is going, moved money directly from Government to Bureau de Change, used it to pay the child’s school fees in advance, $720,000 in advance, in anticipation that he was going to leave the Government House.
“In a poor State like Kogi, and you want me to close my eyes to that under the guise of ‘I’m being used.’ Being used by who at this stage of my life?”
On the EFCC’s present face-off with Bello, Olukoyede said:
“I didn’t initiate the case; I inherited the case file. I called for the file, and I said there are issues here.
“On my own, I called him, which I am not supposed to do, just to honour him as an immediate past governor.
‘Sir, there are issues. I’ve seen this case file. Can you just come let us clarify these issues?’
“He said, ‘Ha! Thank you, my brother. I know, but I can’t come. There’s one lady that has surrounded EFCC with over 100 people to come and embarrass me and intimitade me.’
“I said if that is the issue, I’m going to pass you through my own gate, and you will come to my floor. We will accord you that respect. I will invite my operatives; they will interrogate and interview you in my own office. What could be more honourable than that to allay the fear?
“You know what he said: ‘Thank you, Sir, but can’t they come to my village”?
The former Governor outsmarted EFCC operatives when they went to his Wuse, Abuja, residence a few days ago to arrest him. After a face-off which lasted hours, Bello escaped, allegedly, in the official car and company of his successor, Go Usman Ododo who drove in while the siege lasted.
The EFCC has since declared the former Governor wanted after it obtained a warrant of arrest from a Court. But Bello insists another Court had restrained the Commission from arresting him.
