By Adesina Soyooye
Senate Chief Whip, Orji Kalu said he was deliberately put in jail for six months. To do that, Kalu alleges that money changed hands.
“Somebody paid somebody to put me in jail for six months”, he told Channels Television in an interview on Friday.
Orji, a two-term Governor of Abia State, was prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on allegations of corruption and embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds along with his company, Slok, and others.
In December, 2019, a Federal High Court in Lagos sentenced him to a 12-year jail term.
Stopping short of mentioning the names of those he alleges were behind his imprisonment, Kalu said that “some persons, including a former President were responsible for my predicament.” But Kalu said he has no regrets going to prison. He said he went there to learn, and recommended prison experience to all politicians and civil servants.
He said: “I am not guilty. I am as free as anything. They put me in prison to the glory of God, and Nigerian people should thank them because I am better off today being there.
“I lost nothing. I went there to learn. It was a learning institution, and every politician and every civil servant needs to go there and learn. They will have another perspective of life.
“The average Nigerian knows that I have committed no offence. There were 19 witnesses in Court, and nobody mentioned my name, and somebody paid somebody to put me in jail for six months, and I thank God I went.
“It was a glorious thing. That is the best thing God has ever done for me, to be able to put me in the lowest end of the world. Mind you, I was meant to be in Wuhan, (China) on December 9, 2019, and the people put me in jail on December 5. It is to the glory of God.”
Kalu’s conviction was nullified by the Supreme Court which held that the Honourable Justice Mohammed Idris who sentenced him to jail was already elevated to the Appeal Court, and no longer
had any jurisdiction over the case. It ordered for Kalu’s retrial.
The EFCC has since gone back to Court for the retrial of the case.
