Akpobolokemi was facing an ongoing N754.8 million fraud trial alongside Ezekiel Agaba, Ekene Nwakuche, Governor Juan, Vincent Udoye, Adegboyega Olopoenia and a company – Gama Marine Nigeria Ltd.
However, following a plea deal Nwakuche, Juan and Olopoenia struck a deal with the EFCC to testify for the prosecution.
Akpobolokemi now faces trial alongside Agaba and Udoye who are both former Executive Directors of NIMASA.
The trio was on Monday re-arraigned face a 12-count charge of conspiracy, forgery and stealing an N687.2 million.
The trio, however, pleaded not guilty shortly after the arraignment, Akpobolokemi informed the court that he had a severe case of diahorrea.
Proceedings had to be stood-down on two occasions to enable the ex-NIMASA Director-General use the restroom.
Mr Ekene Nwakuche, Akpobolokemi’s former co-defendant who is the tenth prosecution witness and a former Personal Assistant (PA) to Agaba testified against the embattled maritime bosses.
Nwakuche while being led in evidence by Mr Rotimi Oyedepo, the lead EFFC prosecutor, narrated to the court how the three defendants allegedly embezzled funds while at the helm of affairs at NIMASA.
Nwakuche said he was privy to a lot of illegal transactions as a result of being a Personal Assistant to Agaba.
“I know the first defendant Patrick Akpobolokemi, he was the Director-General (DG) of NIMASA, he was Captain Ezekiel Agaba’s boss, Mr Vincent Udoye was the Head, Maritime Safety and Seafarers Standard, he was a Director at NIMASA.
“My Lord in 2014, the then DG of NIMASA set up a committee on Voluntary International Maritime Organisation Member State Audit Scheme (VIMSAS) and Agaba was the Chairman, we had other members from different departments as well as stakeholders.
“As Adaba’s PA I was privy to 90 per cent of the developments and I had to go to most meetings with him,” Nwakuche said.
The former PA revealed to the court that in order to syphon funds, NIMASA budgets were inflated by the defendants before taken to the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) for approval.
Nwakuche said that a VIMSAS account was opened in Zenith Bank on Aug. 29, 2014, N198 million was paid into the account while on June 20, 2014, N300 million was paid into the account from the office of the NSA.
The former PA noted that he had made various withdrawals worth millions of Naira behalf of Agaba and that funds were illegally transferred into bank accounts belonging to acquaintances of the defendants.
Nwakuche said that funds that were approved for VIMSAS by the office of the NSA were withdrawn from the bank, converted to dollars and handed over to Akpobolokemi and Agaba.
He said the total deposit to the VIMSAS account was N816 million and that N752.3 million was debited by the defendants a total of 36 times.
Nwakuche noted that a company called Arrow Head Consulting was allegedly used by the defendants to embezzle VIMSAS funds.
He further revealed to the court that the company’s documents were forged to perpetuate fraud at NIMASA.
“Arrow World Consulting was not a consultant to VIMSAS, it was a company brought in by Agaba, it was supposed to be a Redundant Security Organisation (RSO) but the name of the company was used for the transactions.
“The monies paid into the account were differences, if there was a difference between the money requested in the budget and the money received, we paid the difference into Arrow World Consulting.
Anytime these monies came, we change them into dollars.
“On Oct 30, 2013, I transferred N35.6 million and N61.7 million to Copa Bala, a Bureau de Change. The funds were changed to dollars and taken to the ED (Agaba).
“At a point, I had more than $2 million dollars in my possession for the ED in my house, I was taking it piecemeal to his house, sometimes I give some of the money to him in his office or in his car.”
The presiding Judge Justice Raliatu Adebiyi adjourned the case until Nov. 30 for the continuation of trial.
According to the EFCC, the offences contravene Sections 285, 363 and 409 of the Criminal Code Laws of Lagos State, 2011.