DEPUTY Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, on Wednesday, raised the alarm that there were plans by a cabal in the Presidency to, within two weeks, use the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to indict and remove him from office.
Consequently, the senators on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) condemned the alleged plan and vowed to give him all the needed support.
Ekweremadu, during the plenary, came through the Order 43 of the Senate standing rules under personal explanation to inform his colleagues of the alleged plan, adding that “the EFCC was planning to raid his apartment in Enugu on the night of Saturday, May 6, through Sunday, May 7 and claim that a huge amount of money and some arms and ammunition were found in the apartment.”
He explained that the plan was disclosed to him through a letter by an unknown person who sought protection of his identity.
The letter, which he circulated around, came with the headline, “Please treat this with utmost secrecy,” read: “I am a trained investigative journalist, working under the EFCC covert intelligence spy police. The EFCC, in collaboration with local and international media, print and television and radio, would raid an apartment under the guise of whistle-blowing policy of the Federal Government with search warrant already obtained in the magistrate’s court to search an apartment alleging to be one of your guest houses in Enugu or any suitable available apartment in your senatorial district that will serve this evil purpose.
“EFCC (is) claiming to have received a tip-off from a whistle-blower in your state alerting the agency of a large huge amount of money of different currencies in the said apartment belonging to you Senator Ike Ekweremadu, the Deputy Senate President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
According to the letter, part of the implicating items to be purportedly discovered in the apartment “is huge amount of money with different currencies, such as British Pounds Sterling, United States dollars, Indian Rupee, South Africa Rand, and Malaysian Ringgit.”
He added that incriminating items allegedly planned to be planted in the apartment were his single photo portrait that would be placed in the sitting room, ammunition and arms, including AK-47 and two pump action guns with unused bullets.
However, the PDP Senate caucus, after an emergency meeting over the alleged plan, condemned it in its entirety, adding that Nigeria would never be allowed to be taken back to the Abacha era.
The spokesman of the caucus, Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe, told newsmen after the meeting that Nigeria had, in the past, gone through similar state intimidation, harassment and persecution and overcome it the way the emerging ones shall surely be overcome.
Reacting to the allegation, the EFCC, in a statement by its spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, dismissed the alarm raised by Ekweremadu, adding that the lawmaker could only sleep easy if he was not a part of the alleged looting in the country.
“The commission wishes to state in very strong terms that it is not aware of any plot to set up Ekweremadu for any arrest. If any agency is plotting to plant monies and guns in Ekweremadu’s residence, it is certainly not the EFCC as such antics are alien to the commission.
“Nevertheless, the commission is worried by the alarm and the fact that the highly-regarded Deputy President of the Nigerian Senate would go public with such unverified information without first double-checking with the commission. This is not only very strange but smacks of a scripted propaganda campaign to distract the commission by putting it on the defensive.
“It must be emphatically stated for the benefit of Senator Ekweremadu and others who share similar misconception and jaundiced views of the EFCC, that the commission does not need any grand plot to arrest and prosecute him if he is found to have violated any law that EFCC enforces.
“He does not belong in the category of public officers that enjoy immunity from arrest and prosecution by law enforcement agencies,” the EFCC said.