EFCC questions Lagos Speaker Ikuforiji over alleged N7bn fraud

Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Adeyemi Ikuforiji has been grilled by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, over an alleged N7bn fraud. The Lagos Speaker walked into the commission’s headquarters, Wuse Abuja at 10am today, Friday 2nd of September 2011, and is undergoing interrogation at the commission’s office.

It is still not certain if Ikuforiji will be granted bail today or detained but our source said he’s presently sweating making statements on the allegations against him in the Commission’s interrogation’s room. Some of the allegations made by the group against the speaker who from available court records in the USA is an ex-convict include:

(1)  That Mr. Ikuforiji has used his position as Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly to collect a monthly running cost of N500 million on a first line charge. In the last 14 months, he has collected not less than N7 billion which he has been funneling abroad to buy properties through proxies and his automobile company called Brown Motors, located at 2 Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way, Maryland, Ikeja Lagos.

(2) That Mr. Ikuforiji committed perjury by denying his record of conviction in his INEC forms submitted in 2007 and 2011, whereas he has been committed twice in the United States in 2001 and 2005.

Records available showed that Ikuforiji was first convicted in 2001 after his arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol on April 22, 2001 in Wake County, North Carolina. His court record with case number 2001CR040190 shows that his residence then was 2116 Saturn Street, Raleigh, NC 27603.

The Lagos House Speaker progressed in his record of crime when in 2005 he was convicted again for a $22,731.00 credit card fraud he had committed in 2003. The Hennepin county district court records show that Ikuforiji as at the time he committed the crime lived at 9112 Yates Bay, Minneapolis MN55443. He was said to have duped the Columbia Credit Service Inc which reported him to law enforcement agents over the $22,731.00 fraud. He had lived with one Omolara Cole as his wife and Abdul as their son before their marriage was dissolved on August 30, 1999.He was eventually convicted on August 3rd, 2005 in case number 27-CV-05-009568.

Ikuforiji whose records in the USA showed that he was born on August 15, 1958 however had a different story to tell about his life record to the institutions he claimed he attended in Romania. While in one of his school files in Romania, he claimed to have been born 0n August 24, 1954, yet in another Romanian school record, he claimed he was born on August 24, 1956. As if that was not enough, Ikuforiji lied under oath in his INEC form CF001 submitted to the electoral body while contesting for the Epe constituency 1 seat in the Lagos House of Assembly in 2003 that he never had a criminal record before. He equally gave a different version of his date of birth as August 24, 1958, bringing to four the dates of birth in the speaker’s records in USA, Romania and Nigeria.

LAGOS, Dec 11, (THEWILL) - Speaker of the Lagos State of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Adeyemi Ikuforiji has submitted a letter of intent to the national secretariat of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) via the Lagos ACN, declaring his intention to contest in the party’s governorship primary election, as part of the plan to dislodge Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola from the state seat of power, THEWILL can report.

For calling a special Press Conference to speak down on the performing governor of Lagos State, the Lagos State House of Assembly Speaker Ikuforiji went too far. Reading all the statements attributed to him at the conference that held in his residence in the Ikeja GRA in Lagos recently, one could not see where he accounted for what the House did during the past year; which ordinarily one expected such to be the main feature at the press briefing. Rather he went extra mile to castigate the Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola (SAN) who rode on the back of Asiwaju Tinubu to become the governor.

temodent:

Nigerians and our usually misplaced optimism, people already rejoicing that a thief had been caught, just wait a minute and you will hear he that he has been released and he himself will claim he has only gone for a brief chat with the EFCC, wait a minute, The Lagos State House of Assembly would be the first to pass a motion condeming EFCC for harassing there 'Honourable' speaker and wait for it he may be contesting for the seat of the Governor of Lagos State come 2015 as compensation for being harassed , end of story or tell me if EFCC has succeeded since the reign of madam Farida in convicting any high ranking Government official. This is naija for ya.

gokuu:

And to think this dude was angling for the gubernatorial seat only last year.
Why do we continue to mass-produce politicians of this ilk? Which one of the gods was offended?
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