Okoi Obono-Obla, the former chairman of the Special Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIP), has said that his efforts to prosecute many high-profiled looters under President Buhari administration were thwarted by former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, and other officials.
Obono-Obla stated that some of the recovered items were returned to the looters. He cited a specific case where he recovered over 80 brand new X-class Mercedes Benz cars (armoured) from Jabi, Abuja.
He wrote to the Director-General of Customs and the Federal Inland Revenue Service to check if the person had paid customs duties and taxes on the vehicles, and they confirmed that no payments were made.
After obtaining an interim forfeiture order from the court, pending the hearing of the case, Obono-Obla sent a memo to Malami to inform him of their actions. However, Malami responded by saying he had never authorized the investigations.
In his words, ” “Some of the things I recovered were returned to the looters. There was this case of someone from whom I recovered over 80 brand new X-class Mercedes Benz cars (armoured plated) from Jabi, Abuja.
“I wrote to the DG, Customs and the Federal Inland Revenue Services to ask if the person paid customs duties and tax on the vehicles; they said No.
“We get an order of interim forfeiture from the court pending the hearing of the case. So, I sent a memo to Malami to brief him on what we were doing, only for him to tell me that he never mandated me to do things I investigated,” he stated.
Recall that Okoi Obono-Obla was accused of conducting unauthorized investigations. This was detailed in a report by Abubakar Malami, the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF).
Following Obono-Obla’s dismissal in August, Malami was tasked with taking over the office and examining several petitions against him.
In the case, Malami’s report claimed that although only two cases were officially referred to the SPIP, Obono-Obla proceeded to investigate 50 cases without proper authorization.
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