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Corruption Probe: Ex-Governors fall-in for interviews-Kalu serves EFCC court order, Bola Tinubu to meet EFCC on Monday.

June 10, 2007
Corruption Probe: Ex-Governors fall-in for interviews-Kalu serves EFCC court order, Bola Tinubu to meet EFCC on Monday.
-Saharareporters, New York
Some ex-governors out of the 15 invited by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission have attended the formal interviews organized by the EFCC to confront them with results of corruption investigations conducted by the EFCC during their tenure.

So far, only ex-governors James Ibori (Delta), Peter Odili(Rivers), George Akume(Benue), Saminu Turaki(Jigawa) and Ahmed Sanni Yerima(Zamfara) have faced EFCC investigators to discuss the principal allegations of corruption against their individual persons as governors in the 36 states of the Nigerian federation.

Though ex-governor Orji Kalu appeared at the EFCC interrogation center, he declined to be interrogated claiming that he already obtained a court order barring the EFCC from probing his tenure in office, he was allowed to go after he served the EFCC a copy of the said court order obtained from a state high court in Aba.

The former governor of Lagos state Ahmed Bola Tinubu will be appearing before the EFCC tomorrow (Monday) to defend allegations of fraud against him while he ran Lagos State. Bola Tinubu will be interrogated over cases of foreign accounts operated by him and his family members while he was the governor of Lagos, some of the accounts were discovered in CITIBANK, New York.

The EFCC has changed strategy since Mallam Umar Musa Yar'adua came into office, he has insisted that the EFCC treat the former governors with "courtesy" which is interpreted to mean that the corrupt governors will not be arrested or detained by the EFCC who had earlier last month bragged that it was going to clamp the ex-governors into detention and later arraign them before competent law courts.

The legitimacy problem facing Yar'adua over the flawed April elections dictates that he slows the EFCC down in terms of ambitious enforcement of anti-corruption laws. Chief James Ibori (formerly governor of Delta State) who is known to have committed the most corruption while he ran Delta State is the biggest financier of the Yar'adua electoral campaigns and remains a powerful ally of the so-called new president.

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