The former minister was arraigned on seven counts bordering on fraudulent award of contract and official corruption.
Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka has raised the alarm that there is a high-level concern for the safety of a former power minister, Dr. Olu Agunloye.
SaharaReporters earlier reported that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on Wednesday, arraigned Agunloye before Justice J.O. Onwuegbuzie of the Federal Capital Territory High Court in Abuja.
The former minister was arraigned on seven counts bordering on fraudulent award of contract and official corruption.
SaharaReporters had also reported that the court ordered the remand of Agunloye in Kuje prison.
Agunloye, who served under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, was remanded at the Kuje Correctional Centre over his alleged complicity in fraud.
Meanwhile, the court will rule on Agunloye’s bail application on Thursday, according to the judge.
However, the literary icon recalled that Agunloye’s predecessor in the power ministry, Chief Bola Ige was murdered in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital on December 23, 2001, and his tragic death has remained a mystery till now.
According to Soyinka, Ige’s killing was connected to the $6 billion Mambilla power scam for which Agunloye is currently being tried.
In a statement issued on Wednesday titled ‘A Pivotal Witness, And A Custodial Danger,’ Soyinka said, “Dr. Olu Agunloye, we learn, was finally charged to court today. The case was adjourned, and the presiding judge, in his or her wisdom, proceeded to remand the accused in Kuje prison, pending resumption of his case.
“I wish to alert the nation, and the government that there exists a justifiable, high level concern for his safety. His predecessor in office, the late Chief Bola Ige, was murdered in his bedroom by professional assassin even while his police protection detail took time off, all at the same time, to a nearby eatery. Till today, those mystery killers have yet to be identified, arrested, and tried.
“I have made it clear, even as recently as a few weeks ago, that Bola Ige’s murder was not unconnected with the Manbilla scam. Olu Agunloye worked closely with me, both within and outside routine police motions, to unmask Ige’s killers.
“It would therefore amount to unpardonable complacency to propose that there are no forces sufficiently desperate to accord him the same fate as Bola Ige. That goal is made easier by the abrupt decision to remand him in prison.”
Soyinka noted that he had “called for an independent, non-partisan commission to probe at length and in-depth, in public sittings, this scandal of expanding dimensions that has crippled the energy needs of a nation of two hundred million citizens over the past two decades”.
“The latest development is sinister and alarming,” he said.
“Let it be understood that, if anything happens to this pivotal witness while in custody, the inference will be heard loud, clear, and unambiguous,” the literary icon added.