Speaker of the Lagos state House of Assembly, Adeyemi Sabitun Ikuforiji has been arrested by Nigeria’s anti-graft police, the EFCC over allegations of perjury and stealing over N7 billion of state funds. Ikuforiji who has been in hiding for over a week was said to have been smoked out after it was obvious to him that the EFCC agents were closing in on him. Operatives of the Commission are said to be grilling Ikuforiji at the moment in their headquarters office in Wuse area of Abuja.www.naijapaymentsonline.com
Though no official of the EFCC called on the matter was ready to make any comment, an anti-corruption activist whose petition led to the arrest of the speaker told us that he had seen Ikuforiji being taken to the EFCC office located in Wuse 2 area of Abuja at about 10am local time today. 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:
i. 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. ii. 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.
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
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