A Federal High Court on Wednesday remanded former Minister of Power and Steel, Mr. Olu Agunloye at the Kuje Correctional Centre, pending when the bail would be granted over allegations of fraud.
This is as Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka questioned the action of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which arraigned Agunloye before Justice Donatus Okorowo. He pleaded not guilty to the charges read against him.
Last December, the EFCC declared Agunloye wanted on an alleged case of forgery and corruption. In a communique shared by the commission on X and its website, the former minister’s image was displayed with a message urging the public to provide information that could lead to his arrest.
Shortly after the EFCC’s alert, Agunloye was apprehended and detained.
Agunloye, who served as minister in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration (1999-2003), was being quizzed during his tenure in connection with Mambilla project.
Obasanjo had accused him of fraudulently awarding the contract for the project without the Federal Executive Council approval. But Agunloye denied the accusations and claimed the former president was distorting facts.
Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka questioned the EFCC’s action.
In his statement, Soyinka argued that the practice of citizen detention at the whim of either religious blackmail or secular arrogation demands curtailment at source, most especially when exercised in defiance of the law, and the pronouncements of its agencies.
“The immediate provocation for these reflections is the ongoing predicament of a former Minister of Power, Dr. Olu Agunloye, currently detained by the EFCC, in total contempt of sense and justice, or indeed, basic humane considerations. We shall not go into the merit or demerits of the charges raised against him over a 16-year-old project that bears the name Mambilla. –that is the business of the law courts”.
“Our concern at this moment is however only partially on the basis of individual fundamental human rights. Most fortuitously, the detention of any former public servant under circumstances such as Agunloye also provokes the question: how is public interest – such as the pursuit of justice – served by such an arbitrary exercise of power”?
