Yahaya Bello took $720,000 from Kogi treasury to pay child’s school fees in advance –EFCC

• Olukayode said such grand larceny in a poor State like Kogi can’t be overlooked.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has revealed that Yahaya Bello, the embattled immediate past governor of Kogi State, moved a staggering $720,000 from the state’s treasury days before leaving office in January.

The chairman of the EFCC, Ola Olukoyede, made the revelation at an interactive session with media executives on Tuesday.

Olukoyede said Mr Bello used the money, which he transferred to bureau D. Change, to pay his child’s school fees in advance, adding that such grand larceny in a poor State like Kogi can’t be overlooked.

“A sitting governor, because he knows he’s going, and moved money directly from government to bureau D. Change, used it to pay the child’s school fees in advance in dollars; the total is over 720,000 in anticipation that he was going to leave government house,” said the EFCC boss.

He added, “In a poor state like Kogi State, and you want me to close my eyes to that under the guise that I am being used? Used by whom at this stage of my life?”

Olukayode said he inherited Bello’s alleged fraud case but he wanted to pursue the matter to a logical conclusion.

“I assumed office here and inherited the case; I didn’t initiate it. But I called for the case file and said there are issues here,

“We need the EFCC and this institution to survive. So many people, we have wiped tears off their eyes, people that they have swindled in their millions,” said Olukoyede.

Within Nigeria reported last Wednesday that officers of the EFCC, alongside armed security personnel, stormed Bello’s Abuja home, blocking both entrances to his residence at Benghazi Street, Wuse Zone 4, at about 9:00 a.m.

However, the commission could not apprehend Bello as he was able to wriggle out of the situation with the help of the incumbent governor, Usman Ododo, arrived at the scene and took him away a few hours later.

Bello absconded trial at the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, and the counsel for the EFCC, Kemi Phinro, informed the court that Mr Bello’s absence in court was a strategy to frustrate his hearing.

However, the High Court on Tuesday ordered the lawyers of the EFCC to serve Bello the letter of the charges against him through his counsel.