HIGHLIGHT
Wife of Chief Godswill Akpabio School has been seized by EFCC over alleged N108bn fraud.
Unoma Akpabio
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has seized a school purportedly belonging to the ex-governor’s wife, Unoma Akpabio.
A visit to the school, St. John Paul II School, in Shelter Afrique, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State shows that it has been marked “under investigation by EFCC”, even as a police van was stationed outside its gate, the Punch reports
The report says the school had been under the watchful eyes of the anti-graft agency considering the enormous amount said to have been sunk into its construction.
A senior operative at the EFCC confirmed to the newspaper that the school had been seized, stating that: “I understand our operatives were recently in Akwa Ibom and did mark a school as ‘under investigation’”.
The EFCC was reported by the paper last August as intensifying investigation into the former governor and was planning to seize his properties and freeze accounts linked to him.
The anti-graft agency was said to have written five banks demanding information on Akwa Ibom State finances under Akpabio’s administration.
The commission also invited key members of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly and serving commissioners many of whom served during the ex-governor’s administration.
“We have written to Zenith Bank, Keystone Bank, FCMB, Skye Bank, and UBA demanding information on the state’s accounts. We are also inviting the accountant-general, the auditor-general, the Speaker and the clerk of the House of Assembly.
“We have traced some houses to the former governor in Lagos and Abuja and it is just a matter of time before we seize them,” a source at the commission was quoted as saying.
The EFCC had started looking into Akpabio, who is now the Senate Minority Leader, last year when he was first quizzed by detectives following a series of petitions accused him of embezzling public funds while serving as governor of the oil-rich state.
