Two officials of the Edo State Committee on Forestry were arrested yesterday in Benin, the state capital, for allegedly forging a First Bank teller and stamp to defraud the government of millions of naira.
The officials, identified simply as Etinosa, an Area Forest Officer attached to Ehor in Uhunwode Local Government Area, and Osifo, an ad hoc worker in charge of the committee’s patrol team, were arrested by the committee chairman, Comrade Samson Abu, in his office.
Abu told reporters that First Bank handled transactions for the committee and that tellers as well as bank printouts were submitted to his office through the committee’s secretary.
The chairman said when the committee’s secretary tendered the file containing the transactions of the two officials, his mind prompted him to verify from the bank.
This, he said, he did and the suspects’ transactions, worth millions of naira, were confirmed to be fraudulent. government money defrauded by the suspects.
Abu said: “…All files pass through the committee’s secretary to my table. With the pressure mounted on me to sign the files, my mind told me something was wrong somewhere. So, I called the police with the committee’s secretary to verify from the bank.”
