Amina Mohammed
A scandalous scene broke out at the headquarters of the State
Security Service (SSS) on Monday, after a fraud suspect paraded by the
secret police indicted top associates of President Muhammadu Buhari and
his wife, Aisha.
During a press event to parade Amina Mohammed on Monday afternoon,
SSS accused the woman, dark in complexion and about middle-age, of
gaining unauthorized entries into the Presidential Villa over a period
of time, during which she impersonated top government officials,
including once identifying herself as the first lady of Kogi State.
Ms Mohammed, whose origin was not immediately learnt, had multiple
access to the residence of First Lady Aisha Buhari, SSS spokesperson
Peter Afunanya said at the presser.
Using her seemingly unrestrained access to the State House and
several cover names, including Justina Oluoha and Amina Villa, Ms
Mohammed was then able to cosy-up to persons close to power, including
Alexander ‘Chicason’ Okafor, whom she allegedly duped of up to N150
million in November 2017.
The fleece came in a deal which Ms Mohammed and Mr Okafor had on a
government property that was placed on sale by the Presidential
Implementation Committee on Lease of Federal Government Properties.
Ms Mohammed’s “unholy enterprise is not to the knowledge” of Ms Buhari, the SSS concluded following its investigation.
Naming names
Although Ms Mohammed did not immediately deny SSS’ claims she
obtained N150 million from Mr Okafor, the billionaire chairman of
Chicason Group, a major logistics and oil and gas firm with
dual-headquarters in Lagos and Abuja, she pleaded with Nigerians to
ensure she does not suffer the consequences alone.
Ms Mohammed specifically mentioned she worked closely with
Moriyatu, a sister of Mrs Buhari, and Babachir Lawal, a former Secretary
to the Government of the Federation who was fired for fraudulent
diversion of funds meant for Nigeria’s internally-displaced victims of
Boko Haram insurgency.
Ms Mohammed said Mr Okafor has been buying government properties
for a long time, and he knew he had to bribe officials in order to be
shortlisted as a potential buyer of an advertised property.
A spokesperson for Mr Okafor told PREMIUM TIMES he could not immediately comment for the businessman Monday afternoon.
Mr Lawal had been invited for questioning by the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, and the anti-graft office recently said
criminal charges were ready to be filed in the matter.
Still, the case has not prevented Mr Lawal from organising
high-level political events towards Mr Buhari’s reelection, neither has
it dissuaded the president from associating with his scandal-plague
associate.
A spokesperson for Mrs Buhari confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES Monday
afternoon that Moriyatu is a sister to the first lady, but denied
knowledge of the massive influence peddling affairs at the State House.
“She is part of the family,” Suleiman Haruna said of Moriyatu. “But I do not have any details about whether she was involved in such a thing or not.”
The SSS said Mrs Buhari was not in the country at the time Ms
Mohammed was using her name to swindle persons in the corridors of
power.
Investigation, investigation, investigation
The scandal comes less than three months after Mrs Buhari accused
her security aide of dropping her name to receive humongous financial
benefits from people seeking to curry favour at the top levels of
Nigeria’s presidency.
The aide, who is a police officer, denied the allegations. His
family alleged that Mrs Buhari was only throwing her aide under the bus
after using him to amass illicit income since moving into the State
House with her husband in 2015.
Identical elements could be deduced from Ms Mohammed’s narration,
especially on the claim that she was being singled out for punishment.
After initially frustrating attempts to be interviewed by a battery
of reporters, Ms Mohammed ultimately opened up, saying she has been in
SSS’ detention since first turning herself in four months ago.
“SSS has been keeping me in this office for four months,” she
screamed to reporters in order to get some words across while being
dragged back into the service’s secluded interrogation cubicle.
Mr Afunanya, however, denied that Ms Mohammed has been in detention
for four months, saying she only turned herself in about the first week
in November.
He added that she had been granted administrative bail and allowed to go report at the secret police on schedules.
“Her cantankerous behaviour before the press further speaks to the dubious personality,” the SSS spokesperson said.
Asked repeatedly by PREMIUM TIMES whether Ms Mohammed mentioned Mr
Lawal and Mrs Buhari as her co-conspirators during interrogation and
what was done to determine the veracity of her claim, Mr Afunanya said
the matter was under investigation.
He also could not immediately say whether Ms Mohammed was a player
in a syndicate, and similarly rebuffed all other questions about the
scandalous affair.
A storied office
The office of Nigeria’s first lady, although not constitutionally
or administratively recognised, has long been a major feature of
presidential tenures, and with it have come multiple financial scandals.
During successive military juntas between mid-1980s and late 1990s,
wives of heads of state were known to have been involved in unbridled
lavishness, aided largely by questionable wealth they often hit upon
assumption of office.
The culture dovetailed when Nigeria returned to civil rule in 1999,
with unconscionable opulence often associated with first ladies in a
country consistently ranked amongst the top poorest in the world.
The exit of Patience Jonathan as Nigeria’s first lady in 2015 was
characterised by allegations of corruption. Anti-graft agents said they
discovered billions in questionable and primitive accumulation of wealth
during a cursory look into her finances.
One of the accounts of Ms Jonathan frozen by the EFCC had over $15 million in it.
Ms Jonathan strongly denied all allegations of fraud, saying she
inherited from her late mother who was a petty trader while the rest
came as gifts from some of her husband’s associates.
Many of the discoveries are still subject to ongoing judicial proceedings.
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Source: PREMIUM TIMES