Africa

Africa

Top Nigerian politician says not guilty of graft

09 June 2011 01:45 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. A top Nigerian politician facing corruption charges on Wednesday pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of inflating contract costs in a test case of the new administration’s anti-graft drive, APA reports quoting AFP.
Dimeji Bankole, speaker of the immediate past parliament which wound up last week, was arrested at the weekend.
The federal high court remanded Bankole in the custody of the anti-graft police pending a hearing on his bail application.
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) spokesman Femi Babafemi told AFP that Bankole had pleaded innocent to 16 charges of fraud, the first batch of a number to be laid against him.
"The judge ruled that Dimeji Bankole should remain in our custody until Friday when his bail application will be heard," said Babafemi.
Bankole and other leaders of the former House of Representatives stand accused of misappropriating nine billion naira (57.9 million dollars, 37.5 million euros) in inflated contracts, he said.
They were alleged to have padded the prices of hundreds of television sets, computers, printers and copiers, and by-passed tender procedures for the purchase of at least two bullet-proof Range Rover and three Mercedes-Benz S600 cars in 2008.
In some cases, the cost price of the office equipment they approved was double the market rate, according to the charge sheet.
Bankole, "with intent to defraud, rigged the bid for the purchase ... by refusal to follow all the procedures prescribed for public procurements," read one of the charges.
The former speaker was arrested late Sunday after a four-hour stand-off with the anti-corruption agency, which claimed he was planning to flee the country. Days before that he had ignored summonses and resisted arrest, according to the EFCC.
The EFCC said more charges were expected to be filed in the coming days when further investigations were concluded into other fraud allegations against Bankole.
Bankole’s case could be a test of the commitment of President Goodluck Jonathan’s new administration to fight corruption.
In his inaugural address on May 29, Jonathan vowed "the bane of corruption shall be met by the overwhelming force of our collective detemination, to rid our nation of this scourge."
Bankole’s arrest "means a giant step forward" in the fight against graft, said Debo Adeniran, director of the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, an NGO.
"It is not a witch-hunt, rather it is an implementation of the rule of law as it is supposed to be implemented," Adeniran said.
"We hope we are going to get justice. We hope that this will be another big fish caught in the pool of high-level corruption."
Bankole, 41, was elected speaker in 2007, after his predecessor Patricia Etteh was forced to resign after five months in office over allegations of corruption surrounding the renovation of her official residence.
He was arrested only days after his mandate ended with the term of the previous parliament following elections in April which saw Jonathan returned to power.
So far only a handful of top politicians have been tried and convicted for graft in Nigeria, a country ranked among the most corrupt in the world.