There is no end to the Ikoyi flat cash haul that cost the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, Ambassador Ayo Oke, his plum job.
First, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) boss, Ibrahim Magu, told an international conference that the whistle-blower had been paid.
But the whistle-blower’s lawyer, Yakubu Galadima, faulted the claim.
He said in Lagos on Friday that the whistle-blower who gave information leading to the recovery of N13bn from Flat 7B Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos, has not been paid a kobo by anyone.
At a Lagos State High Court premises in Ikeja, Galadima said Magu’s claims were untrue, adding that a petition he sent to President Muhammadu Buhari a month ago remained unreplied to.
“The EFCC does not even know the whereabouts of my client. He is presently living from hand to mouth having been abandoned by the commission,” he stated.
“We have written to the President and even to Magu himself and we are yet to get any form of response. I even sent Magu an SMS this morning debunking the allegation that my client has been paid; but as I speak, I have yet to get a response from him.
Friday evening EFCC spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren, made efforts to explain the commission’s position.
“What Magu said at the 7th session of the council of state parties to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption in Vienna, Austria, was that citizens should be encouraged to embrace whistleblowing because of the incentives attached.
“To illustrate this, he stated that the gentleman who provided the information that triggered the huge recovery at Osborne Towers in Ikoyi was already a millionaire based on the incentive in the whistleblower policy where information providers are entitled to between 2.5 and 5 percent of the recovered sum.
“Magu never said that the young man has been paid. The commission is not even directly responsible for the payment of rewards to whistleblowers.
“There is also no controversy about the exact amount recovered in the operation which was streamed live, the first of its kind, and witnessed by the whistleblower, security at the towers and representative of the agency which claimed ownership of the money.”
Recall that the same Uwujaren, had quoted Magu as saying in Vienna, Austria, that the ‘young man’ who blew the whistle had already become a millionaire.
“We are currently working on the young man because this is just a man who has not seen N1m of his own before.
“So, he is under counselling on how to make good use of the money and the security implication.
“We don’t want anything bad to happen to him after taking delivery of his entitlement. He is a national pride,” Magu was quoted as saying.