Hon Olakunle Oluomo, Speaker of the Ogun State House of Assembly, was on Thursday arrested by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, at the Lagos airport.
A reliable source in the House of Assembly
told DAILY POST that the Speaker’s arrest was not unconnected with a probe
going on in the Assembly.
Recall that the Speaker himself had in June
2021, confirmed that the EFCC was probing the assembly over alleged financial
misappropriation.
The EFCC was said to have written to the
assembly, seeking information on all budget appropriations and allocations of
the House from May 30, 2015, to 2021.
A yet-to-be-identified person had
petitioned the EFCC, accusing the Speaker and some other officials of financial
infractions.
It was learnt that invites by the EFCC to
the Speaker and other members of the legislature were not honoured, except for
the former Deputy Speaker, Dare Kadiri, who visited the EFCC office in Lagos
and raised the alarm that his signature was forged to siphon up to
N50million.
To stop the probe, Oluomo and other members
of the house (except Kadiri) dragged the EFCC to court.
In their prayers, they sought an order of
interlocutory injunction restraining the EFCC from taking further steps
including but not limited to inviting, interrogating, imposing obligations, and
demanding or requiring their attendance in connection with the criminal
allegation made against them.
They stated that their request to the EFCC
to provide them a copy of the petition against the house was not granted by the
anti-graft agency; hence they were left with no option but to sue the EFCC and
Hon. Kadiri, whom they alleged as “using an official of the anti-graft agency
to get information given to the agency under confidentiality leaked with the
purpose of smearing the image of the House in the media.”