Dimeji Bankole

Bankole Arrested.

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole was on Friday arrested by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, after a manhunt that lasted for hours.
Reports from the Commission indicate that Bankole resisted an earlier attempt made by a couple of the agency’s officials who went to his house at the Apo Legislative quarters to effect his arrest and bring him to the agency’s office.
His refusal to surrender himself to the operatives was said to have angered the leadership of the anti-graft agency which sent a reinforcement to arrest him.
The Inspector General of Police, Hafiz Ringim who was among the early callers to the outgoing Speaker’s house was denied access as he was reportedly told that the embattled Bankole was not at home.
One of the operatives who was in the team that first attempted to bring Bankole in for questioning said the outgoing Speaker spent hours on end working his phones trying to place a call to President Goodluck Jonathan, possibly to seek his intervention.
According to the operative who does not want his name mentioned, Bankole kept saying “your excellency” repeatedly to somebody at the other end of the phone who did not allow him to complete his plea for something to be done.
The re-inforced batch of operatives who went to arrest Bankole soon became involved in a manhunt as information became sketchy over whether he has been arrested or not.
His house at the Legislative Quarters was said to be deserted giving an indication that Bankole may be hiding in any of his many houses he owns in the Federal Capital Territory.
As at the time of filing this report, heavily armed Mobile Policemen had taken strategic positions around the premises of EFCC, giving credence to reports that Bankole may have been nabbed.
EFCC wants to interrogate him over the N10 billion loan scandal that rocked the House weeks before it wound down its sitting yesterday.
There has been a war of words between the anti-graft body and civil society groups throughout the week over allegations by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, that the civil society groups particularly the committee for the Defence of Human Rights, CDHR, have been compromised to thwart their efforts at bringing high profile Nigerians being investigated by the commission to book.
The EFCC in a statement signed by its spokesperson, Femi Babafemi, said, “these elements who are being coordinated and funded by a high profile suspect in a case of criminal conspiracy, diversion of public funds and money laundering we are currently investigating, were last weekend mobilised with ill-gotten funds to launch series of attacks against the commission and its leadership.”
The commission added that the rights groups had been hired to appear on television and programmes on radio paint the EFCC and its fight against corruption in bad light.
However, spokespersons of the rights groups have continued to condemn the anti-graft agency over the statement.
They have gone on air to describe the statement linking them to corruption by the agency as false and a move to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it.
They have also condemned the current EFCC-led by Farida Waziri over what they called its lukewarm attitude to the fight against corruption in the country.