The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Thursday, October 18, 2018 presented its ninth witness to justify the culpability of a former interior Minister, Abba Moro, in the ill-fated 2014 recruitment exercise by the Nigeria Immigration Services, NIS, which led to the death of about 20 job applicants in various centres across the country.
Moro is being prosecuted alongside three others – Anastasia Daniel-Nwaobia; a deputy director in the ministry, F. O Alayebami; one Mahmood Ahmadu (at large), and the firm that handled the recruitment exercise, Drexel Tech Nigeria Limited on11-count charge bordering on procurement fraud and money laundering before Justice Nnamdi Dimgba of the Federal High Court, Maitama, Abuja.
The witness, Olusina Odegbami was led in evidence by counsel to the EFCC, Aliyu Yusuf.
Odegbami, a programme manager, Human and Environmental Development Agenda, HEDA, an NGO under CSNAC, explained to the court reasons for the petition by his organization.
He told the court how the exercise was ‘poorly handled’ leading to the death of many Nigerian job seekers
He said: “Sometime in 2014, an exercise was held to recruit people into Immigration Service. Some of our coalition officers were on ground and we noticed the exercise was rowdy.
“We felt it ought to be properly organized, so we called a coalition meeting to do our findings as to why an exercise coming from the Federal Government was not properly organized.
“We discovered it was meant for four thousand people and over five thousand applied and we felt that was what led to the rowdiness.
“Following media reports then, we discovered each applicant paid N1,000 (One Thousand Naira). We also discovered that an organization called Drexel organized the exercise”.
Odegbami also told the court that other findings by his NGO revealed that the company, Drexel, was never registered with Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC.
He said further investigations into the matter, showed that over twenty applicants lost their lives during the exercise.
“In our meeting, we arrived at a unanimous decision to right a petition to the EFCC because, we were not happy that applicants seeking for job only went to the exercise to die”, Odegbami said.
The petition was shown to the witness and he identified it. When sought to be tendered in evidence by the prosecution, counsel to the first defendants, A. T. Kehinde, SAN, vehemently oppose its admissibility on the grounds that the witness was not the maker of the document.
The document, captioned, “Request For Investigation And Prosecution Of Those Involved With The Nigerian Immigration Service Recruitment Scam”, was dated March 14, 2014 and was written by a coalition of non governmental organization, under the umbrella of Civil Society Network Against Corruption, CSNAC, to the Commission.
Kehinde argued that: “PW9 is not the maker of this document. Olanrewaju Suraju is the maker. Our objection is premised on Section 83 of the Evidence Act, the whole of it. This same Olanrewaju is a witness in this case. We urge the court to disregard the document and mark same as rejected”.
Other defence counsels aligned themselves with his argument.
Responding, the prosecution argued that “the document is admissible because what determines admissibility is relevancy”.
After heated arguments, the Justice Dimgba sustained the arguments of the defence. He, however said that, “the prosecution is at the liberty to re-present this document if the defect is cured, as it is relevant to the case”.
The case has been adjourned to November 20 – 21, 2018 for continuation of trial.
