Why we petitioned EFCC against Ex-Gov Orji, wife, son –Group

IN the last few weeks, the issue of a petition written by a group, Save Abia Initiative for Change, SA­I4C, to the Economic and Finan­cial Crime Commission, EFCC, against the immediate past gover­nor of Abia State, Chief T. A. Orji, his wife and son accusing them of looting the state’s funds has been raging.

In this interview, the spokesper­son of the group, Chief Peter Eche­ta Eme speaks on why they wrote the petition and the need to see that justice was done in the matter by the anti-graft agency.

Excerpts:

What is the organisation all about?

Save Abia Initiative for Change (SAI4C) is a voluntary organisation of association of men and women in Abia State whose belief is that the last administration headed by Chief T. A. Orji looted Abia State and disappointed its citizens with impunity, and they are not show­ing any signs of remorse about it. They feel on top of the world hav­ing done so. We in SAI4C said no; we insist that this ill-gotten wealth from Abia State must be recovered. So SAI4C is a voluntary organisa­tion made up of men and women from all walks of life. Many may not even imagine the type of people in the group. Some of our members are from the PDP, APGA, APC and other political parties and even in the civil service.

When was SAI4C formed?

This group is a child of circum­stance. It’s new, it’s not up to six months old. We saw the impunity with which these people have loot­ed Abia State and after they had left, they continued with this im­punity from outside. We are doing what we are doing because Abians want this man who has peppered them to be re-peppered. That is the truth. And he is not going to get away with it.

Some people have doubted if all the things you wrote in your petition are factual?

All of us are in Umuahia. This man (former governor) built Ochendo Close and everybody sees it. There are 20 or 30 solid build­ings there.

Where did he get the money? From Umuahia to Apumiri, a little before the Enugu/Port Harcourt Expressway, there is where he called Apumiri-Umudegbe ero­sion control, the place is usually water-logged and he said they did the job at the cost of N80 million. But I can assure you that we went to Ministry of Environment and got all the ecological projects in Abia State- nine of them- and that job was done twice.

Another startling revelation we got was that the money for the nine projects was put at N1.9 bill­lion, but they had released about N820 million and N80 million was supposed to have been used for that particular project. Those monies were fully drawn, but go there, you will see nothing. Are you saying this is false? They took a loan of N10.5 billion from a first generation bank. This bank has its branch in Umuahia and they asked the local governments in the state to apply for the loan; each council applying for N500 million. An of­ficial of my own local government confirmed it. I will not give the name for security reasons. If you go round all the local governments, you will discover that two schools in each LG were fenced and these were done with N10 million each, making it N20 million. Then you will also see that one or two struc­tures in these local government secretariats were renovated at the cost of N40 million. So, when you add the N20 million and N40 mil­lion, it is N60 million. That is all they have to show out of the N500 million loan each local government got.

Again, out of that N40 million given for the renovation of the LG secretariats, each council chairman and his deputy had to take N7 mil­lion to pay for their official cars. Go to any of the local government secretariats, you will find out the truth. This is something that hap­pened before everybody in Abia State and nobody will say it is false. But if they are saying it is false, they have a simple duty to Abians-they should come out and tell us the truth. If they say what we have written is not true, let Theodore Ahamefula Orji invite us through the EFCC and we will go there and say it before him that all we wrote are true, and then bring people who were part of it to confirm that they were part of it. Each of those local government chairman got N20 mil­lion while the then commissioner for local government and chieftain­cy affairs got his own share from the N10.5 billion loan.

Which one are they saying is not true? Is it the SURE-P funds? Are they saying they do not know those he entrusted the funds into their care and how they spent it? These are just but few of the many facts we have. There is no exaggeration of any type in that petition.

Are you saying members of SAI4C will be willing to appear before EFCC if former governor Orji was also invited to testify against him?

Why not? We have been to EFCC after we wrote the petition. We have been interviewed, and we used that opportunity to give them additional information, which was not in the original petition. People will be amazed when they get to know about the additional facts we gave to EFCC. We will be happy if TA (Orji) will go to EFCC and ask them to invite us so that he will ask us if what we are saying against him is true. If you don’t see us, then you know we are not hu­man beings.

You are saying there are other facts aside the ones in the petition that was published?

There are many facts coming in. People are happy bringing them. For instance, there is this latest in­formation we got that a prominent member of the last administration in the state bought a Rolls Royce car which was taken in a container from Umuahia to Enugu where he now resides. People saw it. It was not hidden.

As alleged in some quarters, is OUK behind what you are doing, is he your sponsor?

The other time we held a press conference because they have been accusing former governor Orji Uzor Kalu of sponsoring us, say­ing he is the person behind what we are doing. I can tell you the man does not know anything about what we are doing. We used the oc­casion to tell the world that the man does not know what we are doing. They should leave him and The Sun Newspapers alone and face us. Members of SAI4C are Abians, although not all of us are living in this state. Chief Peter Echeta Eme is a man known in this state, you can verify everything, and we are willing to come out.

Those making the allegation (about OUK) are trying to divert attention, they know the truth. Let me tell the world something; when we were writing the petition, one area of conflict was that we should include former governor Kalu in the petition. It was an elaborate and very hot debate. The question was that why should we include him? This question came about because TA told us in 2011 that the man who made him not to perform was Kalu and that if he goes away from Kalu, Abia would change and we say let us hold him by that word. Then, he left Kalu and we gave him that grace from 2011 down, the other four years we are not going to look at it because he claimed Kalu didn’t allow him to work.

You can now see very vividly that if Abians open their eyes, they must see it was TA who must have misled Orji Uzor Kalu. Anybody who followed what happened must agree with me that Kalu must have been misled by his then Chief of Staff (TA). All of us in Abia know both men and who is what. It was when TA got his so-called libera­tion from Kalu that we saw clearly how wife, son, in-laws, brothers became members of the cabinet.

So, Kalu could not have been part of it. If he were part of it, we could have started from 2007 to 2015 to probe TA. You said Kalu deceived and made you not to work and claimed you liberated yourself from him, but we saw at the end that what the man told us was sto­ries from the marines; the reverse was truly the case. What Abians should do is to call both men for a debate and at the end they would be able to know who among them deceived the other and put the state in this mess.

Maybe TA and some of his cronies are saying that Kalu was sponsoring us because Daily Sun published the petition we sent to EFCC. What we put in The Sun, was it not a paid advert? We went to some other national dailies but because of one reason or the other, they refused to accept the materials for publication. The Sun accepted it, maybe out of the love of its pub­lisher for the state. Do you know why we published it? If we didn’t do it, the man (TA) is an expert in killing stories, EFCC would have done nothing. He has gone there to block every petition against him. We exposed it so that President Muhamadu Buhari will read it him­self, and we will continue to expose everything so that he cannot kill it. We don’t have the type of money he has, but we will fight this cause to the last with what we have.

The truth I must tell is that no­body is sponsoring us. If you are shown the balance in our bank ac­count, you will be surprised, but we are carrying on this crusade based on donations from Abians who feel we should be encouraged. Abians were pushed to the wall and they are now reacting. It’s not a question of one individual sponsoring. Abi­ans are sponsoring us. If you go to facebook, you will see them join­ing the group.

You said EFCC has invited you over the petition; when you went, what transpired? Do you have confidence in the anti-graft agency handling this matter?

When we went to EFCC, we were interviewed and we owed up to the petition and the addition we submitted. They told us the prob­lems they had been passing through which I will not state in this inter­view and which they said they will not like to continue in the time of Buhari. They said due process must be followed. We have put up a pe­tition, it is before the EFCC. They cannot just invite him only for him to get free, they will do the investi­gation thoroughly after which they will invite him.

They will ask him, ‘Mr. Former Governor, these people said you got so, so and so amount from 2011 to 2015 and did not do anything tangible with it’, if he says it is not true, he should be able to tell them the truth. It is as simple as abc.

One may be tempted to ask how you managed to get all the figures you put in that petition which you said are factual.

There is a limit to which you can discuss a matter that is before the law court. All the things you read in the newspaper, we itemized them, the sources, the evidences and put them up in another paper of about 30 pages and submitted to the EFCC, we did not make that one public. If we say this person did this here, there is evidence.

When we were writing it, we told our lawyers not to include our sources in the petition because that is the first thing they will pick. But now, if it leaks, it is only EFCC that has that copy. We even gave them the names of who to call if they are confused or in doubt and that those will help them to clear the issues we raised. Is that not enough?

You said you have confidence in EFCC handling this petition, but earlier, you spoke about pre­vious petitions subdued at the agency, how do we reconcile this?

I cannot say what I cannot sub­stantiate. What I do know is that he (TA) said so. He claims the anti-graft agency will not do him any­thing. Because of that, we threw in a kite in EFCC before we wrote this petition. There was something they did which amounted to about N2 billion and we wrote a peti­tion to the agency on that. After acknowledging receipt of the pe­tition, officials of the EFCC told us they will get back to us within two weeks, but they never got back to us. Somebody told us that the man has killed the petition and we said it was a lie, but it was when we didn’t hear from the anti-graft agency after one month that we came to believe what we were told.

It is because we did not want them to block this one that we went through Abia State asking people to give us money so that we can publish it in the newspaper; and that is exactly what we have done and the looters are now not com­fortable.

The only person they think can do it (finance the publication) is Orji Uzor Kalu, but they don’t know that Abia State has even lesser mortals with courage. That’s the only problem they have. I’m not trying to blow his trumpet, everybody in this country know that OUK has courage so they said there is no other person in Abia who can do this except him and more so it was published in The Sun. But they forget that some­thing that eats grows, that there are smaller mortals in Abia, even though they are not fat, but they are fat in ideas and courage. We are real and courageous. If we are not real, we wouldn’t have an account in First City Monument Bank, we wouldn’t have also had a website and facebook account. The num­ber of people joining us is growing daily.

So, there is no way anybody can subdue this particular peti­tion. They do not know the type of people who insist the correct thing must be done in this matter. In the next two months, if EFCC still fails to act on this petition, we are going to write an open letter to President Buhari because Abia is bleeding to death as a result of massive loot­ing by officials of the immediate past government in the state. If the president is talking about fighting corruption and he allows this one to be swept under the carpet, peo­ple may be forced not to take him serious again.

Before submitting the peti­tion, we were sceptical and asked whether EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Larmode will not be compromised and subdue it? We were assured he will not because things have changed in this country. If he mess­es up this case, even if he leaves office, somebody taking over can recall and probe him on this. So everybody is being careful for now. Our courage is that Buhari’s administration has said no to cor­ruption.

A group, Abia Renaissance has warned that you people should test their patience no more. What’s your reaction?

The Abia Renaissance is no group other than TA Orji’s aides. What we are saying is that you shouldn’t threaten us if your hands are clean. If you say what we’ve written is not true, there is the court of law. If you don’t want EFCC to investigate it and justice be done, go to the law court and sue us for damages. This will make the matter easier because we believe we will have more protection in the regular law courts. At least, the court will be sitting in Abia and those proj­ects they claimed they used those billions of naira to fund will be sighted by the Judge before pass­ing judgment.

The word is due process. EFCC insists they must follow due pro­cess and we agreed. Abia Renais­sance or whatever they call them­selves must follow due process and not threaten our lives.

If those things we put down on paper were not factual, I wouldn’t have been involved because I know the extent to which these people can go and I’m not bothered about their threat. I am ready to sacrifice my life to ensure that the looted funds are recovered and returned to Abia State.

Some people are afraid this crusade may be abandoned half way especially if your members are settled.

The problem of Abia State finds itself in the Igbo adage which has it that if you see a lizard which normally has one tail coming out with two tails and you leave it, in the near future the one with seven tails will come. We will not allow what happened in the past happen again in this state where someone will be doing something with im­punity and everybody will keep quiet. It will not happen again. That is the problem we had which was becoming a culture, it’s not going to happen again. Even this pres­ent government, when we clean up this matter we have at hand and the looted funds are returned, we will monitor how they will be spent and if they go the old way, we will shout to high heavens. SAI4C has come to stay for the good of Abia, there will be no going back.