EFCC shuts down Benue accounts, Governor Ortom laments witch-hunt

The EFCC, on Wednesday, announced that it has closed some bank accounts belonging to the Government of Benue State.

The commission alleged that between June 30, 2015 and March 2018, Governor Samuel Ortom “ordered the withdrawal of N21.3bn from four government’s accounts in Guaranty Trust Bank, First Bank of Nigeria and the United Bank for Africa”.

It also said about N19bn from the money was meant to be for the payment of six security agencies that had been deployed in the state to address the crisis between herdsmen and farmers in the state.

The EFCC also said: “less than N3 billion of the money was paid to the security agencies while the rest could not be accounted for”.

It said that four bank accounts belonging to two Benue State Government’s agencies have also been investigated.

The first agency which is the Benue State Government House which has an account in GTB as well as UBA, allegedly received N1.9 billion from the state’s allocation between June 30, 2015, and March 2018.

“The second government agency is the Bureau of Internal Affairs and Special Services. The agency has an account with UBA with number 1007540119 and a First Bank account with number 2023788057. These accounts were also credited between the same time with N19, 468, 951, 590 from the Benue State allocation,” the commission stated.

Governor Ortom has accused the anti-graft agency of coming after him because he defected from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

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The Governor also expressed shock of why the agencies did not investigate the other defectors too.

“I have nothing to hide,” he maintains. “I can assure that the investigators won’t find anything incriminating against me. If their focus was on Benue state, they should have started from 1999. But this is not the case. With the big security challenges in the state since my assumption of office, it is surprising that anyone would expect me to do nothing but keep the security vote in the safe.

“How can you single me out of 36 (governors) of the states for investigation? It (security vote) is not something that any government will begin to disclose. Why should Benue’s case be different if not persecution?

“Also, If the EFCC wanted a genuine investigation of security vote spending, they should have started from the presidency and across the 36 states,” Ortom said.