Saturday, 28 December 2013
Twenty-four hours after the arrest of kano state house of assembly legislatures, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has granted administrative bail to the speaker of Kano State House of Assembly, Gambo Sallau and other principal officers of the Assembly who were arrested over the review of the state’s 2013 supplementary budget in December to N28 billion.
According to a dependable source at the commission, the legislators were released at about 5:30pm yesterday, but investigation is ongoing and they will be asked to return whenever the need arises.
Those arrested along with the speaker were the deputy speaker, the chief whip, deputy chief whip, majority leader, deputy majority leader, minority leader, deputy minority leader, and chairmen of House Committee on Appropriation and Finance and the clerk of the House.
The state governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, had earlier in the month sent a budget review request of about N24bn to the State Assembly, but later replaced it with a request of N28bn.
However, EFCC claimed that a stakeholder in the state petitioned the commission over the suspicious nature of the request, since the financial year was almost winding up.
Meanwhile, the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) has described their arrest as an undisguised case of political vendetta by a hurting presidency, whose target is actually the state governor.
In a statement issued in Lagos yesterday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said since the arrest of the lawmakers for carrying out their statutory duty of approving a budget cannot be justified by any law, it is clear to all discerning Nigerians that the only motive is to harass and intimidate the lawmakers for their recent defection from the PDP to the APC.
It said the politically-motivated arrest also undoubtedly marked the beginning of the long-expected series of persecution by a desperate federal government against APC states, in particular those states that have recently left the unsettled PDP.
