The Economic and Finacial CrimesCommission EFCC, yesterday, March 4, 2017 told a Federal High Court in Abuja that the fourth defendant in the ongoing N24 billion police pension scam trial, Veronica Onyegbula, during cross examination in 2012 when she was apprehended, that she made $544,000 from sales of pure water.
Onyegbula is standing trial alongside Uzoma Attang, Esai Dangabar, Atiku Abubakar Kigo, Ahmed Inuwa Wada, Sani Habila Zira and Christian Madubuike on criminal accusations verging on scam and criminal breach of trust for their complicity in the scam at the police pension office. It is affirmed that the charged people planned and successively pulled back cash from the Police Pension Fund (PPF) in a record domiciled at First Bank of Nigeria and shared it among themselves.
Upon the resumption of the hearing of the case at a FCT high court yesterday, one of the indicting witnesses and an agent of the anti-graft organization, Rukayya Ibrahim, told the court that amid cross examination, the accused told the office that she made the tremendous whole of cash from her pure water business. Rukayya said this while giving proof in the trial within trial requested by counsel to Onyegbula, Barrister Ernest Ikeji.
Driven in confirmation by prosecutor counsel, Barrister Leke Atolagbe, Rukkaya told the court that all the statements made by Onyegbula were intentionally made under a cheerful intuitive session and not under coercion as being claimed by her counsel.
The managing judge, Justice Husseini Baba-Yusuf, adjourned the trial within trial today at the instance of the prosecution counsel.
