The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC probing 50 bank accounts as it recovered N30bn in the alleged scandals in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.
The EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, who disclosed this in an interview published in the March edition of EFCC Alert, an in-house magazine of the anti-graft agency, also called for special courts for corruption cases.
Olukoyode, in the publication said the recovered fund was in the Federal Government’s coffers.
The EFCC is currently investigating alleged scandals in the humanitarian affairs ministry involving the suspended minister, Betta Edu, her predecessor, Sadiya Umar-Farouq, and Ms Halima Shehu, the National Coordinator of the National Social Investment Programme, an agency under the humanitarian ministry,
You will recall that Betta Edu was in January suspended by President Bola Tinubu following an alleged fraud in her ministry.
She was subsequently interrogated by the EFCC after a leaked memo revealed that the suspended minister directed the Accountant-General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein, to transfer N585m to a private account owned by one Oniyelu Bridget, who the ministry claimed currently serves as the Project Accountant, Grants for Vulnerable Groups.
The minister had claimed that the N585m payment was meant for vulnerable groups in Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Ogun, and Lagos states, describing the allegations against her as baseless.
Edu’s predecessor, Umar-Farouq, was also quizzed by the EFCC investigators in January in connection with the probe into the N37.1bn allegedly laundered during her tenure in office, through a contractor, James Okwete.
Apart from Edu and Umar-Farouq, the National Coordinator of the NSIPA is similarly being probed over alleged scandals in the ministry.
Shehu was arrested and questioned by the EFCC in connection with the movement of N44bn from the NSIPA account to some suspicious private and corporate accounts within the last four days in December 2023.