The Wife of former Minister of Aviation, Mrs Precious Fani- Kayode was detained briefly by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission on Monday in Ado-Ekiti.
Precious, who was in Ado-Ekiti together with her husband as guests of Governor Ayodele Fayose, had gone to Access Bank branch in Ado Ekiti around 3 p.m for transactions when she was detained by officials of the bank acting on orders of the EFCC.
Our correspondent gathered that she got a feeling that something strange was going on when she was not being promptly attended to, she inquired from officials what the problem was and was told she was being detained on the instruction of the EFCC.
It was then it dawn on the nursing mother, who had come to the banking hall with her eight month old baby that she had to call for help. It took the intervention of Governor Fayose who stormed the bank with some of his supporters around 7 pm to secure her release.
Speaking with newsmen shortly after the incident, Mrs. Fani-Kayode, lamented that she was badly treated by the officials while her baby was denied food.
“I’m not a politician and that account had been dormant for about five years. I only activated it last month in Port Harcourt. I decided to go to Access Bank to make some withdrawals when I was detained on the instruction of the EFCC. They told me account had been frozen and they were asked by the EFCC to arrest me on the spot.
Meanwhile, the EFCC has said that the wife of Femi Fani Kayode and her child are not in its custody and were never detained by the Commission.
A statement by EFCC’s head of media, Wilson Uwujaren said that “Contrary to the media spin about the purported arrest of mother and child, a certain Chikwendu Sonia today attempted to withdraw money from an Access Bank account that had been placed on ‘Post No Debit’ Category, following the discovery of illicit cash flows into the account.
“She was intercepted by the bank while the Commission was notified but because it was late, the EFCC advised that the suspect be taken to the police station for processing and release on bail.
“They were arranging to take the suspect to the police station when Governor Ayo Fayose stormed the bank with thugs and his personal security and forcefully secured the release of the suspect, with claims that the EFCC had no power to detain anybody in his state. He also vowed to close down the branch of the bank.”
EFCC said that the said account, which had a balance of N 2,307,712.82 was flagged following investigation into the PDP Joint Trust fund when the Commission traced N1.1 billion to the Zenith Bank account of Fani-Kayode.
“It was discovered that the account had two biometric identification numbers, one for Fani-Kayode and the other (with BVN 2205597283)for Sonia Chikwendu. The same BVN is linked to two other accounts in Diamond bank and 15 accounts in Guaranty Trust Bank,” it said.
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