WOLE BALOGUN, Ado Ekiti
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has unsealed some properties it claimed belonged to the immediate past governor of Ekiti State, Mr Ayodele Fayose, in Ado Ekiti, the state capital.
The anti-corruption commission had on Thursday, November 22, 2018, sealed off the properties, marked them with red ink and wrote on them: “EFCC under investigation, KEEP OFF ABJ-HQ FAFI.”
Fayose had reacted through his spokesperson, Lere Olayinka, accusing the EFCC of sealing houses belonging to innocent people in the state under the guise that they were linked to him saying it was only in Nigeria that an anti-corruption agency would first go about sealing houses before determining the ownership, which can be done so easily by visiting relevant agencies.
However, our reporter observed in Ado Ekiti that officials of EFCC, in a white- coloured bus marked BWR 627 AT, moved from one of the properties to others, erasing the marks.
The buildings included a block of two-storey commercial complex located opposite the Ekiti State Local Government Service Commission, the NTS Event Hall and Hotel, Fajuyi, Our Peoples 104.1FM, Fajuyi, and a building beside Spotless Hotel, GRA, Ado Ekiti.
Others were a twin-building behind the Government House at the GRA, a two-storey commercial building at Okesa Market and a petrol filling station.
Sources disclosed that the EFCC’s action might not be unconnected with its discovery that the properties were sealed in error.
It would be recalled that a two-storey commercial building at the Okesa Market, owned by a medical doctor and former member of the State House of Assembly, Dr. Samuel Omotoso, that was among the properties sealed was unsealed in December last year.
Omotoso, who personally removed the EFCC marks on the building said then that the removal of the markings was consequent upon presentation of documents to EFCC to prove his family’s ownership of the property.