President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the indefinite suspension of a top and ‘powerful’ official in the legal arm of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), identified as Abba Ibrahim.
The order, THE WITNESS learnt, was handed down on Monday following a request by the Presidential Panel investigating the allegations of graft and misconduct against the former EFCC acting Chairman, Ibrahim Magu.
This newspaper gathered that Ibrahim was one of EFCC’s legal team that “handled sensitive cases.
Ibrahim’s suspension came days after the president approved the suspension of 12 directors in the commission alongside its secretary, Olanipekun Olukoyede.
Magu was on July 6 arrested by a combined team of Department of State Services personnel and policemen and taken to the Presidential Villa in Abuja to answer questions from an investigative panel headed by Justice Ayo Salami, a retired judge of the Court of Appeal.
He was detained for several days before being released on bail.
Magu is facing grilling by the presidential panel over financial allegations and improprieties, including money laundering.
He is also accused of mismanagement of recovered assets by the EFCC.
Among the issues Magu is helping the panel to resolve are wide discrepancies in figures of recovered monies published by the agency.
The panel has also asked him to react to the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) report accusing him of siphoning money from the EFCC. NFIU report showed that a particular Bureau de Change, owned by Ahmed Ibrahim Shanono linked to the Acting Chairman based in Kaduna has more than 158 accounts and has been receiving huge sums of funds.
The report also accused Magu of laundering money through Pastor Emmanuel Omale of Hand of God Prophetic Ministry.
Omale was alleged to have bought a landed property on behalf of Magu worth N573 million in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Magu has also been accused of allegedly failing to give proper account of missing 332 out of the 836 recovered real estate property as of March, 2018.
But the former EFCC boss has denied the allegations.