•Conviction of Kebbi’s ex-accountant-general raises questions about the lower court’s verdict
After being discharged and acquitted by a Kebbi High Court, on charges of conspiracy and obtaining money by false pretences preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), a former Accountant-General of Kebbi State, Mohammed Dakingari, has had his luck reversed by the Court of Appeal, Kebbi Division. The appellate court found him guilty of all the 10 counts and sentenced him to seven years in prison on each count, making 70 years in all.
Mercifully, the sentences are to run concurrently.
Dakingari was accused of using his office as accountant-general of the state for personal enrichment to the tune of N1.6bn. Moreover, contrary to extant civil service rules and regulations forbidding serving civil servants from owning businesses, the former accountant-general not only owned a construction company, Beal Construction Nigeria Ltd, but also awarded mouth-watering contracts to the company in his capacity as accountant-general. He was charged alongside Musa Yusuf, the company’s managing director.
A statement by the EFCC spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren, said it was discovered at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) that Dakingari’s sons, Bashir Mohammed, Anwal Sadat and Nasir Mohammed, as well as his brothers, Abduallahi Mohammed and Habibu Mohammed, were all directors of Beal Construction Company Ltd.
The statement added, “The construction company operates two accounts at Ecobank and Unity Bank, with Dakingari and Yusuf as signatories to the accounts. However, Dakingari was discovered to have operated with two signatures, one in his official capacity as accountant-general of the state and the other as the owner of Beal Construction Company Limited. EFCC said “the contracts executed for the state for which Beal Construction Company received huge payments included the supply of furniture to 66 secondary schools in Kebbi State valued at N987m; the connection of water and drainage system at the Kebbi Central Mosque valued at N110m and the building and partitioning of Mohammed Maira Secondary School valued at N247m.”
According to it, “analysis of the accounts revealed a total inflow of N1.3bn between May 2012 and September 2013, with most of the receipts coming from the Office of the Accountant-General and the Kebbi State Ministry of Finance.” The commission consequently filed 20 charges bordering on conspiracy, obtaining by false pretences and abuse of office against Dakingari and Yusuf at the Kebbi High Court.
Curiously, the lower court convicted and sentenced Yusuf to six months’ imprisonment but discharged and acquitted Dakingari. This judgment did not go down well with the EFCC which approached the Court of Appeal, urging it to set aside the judgment of the lower court and convict Dakingari as charged. The appellate court upheld the plea, convicted and sentenced Dakingari to seven years’ imprisonment each on 10 of the counts preferred against him.
We commend the EFCC for its doggedness in pursuing the matter this far. The convict would have been left to go away with the impression that it pays to commit crime if the EFCC had handled the case in a cavalier manner. Even as laymen, the facts on ground could not have supported the acquittal of the former accountant-general. As a matter of fact, most of the thieves in high places in the country steal cleverly, if we can be pardoned for using that expression. In this instance, Dakingari was either too naïve or overconfident that nothing would happen to him even if he broke civil service rules to commit crimes.
While we wonder what informed the lower court’s judgment, we commend the decision of the appellate court for serving justice without fear or favour. That is the way it should be. Public servants must work by the rules and when they depart from these to commit crime, they should be duly punished. This is the way to check corruption, which has done so much damage to the country’s economy.
We hope both the judiciary and the EFCC would sustain the momentum in dealing with the many other corruption cases pending in the courts or under investigation.
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