A Lagos High Court today, presided over by Justice Olubunmi Oyewole, ordered the notorious fraudster, Fred Ajudua, to be remanded in Kirikiri Prison. Since being granted an earlier bail, Ajudua has for four years failed to appear in court over charges to the tune of over $1.5billion. Worse still, the authorities have failed to arrest him, despite a warrant issued for his arrest.
As fate would have it, he turned up in court today hoping to renew a bail request that had been earlier revoked in 2006. He was quickly nabbed, pending the hearing of the bail application. The matter was adjourned to 24th June, 2013.
In the history of Nigeria, Ajudua can safely be referred to as an 'unrepentant' exponent of the Advance-Fee-Fraud (419), which later became an international phenomenon. The audacious Ajudua was the talk of the town in the early/mid 90s in Nigeria, as he often moved in an entourage and mingled with those in the top echelon of power, including the top notch in the police. He was said to have duped more than $1.69million off two Dutch nationals between 1999 and 2000. In 2000, he was also reported to have served five years in Kirikiri, and Agodi prisons. The EFCC had claimed, in October, 2003 that Ajudua had 12 pending cases against him, including an advance-fee-fraud of 1.6million Euros, and another one for $1.5million committed in 2001.
Several attempts to arrest the man in the past have been foiled and sabotaged by rogue law enforcement officers, and mostly by his die-hard supporters/local armed thugs from his village in Ibusa, Delta State. In 2007, the Administrative Panel of Inquiry on Reports of Alleged Corrupt Practices, stopped his wife, Princess, from contesting for political office on basis of an EFCC Report that she was involved in a conspiracy to obtain $7.85million under false pretenses.
- So what next? I ask you, fellow Nigerians. How is it possible for this guy to have jumped bail for four good years? What does that say about our attitude to crime prevention, and corruption in Nigeria?
- Call it 419, call it stealing government money...all na the same criminality. Tif na tif, whether you cajole your victim, or you mug them. What has happened to Oladimeji, Tinubu, Daniel, Fani-Kayode, and others??? Bode George, and Ibori only went to prison because they stepped on big toes of big men!!! Ajudua, like many others, has been at large because he is a 'good boy'.
- When are we going to be coming down hard on these enemies of progress in Nigeria...people that make the whole world to stereotype us all as dishonest criminals???
- I bet you he is not going to smell the real prison at the end of the day.....how much???
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