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| Doyin Okupe |
The
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has been grilling a former Senior
Special Assistant to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan on Public Affairs, Dr.
Doyin Okupe, for the last one week for allegedly receiving N85m from embattled
former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.)
The
EFCC, however, did not detain him but afforded him the privilege of coming from
home due to a heart condition Okupe reportedly suffers.
Apart
from allegedly receiving money from Dasuki, the former presidential aide is
also accused of receiving dubious contracts to the tune of N76m from a local
council in Niger State.
According
to investigators at the anti-graft agency, Okupe was first invited on June 22,
2016 over fresh allegations bordering on illicit payments received from the
account of the Office of the National Security Adviser, which is domiciled at
the Central Bank of Nigeria.
A source
at the EFCC said, “Okupe was quizzed over N50m which he collected in cash from
the former NSA, without record or accountability. Another company that is
linked to Okupe, Abraham Telecoms Limited, allegedly received N35.5m from the
NSA through the CBN.
“We also
got evidence that a company owned by him, Romic Soil Fix International Limited,
received N63m from Chanchaga Local Government council of Niger State and
another N13.5m from the same council, for reasons that are not stated.
“We were
told that the payments from Chanchaga Local Government to Romic were made on
November 21, 2014, during the Peoples Democratic Party’s primary election and
February 13, 2015, just before the general elections.
“He has
not been able to explain the receipts and has been asked to be reporting at
intervals. The reason he is not detained is because he claimed to have a heart
condition and presented a medical report to back up the claim.”
It will
be recalled that Okupe had openly confessed on his official Twitter handle on
May 7 that he received money from Dasuki on several occasions for the running
of his office.
Okupe,
who served under Jonathan from 2012 to 2015, however, said he had nothing to do
with the arms scam which reportedly cost the country over $15bn in stolen
funds.
Okupe
said, “I was not paid arms deal money. The NSA paid for the running of my
office monthly from August 2012. Dasukigate was in 2014. I did not take part in
the campaign.”
It had
been reported in January that Okupe got money from Dasuki in three shady cyber
security contracts.
One of
the contracts had instructions to hunt down unfriendly media websites with
Distributed Denial of Service attacks.
It was
believed to be a project conceived to shut down online media platforms
perceived as friendly towards Muhammadu Buhari, the then presidential candidate
of the All Progressives Congress ahead of the 2015 election.
The
other contract was to intercept all optic fibre cables landing in Nigeria. The
third was a passive mass and target GSM interception that had the ability to
decrypt ciphers and operate undetected.
Labels: Dasukigate scandal, Doyin Okupe, EFCC interrogates Doyin Okupe for receiving ₦85m from Dasuki