Abba Mohammed denied executing project for ONSA, says witness

The trial of former Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and ex-Minister of Defence, Bello Haliru Mohammed, and his son, Bello on a four-count charge bordering on criminal breach of trust and money laundering, continued yesterday at a Federal High Court, Abuja under Justice A.R Mohammed with a prosecution witness Rouquyya Ibrahim testifying that Mohammed denied executing any contract for the Office of National Security Adviser(ONSA).

Essentially, Mohammed and his son are being prosecuted by the anti- graft agency for their role in the alleged diversion of funds meant for procurement of arms through the office of the National Security Adviser.

Rouquyya, who is an operative with the EFCC attached to the Forensic Accounting Unit as analyst with a special task force said: “In October/November 2014, a special task force was created to investigate defence and arms contract in the Office of the National Security Adviser otherwise known as ONSA.

After the team was constituted, they looked at the intelligence report and commenced investigations into the allegations during which staffers of the relevant government agencies and banks were invited.

“Specifically in this matter, we invited officials of the office of the Accountant General of the Federation, otherwise known as the AGF, staffers of ONSA and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). After our interview with them, we requested for relevant documents. The AGF’s office gave us the documents requested. The CBN also replied and furnished us with the requested documents.

“One of the discoveries we made after receiving documents from the AGF’s office was a letter written by the Ministry of Finance to the CBN requesting for N100 billion on the 2nd of March 2015 for several expenditures for several agencies but specifically, N30 billion of the N100 billion was for ONSA for security issues.

“On the 3rd of March 2015, the AGF office wrote to the Ministry of Finance in respect of the same N30 billion but they had another N31 billion unrelated to ONSA in the letter.

“On the 6th of March 2015, the AGF office wrote to the CBN authorizing the release of the N30 billion which was paid into ONSA’s account with CBN on the 11th of March 2015.