Former director of finance in the Ministry of Niger Delta, Ayinla Abibu, has been sentenced to one-year imprisonment.
A Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court, which gave the judgment, also ordered that two plots of land in Kubwa and Bwari areas of Abuja belonging to the convict be forfeited to the federal government.
According to a statement on Tuesday by Azuka C. Ogugua, spokesperson for the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Abibu was charged for embezzling the sum of N60 million from the federal government through the use of a front company, Zeocat Nigeria Limited, in March 2014.
Abibu was charged by the commission before Justice Olukayode Adeniyi for defrauding the federal government in collusion with a former principal accountant in the ministry, Kabiru Poloma, by fraudulently withdrawing money from the Constituency Project account of the ministry domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The 60-year-old convict was said to have used the proceeds of the fraud to acquire a house in Ogbomosho, Oyo State, and plots of land in Kubwa and Bwari areas of the Federal Capital Territory Abuja.
Before the sentencing, the defence lawyer, Abiola Akinwale, pleaded with the court to be lenient with the convict by granting him a lighter sentence as the convict falls among the age vulnerable to COVID-19. The defence lawyer further told the court that a longer sentence would quicken the death of the convict’s aged parents who are 99 and 92 years old, respectively.
The ICPC counsel, George Lawal, while conceding the powers of sentence to the court, stated that the grievous nature of the crime committed by the convict demanded that he should be punished accordingly. Lawal argued that a lesser sentence might fail to serve as a deterrent to would-be-offenders.
He said, “In the circumstances, it is only fair that restitution be made in equal value of what was taken. This will send a clear message that crime does not pay.”
