Shehu Sani, a former Kaduna state senator, spoke from a detention center belonging to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), claiming that the case against him was a smear campaign. On Friday 10 January, Sani, who was held for allegedly extorting the sum of $24,000 from a businessman, said the EFCC allegation was groundless and unreasonable.

He specifically described the allegations as “baseless, factless, unfounded, hollow and unsubstantial”. Daily Trust reports that Sani said in a WhatsApp message he sent out to journalists, that the allegation was meant to tarnish his image.

The WhatsApp message is as follows:

It is a scripted stream of mischievous concoctions and utter fabrications using a puppet state agent; all aimed at splashing feaces and mud on me. The extortion allegation is nothing but a wholesale falsehood, packaged in a phantom anti-graft facade to taint, stain and mute me.

That shall never happen if I am alive. I have made my statement and provided all my facts against their package of lies and I demand the EFCC to make public all the sheets of our statements and supporting documents for the world to see. My detention is unfair, unjust, prearranged and politically motivated.

Alhaji Sani Dauda and his hidden sponsors have not been able to provide any proof of their allegations. I’m unjustly incarcerated on the ground of an arranged two page petition backed with no evidential or documentary proof. Fascism thrives in frame up of its critics. They claim extortion and here they are closing my bank accounts, searching my houses and offices and demanding I declare my assets of which I have already done that at the CCB last year when I left the senate.

Frame up cannot silence me!!! I have never ever met with the CJN or any judge or judges or ever called directly or indirectly to offer to give or to give directly or indirectly any form of gratification from Alhaji Sani Dauda. I have never ever discussed with ASD on any form of bribe or gratification to be given to any judge or any EFCC official. The bribe story is phantom, the bribe story is a fake, imaginative work of fiction, cruelly crafted to smear me, to frame me and to justify my persecution.

The bribe story is a heap of blatant lies and outright falsehood concocted and fabricated, using a front and the EFCC to premiere a state drama. ASD is a barely educated front for a state mission. Criminalizing me or “framing me” will not silence me, bend me or compromise me.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.