The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Tuesday confirmed that former Senator Shehu Sani was in its custody answering questions over alleged extortion and name –dropping.
Speaking on the widely reported case , a top official of the Commission told Newsdiaryoline Tuesday night that the former Senator was “still with us.”
“He is still with us.He is being quizzed for alleged extortion and name dropping,” the source said. He confirmed that he was being interrogated over alleged extortion of $20,000 from Alhaji Sani Dauda, owner of Kaduna based ASD Motors .
The EFCC source also accused the senator of claiming he was very close to the acting Chairman EFCC, Ibrahim Magu
Prior Tuesday’s incident, Sani had been granted ‘a kind of administrative bail’ by the anti-graft agency on the alleged issue of extortion and he was asked to be reporting. He however made himself incommunicado, reports said.
Newsdiaryonline was told that Sani’s troubles began after complaints were lodged with EFCC against him.The complainant is expected to confront the former Senator with the allegations while he is being held by the EFCC, it was learnt.
Meanwhile, Suleiman Ahmed, one of Sani’s aides gave a different account of the Senator’s travails in a report Tuesday by Daily Trust. He said :“We are here with the Senator because he was invited by the EFCC which was why he came to listen to the complaint against him and which is normal.
“All we know is that there was a business transaction between Senator and him ASD. The senator wanted to buy a Peugeot 508 Executive and was making part payment.
“An invoice was given to him as well as an account number by ASD to make deposit. So we were all surprised when we heard that ASD filed a complaint at EFCC alleging 7.2 million naira extortion.”
Ahmed suspects Shehu Sani may have been set up : “How can Senator Shehu Sani extort mere 7.2 million naira from somebody like ASD. The point here is that we are thinking that somebody somewhere instigated ASD to go against senator.”
However, a source at EFCC told Newsdiaryonline that there are more complaints against the former Senator that have not been made public, suggesting that he might spend the night with the Commission.
