By Ismail Auwal
Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), found the case of Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris baffling. Despite being one of the most important appointees of President Muhammadu Buhari, he deliberately refused to respond to repeated invitations of the anti-graft agency.
Idris, SAHELIAN TIMES learnt, chose to play a hide-and-seek game with the operatives of the agency since receiving an invitation to come and explain the case of fraud the commission has been building around him.
“We don’t know whether he was afraid to accept the invitation or he simply thought he had become too powerful as he seemed not to care,” a source told SAHELIAN TIMES.
According to the source the embattled AGF used his family members and close associates to allegedly steal public funds and laundered through real estate investments in Kano and Abuja.
Idris on Monday learned that the EFCC planned to arrest him in Kano where he arrived to attend an event and he quickly submitted himself to the office of the Department of Security Service (DSS). The DSS later handed him over to the EFCC.
What is stranger, however, is that, before Mr. Idris’ arrest he had continued to be reckless in buying expensive properties in Kano and Abuja despite knowing that he was under EFCC’s watch.
Before he was eventually arrested in Kano on Monday, the agency was said to have arrested his relatives who were indicted in the investigations that the agency has been carrying out on the AGF.
Residents of Kano have over time questioned the spending spree of the AGF.
Idris has allegedly built multiple houses and shopping malls in Kano and Abuja including the multi-million Naira Gezawa Commodity Market projects.
President Muhammed Buhari appointed Ahmed Idris as the Accountant General of the Federation on June 25, 2015.
The position became vacant at the time after the former Accountant General, Jonah Otunla, left office on June 12, 2015.
President Buhari reappointed Idris for a second four-year term in June 2019, amid criticisms from labour groups who said the accountant-general should retire after turning 60.
Idris, a native of Kano State, North-west Nigeria, was born on November 25, 1960, and was until his appointment in 2015 the Director of Finance and Accounts, Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has indicted him for an allegedly fraudulent transaction of about N80 billion Naira.
