The Centre for Good Leadership Initiative (CGLI) has called on the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Mohammed Adamu “to investigate a faceless group of lawyers calling for the prosecution of the Minister of State Mines and Steel Development Dr. Uchechukwu Ogah.”

The Coalition of Public Interest Lawyers and Advocates (COPA) had on Tuesday asked the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to reopen the case file against Ogah in the interest of justice.

COPA in the petition to EFCC, a copy of which was made available to News Express on Wednesday, said: “We have course to write to you pertaining to a case that has lingered unattended with your agency especially as it relates to a matter of gross betrayal of trust and deliberate fraud. One Mrs. Bridget Adeosun, Managing Director of Mut-Hass Petroleum Limited, wrote and submitted a petition to your agency wherein she alleged with attached proof that Mr. Uchechukwu Sampson Ogah, who currently serves as a Nigerian Minister, forged her signature on a document to validate a non-existent Memorandum of Understanding between his company Masters Energy Oil & Gas and Mut-Hass Petroleum Limited sometime in 2011.”

Executive Director of CGLI, Chief Okoi Ken, said it is criminal for COPA to begin to resurrect a case that had already been handled and discarded by the court and the Inspector General of Police in 2012 nothing that those behind the fresh petition are political hatchet jobbers and blackmailers who are “seeking personal gains”.

The CGLI director said for the records, the office of the Inspector General of Police (IGP) pressured by Ogah’s political opponents initiated “a criminal charge in a Magistrate Court in Lagos against Masters Energy and the minister when he was the president of Masters Energy Oil and Gas Ltd,” stressing that “when the Police saw the futility of the charge and knowing their inability to secure any conviction with the alleged frivolous charge, they withdrew the charge immediately and up till now there is no other criminal case in court against Dr. Ogah or Masters Energy concerning this false allegation and for anybody to begin to resurrect a case that has been concluded by the IGP is not only inciting but done in bad fate. Such persons must be investigated to determine their real motives.”

Continuing, the CGLI director said: “Those behind this new petition should be thoroughly investigated and the motives behind their petition should be unearthed. We know that they are all afraid of the growing political influence of Dr. Ogah and they want to give him a bad name to tarnish his growing political profile in Nigeria and especially his state, Abia.”

He added that “blackmailers should not be allowed to do their dirty jobs and go scot free. They must be made to account for their bad actions.”

He insisted that the COPA petition is “driven by an unprecedented greed and avarice” adding that besides the IGP, other security agencies in Nigeria including the EFCC investigated the said allegation and found no substance in it.

“Why COPA renewed interests in this case if not for political vendetta and personal gains? Why are they trying to wake up dead issue if not for personal gains? We challenge them to come out open in this case.”

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