Court Adjourns Alleged ₦5.78bn Fraud Trial of Former Kwara Governor Ahmed to February 16

Court Adjourns Alleged ₦5.78bn Fraud Trial of Former Kwara Governor Ahmed to February 16

ALIMOTU SHADIAT

trial of a former Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, and his Commissioner for Finance, Ademola Banu, resumed on Thursday, January 8, 2025, with the testimony of a key prosecution witness, Stanley Ujilibo.

The duo is being prosecuted by the Ilorin Zonal Directorate of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, over an alleged ₦5.78 billion fraud.

At the resumed hearing before Justice Mahmud Abdulgafar, of the Kwara State High Court, Ilorin, Ujilibo, who is the sixth prosecution witness (PW6), told the court that the EFCC, in the course of its investigation, obtained bank statements of the Kwara State Government from Polaris Bank and Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank).

Led in evidence by Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, the witness stated that letters were written to the Managing Directors of the then Skye Bank (now Polaris Bank) and GTBank, requesting the relevant statements of account.

“My Lord, we wrote to the then Skye Bank, now known as Polaris Bank, and Guaranty Trust Bank to request the statements of accounts of the Kwara State Government,” Ujilibo said.

He explained that the letters, dated August 1, 2025, were duly received and acknowledged by the banks, which subsequently responded with the requested documents. The bank statements were tendered in evidence and admitted by the court as exhibits.

The EFCC had alleged that the defendants approved the use of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) matching grant funds to pay salaries of civil servants, contrary to the purpose for which the funds were released.

According to the Commission, the UBEC matching grants and counterpart funds constituting fifty percent of the total allocation were meant for the provision of basic infrastructural facilities in primary and junior secondary schools across the sixteen local government areas of Kwara State.

At the previous sitting, a former Accountant-General of Kwara State, Suleiman Oluwadare Ishola, who served between 2013 and 2019, had testified that the sum of ₦1 billion, being a UBEC matching grant, was borrowed by the Abdulfatah Ahmed administration in 2015 to pay salaries of civil servants and pensioners.

Testifying further, Ujilibo told the court that the EFCC also received a petition from the Kwara State Government, which prompted further correspondence with the Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant-General during the investigation.

However, when the prosecution sought to tender responses obtained from the Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant-General, defence counsel, led by Kamaldeen Ajibade, raised an objservation, noting that the documents had not been properly highlighted for ease of reference.

Consequently, Justice Abdulgafar adjourned the matter to February 16, 2026, for continuation of the trial.