Arresting Folashade Oke May Lead To Clues On The True Owners of The EFCC Seized $50m

The story is developing on the $50m corruption case in Nigeria.

While Ayodele Oke, the Director-General of the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA) has claimed that the $43 million, N23.2 million and £27,800 (N13billion) cash found in an apartment in Lagos last week belongs to his agency, information available to SaharaReporters suggests that the woman seen hauling the money into the apartment in Ghana-Must-Go bags may have been Folashade Oke, his wife.

It has been gathered that investigation has revealed that the owners of Apartment 7B gave Folashade Oke, with phone number +2348059833410, as their contact. Sources at the NIA confirmed Folashade to be the spouse of their Director-General, Mr Oke.

The day after the money was discovered, Mr Oke had told SaharaReporters he could not verify any information about the money as he had not read any report linking his agency to the cash.

One of the whistleblowers responsible for the discovery told our correspondent that since he started working on the property as a guard, a woman who spoke fluent Yoruba repeatedly brought huge bags of money to Apartment 7B. That particular property was known to guards as Apartment “Dash-Dash” because in the records there were two dashes where the name of the owner ought to be.

He recalled that on two occasions, he helped the woman, who was always curiously dressed in a haggardly way, to carry the money to “Dash-Dash”.

The building in Ikoyi where the money was found

The woman, on the first occasion, gave him N10, 000 as a gift, and on the second, N500. He said the woman would spend about two hours in the apartment, then go freshen up in the gym at the back of the building before leaving. While Mrs. Oke appears to be that person, who was quietly trying to traffic the money to the apartment for some reason, a quick check on True Caller shows phone number +2348059833410 to be customized as “Okemob Niger”.

According to the whistleblower, who is in hiding for fear of his life, there are about 19 fully occupied apartments and 2 penthouses at the 16 Osborne Road, Ikoyi, property. Estate valuers estimate each of the apartment with four bedrooms and state of the art facilities to cost about N250 million.

An EFCC source also told SaharaReporters that the reason they went ahead and raided the apartment was because the EFCC has in the past year investigated several NIA operatives involved in corruption, finding widespread malfeasance within the agency, with several NIA operatives owning hotels, apartment buildings and luxury cars in Abuja and elsewhere.

That background may have emboldened the EFCC chairman to ignore pleas by Mr. Oke when he arrived suddenly at the EFCC offices asking them to call off the raid after they had already commenced. The question now is: how did Mrs Oke become involved in discreetly and personally ferrying money supposedly belonging to the federal government into a private apartment she appears to own, and apparently trying to hide it there?

Arresting this woman could help solve this case.