Muiz Banire, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and founder of the United Action For Change — “a pressure group and think tank with the drive to build a society where people are valued and treated equally, and enjoy their rights as full citizens” — wrote the petition on the basis of which the police abducted Daniel Ojukwu, FIJ can confirm.

On its website, Banire’s UAC says it is “striving to enable citizens to exercise their democratic rights and assert their dignity as full citizens and take control of their lives”.

Banire, a former national legal adviser of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), was appointed by President Bola Tinubu as the Lagos State Commissioner for Special Duties in 1999.

In 2000, he headed the ministry of transport until 2007 when he moved to the ministry of environment.

THE SUBJECT OF BANIRE’S PETITION

Banire’s pettition is in relation to FIJ’s coverage of financial mismanagement in the office of Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, senior special assistant to the president on sustainable development goals (SSAP-SDGs).

In one of its investigative pieces on the office of the SSAp-SDGs, FIJ had reported how, with two weeks left of Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential reign, Orelope-Adefulire, his senior special assistant on SDGs, sent N147.1 million for the building of classrooms and a skill acquisition centre to the account of a restaurant.

FIJ’s report also highlighted how the restaurant secured and began executing a contract for the government without receiving any initial payments less than two years after it began operations.

On October 6, 2023, when FIJ visited the community that should have hosted school, the edifice could not be traced.

Also, when FIJ rang Nkiru Ezekwesili, owner of Enseno Global Ventures (Enseno GV), the Abuja-based restaurant, on October 17, 2023, she denied any knowledge of the project.

By the way, this same restaurant has also posed as an engineering company to take N367.46 million from the government.

In a related development, FIJ also reported how on Sunday, February 26, 2023, barely 24 hours after the country’s presidential election, the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on SDGs (OSSAP-SDGs) paid N47,511,621.63 to a certain Tru 3 Nigeria Limited was for the construction of one unit of six blocks of classrooms at the central senatorial district of Ogun State. This was a one-time payment for a contract that was never publicised, and for which the contractor was never mobilised.

This company was registered on June 14, 2009 and has been operational for 14 years, but it has never executed a construction contract, at least not until 2021 when Orelope-Adefulire started paying it.

Since October 27, 2021, Tru 3 has received payments for at least five contracts executed for the government. Awarded by the same entity and paid for by that same entity, all five contracts total N586,257,759, paid between October 2021 and February 2023.

POLICE ARREST AND ABDUCTION

For writing all these stories, Ojukwu went missing on Wednesday, May 1, his numbers were switched off, and his whereabouts unknown to colleagues, family and friends.

On Thursday, FIJ initially made a missing person report at a police station in the area where Ojukwu was headed. However, on Friday, a private detective hired by FIJ tracked the last active location of his phones to an address in Isheri Olofin, a location FIJ now believes was where the police originally picked him up.

Ojukwu’s family would subsequently get wind of his detention at Panti, where they were made to understand the authorities are accusing him of violating the 2015 Cybercrime Act.

Very early on Sunday, the Intelligence Response Team (IRT) of the Inspector General of Police relocated Ojukwu to the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre (NPF-NCCC) in Abuja, hours after which they then moved him to the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID).

Ojukwu, supported by FIJ’s legal team, will be grilled at 8am on Monday.