The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s Sokoto Zonal Office, EFCC, has arrested INEC officials on accusations of fraud in Zamfara State.
Those arrested are Administrative Secretary Hassan Sidi Aliyu ; Operations Head Hussain Jafar ; State Accountant Abdullahi Yusuf Abubakar ; and Usman Abdulmumin.
The EFCC declared that they had been arrested in an alleged case of conspiracy, breach of trust and criminal diversion of the Ad Hoc staff allowance to the tune of N84.7 million.
The petitioner, Abdullahi Nasiru, who wrote on behalf of all the presiding officers who worked for INEC during the presidential and governorship elections in Zamfara State in 2019, claimed that the ad hoc staff had been denied the payment of their N6,000 movement allowance each for the two elections.
He also claimed that what the Commission paid to them was different from what the other States paid to their Adhoc staff.
The Commission allegedly paid its staff N9,000 in Zamfara, while the Commission paid N12,000 in other states such as Sokoto State.
The EFCC investigation revealed that none of the 10,500 presiding officers who had taken part in the elections have been paid their entitlements on a commutative basis to N84, 696,000 (Eighty Four Million, Six Hundred and Ninety-Six Thousand Naira).
EFCC said that the Commission was making efforts to recover the money criminally diverted by the three INEC heads of departments and by the Electoral Officers of the 14 local governments in the State of Zamfara.
In a declaration, spokesman Wilson Uwujaren said that the suspects would be arraigned in court as quickly as the investigation is completed.