Aisha Alkali Wakil, often known as Mama Boko Haram, and two others, Tahiru Saidu Daura and Prince Lawal Soyade, have been sentenced to ten years in prison for a N40 million fraud.
EFCC spokesperson Dele Oyewale stated on Monday that Justice Umaru Fadawu of the Borno State High Court in Maiduguri convicted Wakil, Daura, and Soyade on two counts of conspiracy and obtaining by pretense of forty million naira.
Oyewale noted in the statement that Wakil, Daura, and Shoyade, respectively, CEO, Programme Manager, and Country Director of Complete Care and Aid Foundation, a non-governmental organization, and Saidu Mukhtar, now at large, did, with intent to defraud, obtain N40 million from Bashir Abubakar, the CEO of Duty-Free Shop Ltd, under the pretense of executing a purported contract for the supply of five x-ray machines with solar energy.
According to Oyewale, the offense was contrary to Section 1(b) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act, 2006, and punishable under Section 1(3) of the same Act.
When the charges were read to the defendants, they pleaded “not guilty”. A.I. Arogha, counsel for the prosecution, presented four witnesses and 17 exhibits in court.
Justice Fadawu convicted them and sentenced them to ten years in jail for conspiracy. The defendants were also sentenced to ten years in prison for acquiring by pretense, and they were forced to pay Bashir Muhammad N40 million in total.
The judge ruled that the prison terms run consecutively.
Oyewale wrote in the statement: “The convicts’ journey to the correctional center began when a petitioner alleged that they swindled him through a purported contract for the supply of five x-ray machines 1900 with solar energy to a non-governmental organization, Complete Care and Aid Foundation, worth N40m. They neither supplied the machines nor returned the contract sum to the petitioner.”
