Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, have arrested the immediate past governor of Anambra State, Mr. Willie Obiano.
Operatives of the Commission disclosed that Mr Obiano was apprehended at the Murtala Muhammad International Airport, Lagos, at about 8:30pm, Thursday, 17 March, 2022, as he was preparing to board a flight to Houston in the United States, just hours following the swearing-in ceremony of his successor, and former Central Bank Chief, Charles Chukwuma Soludo.
TheFact Nigeria gathers that Obiano, who has now lost the constitutional immunity shielding him from prosecution while in office by virtue of his handing over the reigns of the State, had been on the Commission’s watchlist for some time. However details of the allegations of the anti-graft agency against the ex-governor could not be immediately ascertained on Thursday.
It would be recalled that the EFCC had, in November last year, written to the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, requesting it to place the governor on watchlist and inform the Commission anytime he is travelling out of the country from any of the international airports and other points of entry and exit.
Sources had intimated that the move was an indication that the agency might have been discreetly investigating the governor and possibly had intelligence that he planned to travel after handing over power to his successor.
News had gone viral yesterday of an altercation between the ex-governor’s wife, Ebele, and the widow of the late Biafran warlord, Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu, Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu, just after the new Governor had taken his oath of office. Mrs. Obiano was said to have slapped Bianca, after accusing her of being a witch, which led to a fracas, before security personnel and other guests at the event intervened.
Mrs. Obiano was also heard calling Bianca an ‘ashawo’ (Nigerian derogatory pidgin slang meaning ‘escort’, ‘prostitute’, ‘sex worker’)
