Waripamo-Owei Emmanuel Dudafa, a former Special Assistant to ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, told the Federal High Court in Lagos on Monday the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), told him to implicate his former boss in exchange for his release from the custody of the agency.
He was giving testimony in his criminal trial before Justice Muhammad Idris of the court in Ikoyi, Lagos.
Dudafa said the commission tortured him and subjected him to severe mental assault while they held him in detention for 60 days, and that officials of the EFCC and the agency’s Director of Operations made several promises just to get him to indict some influential people.
“The Director of Operations intimidated me,” he stated. When he saw that intimidation will not work with me because I told him I have seen worse than that, he told me my freedom was dependent on my cooperation with the EFCC.”
Dudafa added that at that point he was ready to do anything just so he could be reunited with family members who had been barred from seeing him, so he had no objections to the director’s persuasions.
Dudafa also mentioned that EFCC arrested about 40 of his friends and family members in a clampdown on him.
It would be recalled that on December 12, 2016, counsel for the defendant, Gboyega Oyewole, contested the admissibility of the extra-judicial statement as evidence before Justice Idris, arguing that his client had not given the statement the prosecutor sought to tender voluntarily, but under the inducement of the EFCC.
In the written statement, Dudafa admitted to some of the charges brought against him by the anti-graft agency, hence the attempt to render the statement inadmissible in court.
Similarly, before Justice Babs Kuewumi of the same court counsels representing Dudafa, and his co-defendants Mr. Amajuoyi Azubuike Briggs and one Adedamola Bolodeoku refused EFCC prosecutor’s attempt to tender certain documents relating to some bank accounts in Skye Bank Plc.
They said the documents tendered could not be accepted into evidence because they were not certified as required under the Evidence Act. One of Dudafa’s lawyers, Mr. Ige Asemudare urged the court to disregard the document as documentary hearsay.
Justice Kuewumi adjourned the matter till February 22 for ruling on the application and continuation of the trial.
SR