News Obiaks News

Ex-lawmaker, Senator Shehu Sani, on Friday, January 10, 2020, said he can't be silenced over the extortion allegation against him. Recall that Sani, who represented Kaduna Central senatorial district in the national assembly from 2015 to 2019, was arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on December 31, 2019, for allegedly extorting the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ASD Motors, Alhaji Sani Dauda. Following his arrest, the lawmaker who was accused of duping the businessman to the tune of $24,000 (N8.6 million), According to reports, Sani told investigators that he’d rather swear by the Quran than face a lie detector machine.

Speaking from EFCC detention, Sani said he still maintains his status quo as an active critic of the current Nigeria government. The lawmaker said the allegations of ‘extortion’ against him are baseless, fact-less, unfounded, hollow and unsubstantial. Sani added, “It is a scripted stream of mischievous concoctions and utter fabrications using a puppet state agent; all aimed at splashing faeces and mud on me. The extortion allegation is nothing but a wholesale falsehood, packaged in a phantom anti-graft facade to taint, stain and mute me. That shall never happen if I am alive. I have made my statement and provided all my facts against their package of lies and I demand the EFCC to make public all the sheets of our statements and supporting documents for the world to see. My detention is unfair, unjust, prearranged and politically motivated. Alhaji Sani Dauda and his hidden sponsors have not been able to provide any proof of their allegations. I’m unjustly incarcerated on the grounds of an arranged two-page petition backed with no evidential or documentary proof “Fascism thrives in frame up of its critics. They claim extortion and here they are closing my bank accounts, searching my houses and offices and demanding I declare my assets, of which I have already done that at the CCB (Code of Conduct Bureau) last year when I left the Senate.

Addressing the allegation that he promised to assist Dauda in influencing a case at the Supreme Court by bribing Muhammad Tanko, the former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), and some other judges, Sani said, “I have never ever met with the CJN or any judge or judges or ever called directly or indirectly to offer to give or to give directly or indirectly any form of gratification from Alhaji Sani Dauda." He added, “I have never ever discussed with ASD on any form of bribe or gratification to be given to any judge or any EFCC official. The bribe story is phantom, the bribe story is a fake, imaginative work of fiction, cruelly crafted to smear me, to frame me and to justify my persecution. The bribe story is a heap of blatant lies and outright falsehood concocted and fabricated, using a front and the EFCC to premiere a state drama. “ASD is a barely educated front for a state mission."