8th November, 2013
A man who had paraded himself as an operative of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,EFCC, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison by Justice Yakubu Gyang Dakwak of the Jos High Court in the central Nigerian state of Plateau.
The man, Mohammed Umar, alias Terror, was convicted , for offences bordering on conspiracy, obtaining money by false pretence and impersonation.
Umar was arrested in October 2008 following intelligence report that he had been posing as an operative of the EFCC and extorting money from top government functionaries in Bauchi, Gombe and Sokoto States under the pretext that he had damning petitions against them.
He cajoled several of them into wiring funds into his account with a promise to help stop any investigations into the petitions.
One of the three-count charge against the convict reads, “”That you, Mohammed Umar and Mustapha Abdullahi (now at large), sometime in 2008 at Jos, Judicial Division of the High Court of Plateau State did agree among yourselves to commit an illegal act, to wit: Conspiracy to obtain money from a Special Assistant to the Bauchi State Governor by falsely pretending to hold the office of an operative of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, as a Public Servant and in such assumed character did falsely pretend that you were in a position to compound an alleged case of illegal contract deals with some contractors and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 8(a) and punishable under Section 1 (3) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Related Offences Act 2006”.
In his ruling, Justice Dakwak affirmed that the prosecution had proved the case against the accused beyond reasonable doubt and accordingly pronounced him guilty on all three counts.