Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have taken into custody Mrs. Joy Enwa, the Accountant General of Delta State, as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged financial misconduct involving the state’s former governor, Ifeanyi Okowa.
Sources reveal that the EFCC is probing the alleged misappropriation of N1.3 trillion in state funds.
In November, the commission arrested and detained former Governor Okowa over allegations of diverting the funds, which reportedly included a portion of the 13 percent derivation fund allocated to oil-producing states.
The EFCC spokesman, Dele Oyewale who had confirmed the arrest and detention, stated that the former Delta governor and former Vice Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was taken into custody at the Port Harcourt division of the anti-graft office.
Okowa was alleged to have used his office as governor to loot and acquire assets up to N1.3 trillion. Some of the assets were shares in UTM Floating Liquefied Natural Gas Company, among other investments in the oil sector.
The National Bureau of Statistics had reported how the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) shared funds among the oil-rich states.
Amid the ongoing investigation of the former governor, the EFCC operatives last week arrested and detained the Accountant General of Delta State, Mrs. Joy Enwa for questioning.
SaharaReporters gathered that one Ekeruche, former director of finance and administration (DFA) and the director of administration, Government House, were also arrested and detained for several days by the commission. They made separate statements during the time.
In 2015, the former Delta State Accountant General Cyril Agbele, his then deputy, Mrs. Joy Enwa, now current Accountant General, former Asaba branch manager of the First City Monument Bank (FCMB), Mabel Asaije, and a staff member of the Delta State Board of Internal Revenue, simply identified as “Prosper” were enmeshed in a N369 million fraud and arrested by operatives of the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) in Asaba.
One of the officers from the Delta State Criminal Investigation Department (CID), the crack team that arrested the FCMB manager and others, had confided in SaharaReporters the bank manager, the AG, deputy AG and some staffers of the internal revenue board connived to defraud the state government of the money a few days before the expiration of the tenure of the then governor Emmanuel Uduaghan.
Agbele had debunked the allegation.
In April 2020, Okowa appointed Enwa as the new Accountant General of the state, taking over from Agbele.
However, when contacted for comments on her arrest and detention at the EFCC’s facilities in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Enwa declined comments and simply said, “I am not the right source to confirm such story from. Why don’t you reach out to the commission to give you details of my arrest and detention if at all I was actually arrested and detained by the commission?”
When SaharaReporters contacted the EFCC spokesman, Dele Oyewale on Wednesday evening, he confirmed the arrest and detention of Enwa over the ongoing investigation of Okowa.
“Yes, the accountant general was arrested and detained by the commission for some days before she was released. We also arrested some officials of the state government but they have been released as well,” Oyewale stated.
