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abujagirl
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For the sake of a dear, seemingly inevitable friend, Nasir el-Rufai, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, is once again attracting flaks. El-Rufai is well-known to be a close pal of Jimi Adebisi Lawal, former managing director of the defunct Alpha Merchant Bank and businessman with the scruples of an alley cat. On behalf of Lawal, el-Rufai is currently entangled with Gbenga Ikuomola, consultant to a firm based in Venezuela.
Ikuomola is claiming that el-Rufai, on 16 July 2006, threatened to use the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, “to deal with me,” because he, Ikuomola, is insisting that Lawal refund a sum of 45,000 pounds sterling, balance of 160,000 pounds sterling that the former banker swindled the consultant. The story is that Lawal sold two plots of land in Lekki to Ikuomola after using the same property as collateral to secure a loan from a bank. The matter became so messy that, according to Ikuomola, the bank began suspecting him of conniving with Lawal to commit the fraud. The bank eventually took ownership of the property and Ikuomola ended up the loser.
But Ikuomola, who told TheNEWS he had known el-Rufai and Lawal to be some special kind of friends since 1991, would not give up. Last year, he reported Lawal to the EFCC after which the latter was picked up by agents of the Commission. But, the creditor stated, el-Rufai used his influence as an incumbent minister in the present dispensation to get the debtor off the hook. “It is on record that the EFCC investigated the above and found it to be true and correct. Jimi could have been facing prosecution by now from the EFCC, but you made his abscondment possible as a result of your relationship and influence,” Ikuomola told el-Rufai in an open letter dated 17 August 2006 addressed to the minister.
El-Rufai and Lawal seem to be more than ordinary friends. Ikuomola actually described Lawal as “your boyfriend” in the letter to el-Rufai. When asked to elaborate what “boyfriend” connotes, Ikuomola only chuckled, but promised to unearth a stinking can of worms on the manner of the relationship between the two men at the appropriate time. The consultant reminded the Minister of how he had assisted him and Lawal in their businesses when el-Rufai was, as he put it, “a nobody and junior business partner to Lawal.” He specifically mentioned a proposal on the establishment of Omega Cement Company, “when Jimi used to send you to my house at Probyn Road to see, talk and brainstorm with me.” El-Rufai was said to have actually written the proposal on the cement project. But the project allegedly failed when the two partners could not put together the required credible documentation to back up a government policy demand that such a project must have a certain degree of local content.
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SOURCE: #SaharaReporters
#ElRufai
Ikuomola is claiming that el-Rufai, on 16 July 2006, threatened to use the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, “to deal with me,” because he, Ikuomola, is insisting that Lawal refund a sum of 45,000 pounds sterling, balance of 160,000 pounds sterling that the former banker swindled the consultant. The story is that Lawal sold two plots of land in Lekki to Ikuomola after using the same property as collateral to secure a loan from a bank. The matter became so messy that, according to Ikuomola, the bank began suspecting him of conniving with Lawal to commit the fraud. The bank eventually took ownership of the property and Ikuomola ended up the loser.
But Ikuomola, who told TheNEWS he had known el-Rufai and Lawal to be some special kind of friends since 1991, would not give up. Last year, he reported Lawal to the EFCC after which the latter was picked up by agents of the Commission. But, the creditor stated, el-Rufai used his influence as an incumbent minister in the present dispensation to get the debtor off the hook. “It is on record that the EFCC investigated the above and found it to be true and correct. Jimi could have been facing prosecution by now from the EFCC, but you made his abscondment possible as a result of your relationship and influence,” Ikuomola told el-Rufai in an open letter dated 17 August 2006 addressed to the minister.
El-Rufai and Lawal seem to be more than ordinary friends. Ikuomola actually described Lawal as “your boyfriend” in the letter to el-Rufai. When asked to elaborate what “boyfriend” connotes, Ikuomola only chuckled, but promised to unearth a stinking can of worms on the manner of the relationship between the two men at the appropriate time. The consultant reminded the Minister of how he had assisted him and Lawal in their businesses when el-Rufai was, as he put it, “a nobody and junior business partner to Lawal.” He specifically mentioned a proposal on the establishment of Omega Cement Company, “when Jimi used to send you to my house at Probyn Road to see, talk and brainstorm with me.” El-Rufai was said to have actually written the proposal on the cement project. But the project allegedly failed when the two partners could not put together the required credible documentation to back up a government policy demand that such a project must have a certain degree of local content.
Click here to read more
SOURCE: #SaharaReporters
#ElRufai
