APGA crisis deepens, Agbaso seeks Oye’s arrest for money laundering

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Martin Agbaso

Kogi chapter backs ex-chairman

National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Martin Agbaso, has charged the Economic and Financial Crimes Corruption (EFCC) to arrest the immediate past chairman of the party, Victor Oye, for money laundering.
 
Oye had accused Agbaso and his supporters of breaking into APGA’s national headquarters and carting away sensitive materials, including N19 million cash, pointing out that Agbaso and his co-travelers were strangers to APGA and never in the party’s line of succession.
 
But Agbaso said in an interview with The Guardian that the police should arrest Oye immediately, insisting that under the country’s money laundering law, he should be picked up by the EFCC.
   
Agbaso, who was the 2007 governorship candidate for APGA in Imo State, tasked the EFCC to interrogate Oye over the N19 million of public fund in a safe and find out how he got the money.
  
While regretting that Oye, who he claimed has not spent more than two years in APGA should be describing him as a stranger, Agbaso said: “The man should be picked up, interrogated and prosecuted for laundering N19m in his office.
  
“The Nigeria police, with journalists numbering about 20 and no fewer than 40 policemen, were inside the building before I entered. And members of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) entered the place with police and the electronic media, with all the cameras, it was in broad daylight.”
 
Agbaso said Oye must disclose where he got the N19 million, stressing that he doesn’t earn N19 million and that political parties do not do business in cash since they were not traders.

Meanwhile, the Kogi State chapter of the party has denounced Agbaso as its national chairman and endorsed Oye who was elected through democratic process in a convention duly supervised by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC.)

The state chairman, Abdulazeez Arikora, told The Guardian in Lokoja yesterday that the Agbaso they knew was a 2015 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship aspirant in Imo State where he lost to former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Emeka Ihedioha.

He was speaking on the heels of the crisis within the party, and the recent court order by an Enugu High Court under Justice J.B Ozoemena, which removed Oye, as the party’s national chairman.