Subsidy: Bamanga’s son, others seek passports to travel abroad

[DT]

Mahmud Tukur, son Alhaji Bamangar Tukur; Abdullahi Alao and Felix Ochonogor had applied for release of their international passports to enable them to travel abroad in order to attend pressing business matters, their respective counsels said yesterday.

Tukur, Alao and Ochonogor are among some of the directors of Oil Marketing and Trading Companies (OM&Ts) suspected to have participated in the fuel subsidy scam and are now standing trial at a Lagos court. In the Motion on Notice dated August 14 before a vacation judge, Justice Lateefat Folami of an Ikeja High Court, the applicants through their counsel, Olaniran Obele, said they need to travel to Paris and London for business related issues.

In the application, Mahmud, the first applicant, wants to travel abroad to attend a board and committee meetings of which he is a director and thereafter perform hajj pilgrimage.

For Ochonogor, he is planning to travel to Paris to be able to attend a board meeting which should have held last month but was rescheduled to August 27 based on his ongoing trial.

Though reasons for the third applicant's (Abdullahi Alao) request were not stated, his counsel tendered before the court three exhibits comprising Notices of Meetings which they intend to attend both in London and Paris.

In his plea, Obele told the court that the applicants will not abscond should their application be granted, adding that the first applicant's father who is the national chairman of PDP stood as surety for his son and the applicant would not want to put his father to shame by jeopardizing the bail terms.

"The second applicant was abroad when they were charged and was called by the first applicant and he came back for his arraignment voluntarily. When they were granted administrative bail by the EFCC, the second defendant travelled to Ukraine and did not abscond but came back for his arraignment", Obele said.

But in a counter-motion, EFCC counsel Rotimi Oyedepo told the court that Justice Onigbanjo's order asking the applicants to drop their international passports has not been reviewed, arguing there was nothing in the exhibits tendered by the applicants that showed or suggested that the meeting to be attended by Ochonogor, for instance, has been rescheduled.

Granting the applicants permission to travel, according to him, could open an escape route as was experienced in Ibori's case, and therefore urged the court not to grant the request.



Daily Trust