The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has revealed how he allegedly escaped a $2 million blackmail plot in which a man claimed to have paid the money to his son in exchange for a land allocation.
Speaking during a media parley on Thursday, Wike said the allegation collapsed after investigators established that his son was out of Nigeria on the day the alleged transaction was said to have taken place.
“As I’m sitting as the minister of FCT, somebody has done that, claiming that he knows my children, and that there was a day that he was with my son, and that my son called dad, ‘Is any land available?’, and I said yes. And that they gave him two million U.S. dollars. So look at the game,” Wike said.
The minister said he first became aware of the allegation after a contact at the Presidential Villa informed him that documents relating to the claim were being circulated.
“Somebody called me from the Villa that he has this thing going on. I said, ‘What is that?’ He said, ‘Oh, you get this document for me.’ Somebody’s trying to do it. I said, ‘Okay, no problem.’ I sent my CSO: ‘Go and get this person.’
“We got him arrested. He said that two million was given at night, that’s 9 p.m., 8 p.m., two million dollars.”
Wike said investigators later confirmed that his son had travelled out of the country on a British Airways flight earlier that day.
“But see how, unknown to him, that day in the morning, my son travelled on British Airways.
“Meanwhile, the money was given at night. So we had to tell the police. They went to British Airways, everything,” he said.
According to the minister, he was later advised to quietly resolve the matter to avoid public embarrassment, but he declined.
“One of them came to me and said, ‘Look, before it embarrasses you, why not settle it?’ I said, ‘Settle what? Settle what? This is cheap blackmail. I will not allow that.’ And we didn’t do it.”
Wike said the incident demonstrated how senior government officials could become targets of fabricated allegations intended to damage their reputations or force concessions.
He compared the episode with allegations made by Adeyemi against the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila.
“There are people you target in government to do bad thing to the boss.
“This is chief of staff. This is the person who is in charge of finance and secretary to government. If you want to embarrass any government, this is the first target,” he said.
Wike argued that anyone with credible allegations should present them to security agencies rather than the media.
“If it was indeed correct, eyeball to eyeball, go to the security agency.
“Look at my communications with him. Look at the phone I’ve been talking with him. These are what we have done,” he said.
The controversy followed allegations made by Adeyemi against Gbajabiamila over the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, claims the Presidency has rejected while ordering the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission to investigate.
Adeyemi is also facing forgery charges before the Federal High Court in Abuja and is expected back in court on July 27, while Gbajabiamila’s legal team has threatened a N10 billion defamation suit over the allegations.
