EFCC boss goes underground over N30m health fund scandal

Chris Agbambu, Abuja - 31.03.2008

As pressure mounts on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to mellow down on the prosecution of the suspects in the N300 million Ministry of Health scam, the acting chairman of EFCC, Ibrahim Lamorde, has gone underground to avoid distraction.

Lamorde, who has been inundaunted with telephone calls since the scandal was blown open, decided to switch off all his phones to stop further calls on the matter.

Reliable security sources told the Nigerian Tribune that the EFCC chairman had even decided to stay away from his close friends who might be used to influence him on the case.

The source revealed that Lamorde’s whereabouts were a guarded secret as only a few top officials of the commission knew where he was in case of any urgent official matter.

Nigerian Tribune gathered that the commission had also started beaming its searchlight on other ministries as some of the suspects during interrogations revealed that it was not only the Ministry of Health that was involved in such a shady deal.

According to the source, if not for the disagreement over the sharing formula in which some of the staff felt cheated, nobody could have heard about the deal.

An inside source in the EFCC disclosed to the Nigerian Tribune that the commission had even gone further to demand the tellers for the returned unspent money as at 31 December, 2007 which they used in returning the money from various ministries.