These are not the best of times for ex-Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State as agents of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) raided his house in Epe, Lagos on Tuesday, August 20th, 2019.

EFCC spokesman, Tony Orilade confirmed the raiding of the former governor’s residence.

He said; “Yes, we received petitions regarding the governor, and we are investigating. The operation is part of the investigation.”

For those who don’t know, a federal high court in Lagos had ordered the freezing of three bank accounts allegedly linked to the former governor over a N9.9 billion fraud allegation following an ex parte application by the EFCC.

The accounts are domiciled in First City Monument Bank (FCMB), Access Bank, and Zenith Bank with numbers 5617984012, 0060949275 and 1011691254 respectively

The EFCC had prayed the court to freeze the accounts pending the conclusion of an investigation and possible prosecution of Adewale Adesanya, permanent secretary in the office of the chief of staff to the governor of the state, for money laundering.

Kungmi Daniel, a member of the EFCC investigating team, said the anti-graft agency discovered “a huge inflow of N9,927,714,443.29” from the state accounts into an FCMB bank account opened on September 17, 2018 during the administration of Ambode. He said the account was operated by Adesanya.

However, Ambode’s Media Aide, Habib Aruna, said;

“Those accounts were opened in the course of normal operations by the Lagos state government for its administrative purposes and not for the former governor’s personal transactions as was being wrongly insinuated and have been operated to ensure smooth operations of government activities by previous and present administrations,”

“The former governor was not and will never be involved in any unauthorised use of government property and resources.”