Oil marketer’s relocation from Kirikiri Prison shocks EFCC

Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Monday expressed surprise with how an oil marketer facing multiple fraud charges at the Lagos High Court, Ikeja, was suddenly relocated from where he was remanded at the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prisons to Ikoyi Prison.
Though both prisons are located in Lagos State, the anti-graft agency said the relocation of Mr. Oluwaseun Ogunbambo from Kirikiri was a violation of the orders of the two separate judges who both specifically remanded him in the prison.
EFCC’s counsel, Mr. Francis Usani, said this before Justice Adeniyi Onigbanjo of the Lagos High Court, Ikeja, where the trial of Ogunbambo, Habila Theck and their firm, Fargo Petroleum and Gas Limited, for alleged N976.6m fuel subsidy fraud, was to continue on Monday.
The trial was however stalled on Monday for the second consecutive time due to the failure of the prison authorities to produce Ogunbambo in court.
Usani expressed dissatisfaction with the development, alleging that “games are being played”.
He said, “I have just observed that the first defendant (Ogunbambo) is not in court and the people from Kirikiri Prisons are here.
“I learnt he is in Ikoyi Prison. Your Lordship made an order that he be remanded at Kirikiri. How he got to Ikoyi Prisons, we don’t know.
“The judge in the other case also said that he be remanded at Kirikiri Prisons. For him to be in Ikoyi beats my imagination. How did he get to Ikoyi?”
Meanwhile, Ogunbambo’s counsel, Gboyega Oyewole, accused Usani of misrepresenting facts.
Oyewole said, “He (Ogunbambo) is on bail in relation to this matter. On Friday I was at Ikoyi and he wasn’t feeling too well. If he had been on bail, the duty would have been on us to provide him.”
Onigbanjo had on January 22, 2013, ordered that a warrant  be served on the Ikoyi prison authorities to make Ogunbambo appear for his trial.
On Monday, the judge blamed Ogunbambo’s absence from court on his court registrar who he said failed to write the production warrant.
The judge adjourned till February 12 for a production warrant to be issued on Ikoyi Prisons for the accused to appear in court.
Another judge of the Lagos High Court, Ikeja, Justice Olabisi Akinlade, who presides over the trial of Ogunbambo for alleged N430m bank fraud, had also denied him bail and ordered that he be remanded in Kirikiri pending the final determination of his case.
Though he was granted bail in the matter that came up in court on Monday, Ogunbambo had been denied bail by Onigbanjo in a N4.46bn subsidy fraud case involving him and Mamman Ali, son of former chairman of Peoples’ Democratic Party, and others.