Ex-lawmaker tackles EFCC’s over cyber cafes registration

APRIL 10, 2012 BY FEMI MAKINDE, ADO-EKITI 

 Former member of the National Assembly, Senator Bode Ola, has dismissed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s allegation that his Ado Ekiti hotel is being used for cyber crimes.

The ex-lawmaker was reacting to allegation against Friendly Hotel by the spokesman for the EFCC, Mr. Wilson Uwajaren, that a student of the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Olasaidi Dare, who was jailed five years by an Abuja High Court, had used the cyber cafe in the hotel to send the scam mail which led to his imprisonment.

Ola, in a statement on Monday also debunked EFCC’s claim that cyber cafes operators were mandated to register with the agency.

The ex-lawmaker, who represented Ekiti Central Senatorial District between 2009 and 2011, challenged the EFCC to make public the list of cyber cafes registered with it if the agency was sure of its claims.

Ola admitted that the customer came to browse at his hotel but said he did not send the scam mail at the hotel’s cafe. According to him, Dare sent the mail at another location in 2006 as shown on his laptop but was arrested at Friendly Hotel in 2008 when the anti-graft agency raided it.

His statement read in part, “The EFCC is wrong in the sense that I am not in any way connected with the cyber crime of which Olasaidi Dare has been convicted. Ownership of a hotel/cyber café is not an offence and is no way a reason for convicting the owner for an offence committed by a customer.

“Since registering a café with the EFCC is a public issue, I hereby challenge that EFCC should publish the list of registered cyber cafes in Ekiti State or in any other state in the federation.”

Ola added, “The cyber café in the hotel is duly registered with CAC and NCC which is the normal procedure and which has been duly complied with. The EFCC does not even have a procedure for registration of hotels or cyber cafes. So, one begins to wonder what the basis of their trumped-up charges.

“The EFCC should come out to tell the whole world about their hidden agenda which has motivated them to be persecuting through the media in attempt to destroy my person.”

SOURCE: The Punch, 10 April 2012. http://www.punchng.com/