{"id":92990,"date":"2025-02-14T09:16:37","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T09:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=92990"},"modified":"2025-02-14T09:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T09:18:07","slug":"after-six-years-trial-court-discharges-acquits-ex-nbc-dg-of-alleged-n2-5-billion-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=92990","title":{"rendered":"After six years trial, court discharges, acquits ex-NBC DG Of alleged N2.5 Billion fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 17px;\">A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja on Thursday, discharged and acquitted the former Director-General of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Ishaq Kawu of the alleged N2.5 billion corruption charge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 17px;\">Delivering judgment, Justice Folashade Giwa-Ogunbanjo, held that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) failed to prove the allegations preferred against Kawu and the co-defendants.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 17px;\">The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Kawu and others were charged on amended five counts of diverting funds meant for the Digital Switch Over (DSO) system introduced by the Federal Government.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 17px;\">Kawu was arraigned in 2019, alongside Lucky Omoluwa and Dipo Onifade, Chairman of Pinnacle Communications Limited and the Chief Operating Officer respectively, over their alleged complicity in the mismanagement of the N2.5 billion seed grant.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 17px;\">ICPC alleged that the former NBC director-general hoodwinked the Minister of Information and Culture to approve payment of N2.5billion to Pinnacle Communications Limited, a private company owned by his friend, Omoluwa who is the 3rd defendant.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 17px;\">According to the anti-graft agency, Omoluwa, whose firm was not qualified for such grant, subsequently transferred the sum of N537.25million out of the N2.5billion to a Bureau De Change operator for the dollar equivalent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 17px;\">The BDC operator was said to have delivered the dollars in cash to the 3rd defendant (Omoluwa) at his residence in Kaduna.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 17px;\">Although the anti-corruption commission earlier filed a 12-count charge against the defendants, it was later amended to five counts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 17px;\">The offence, the anti graft agency said is contrary to Section 26(1) (c ) and punishable under Section 19 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000\u2033.<\/span><!--\/data\/user\/0\/com.samsung.android.app.notes\/files\/clipdata\/clipdata_bodytext_250214_100631_042.sdocx--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja on Thursday, discharged and acquitted the former Director-General of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Ishaq Kawu of the alleged N2.5 billion corruption charge. Delivering judgment, Justice Folashade Giwa-Ogunbanjo, held that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) failed to prove the allegations preferred against Kawu [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":92991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[6994,3378,6995],"class_list":["post-92990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-kawu","tag-n2-5b","tag-pinnacle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/92991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}