The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has declared Olu Agunloye, former Minister of Power and Steel wanted over alleged corruption and forgery.
The commission shared the public notice declaring Mr Agunloye wanted on its Facebook and Instagram channels on Tuesday.
“The public is hereby notified that Olu Agunioye, whose photograph appears above, is wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in an alleged case of corruption and forgery,” the public notice read in part.
According to the commission, Mr Agunloye is aged 75 and is from Akoko North Local Government Area, Ondo State.
It also gave his last known address as No 20 Sold Boneh Way Bodija, Ibadan, Oyo State.
EFCC urged anyone “With useful information as to his whereabouts” to contact its offices in Benin, Kaduna, Ibadan, Sokoto, Maiduguri, Makurdi, Ilorin, Enugu, Kane, Lagos, Gombe, Uyo, Port Harcourt and Abuja offices as well through its telephone lines and email.
The public notice signed by EFCC’s spokesperson, Oladele Oyewale, did not disclose details of the “corruption and forgery” allegations over which the former minister is being wanted.
Agunloye had few months ago, addressed l his investigation by the commission over the stalled multi-billion-dollar Mambilla Hydropower Project, confirming that he had been detained and interrogated by the EFCC over the case.
His comments in September on the issue were in response to a fraud allegation former President Olusegun Obasanjo, under whom he served as minister, levelled against him in an interview with TheCable newspaper with respect to the project.
Obasanjo, in the interview, accused the former minister of fraudulently awarding the contract for the multi-billion-naira Mambilla Hydropower Project without the approval of the Federal Executive Council.
The project, first awarded in 2003 to Sunrise Power and Transmission Limited by the Obasanjo administration, is the subject of decades of a legal dispute that is now under international arbitration between the company and the Nigerian government.
Obasanjo, in distancing himself from the mess that the project has become, claimed that he was not aware that the contract was awarded by his then-minister, Mr Agunloye.
Alledging fraud in the contract award, Mr Obasanjo insisted that no minister in his administration had the power to award a contract beyond N25 million.
But in his reply, Mr Agunloye dismissed Mr Obasanjo’s claim and denied any wrongdoing, noting that he was being picked on as the fall guy for the government’s mishandling of the project, while those who were responsible for it were left off the hook.
According to Mr Agunloye, the contract for the project was duly awarded in 2003 by the Obasanjo administration on a Build, Operate and Transfer basis to deliver Nigeria’s biggest power plant with a 3,050 megawatts capacity at no cost to the Nigerian government.
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