{"id":63974,"date":"2025-04-08T14:39:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T14:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=63974"},"modified":"2025-04-08T14:39:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T14:39:09","slug":"efcc-drags-bauchi-officials-to-court-over-n8-3bn-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/04\/08\/efcc-drags-bauchi-officials-to-court-over-n8-3bn-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"EFCC Drags Bauchi Officials to Court over N8.3bn Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Patrick Idowu<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has arraigned the Accountant General of Bauchi State, Sirajo Muhammad Jaja, alongside several others, over allegations of laundering and misappropriating more than eight billion naira in public funds.<\/p>\n<p>Jaja appeared before the Federal High Court in Maitama, Abuja, alongside bureau de change operator Aliyu Abubakar and his company.<\/p>\n<p>Other suspects, including former Secretary to the State Government Ibrahim Kashim, current Secretary to the State Government Aminu Hammayo, Saleh Mohammed, and Balarabe Abdullahi, were declared at large.<\/p>\n<p>The accused are facing a nine-count charge bordering on money laundering, diversion, and criminal misappropriation of public funds.<\/p>\n<p>They pleaded not guilty to all charges.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecution counsel Abba Mohammed, SAN, called for a trial date and asked the court to remand the defendants in custody.<\/p>\n<p>Defence lawyers Mohammed Ndayako, SAN, and Chris Uche, SAN, moved applications for bail.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Egwuatu granted the defendants bail in the sum of two hundred million naira each, with two sureties who must be Abuja residents.<\/p>\n<p>One of the sureties must be a federal government employee not below Grade Level 17.<\/p>\n<p>Pending the fulfilment of their bail conditions, Jaja was remanded at the Kuje Correctional Centre in Abuja.<\/p>\n<p>The trial is scheduled to commence on June 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Patrick Idowu The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has arraigned the Accountant General of Bauchi State, Sirajo Muhammad Jaja, alongside several others, over allegations of laundering and misappropriating more than eight billion naira in public funds. Jaja appeared before the Federal High Court in Maitama, Abuja, alongside bureau de change operator Aliyu Abubakar and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":63975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-63974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63976,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63974\/revisions\/63976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}