{"id":31336,"date":"2024-05-10T06:00:45","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T06:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/emefiele-i-was-forced-to-give-600000-bribe-for-contract-payment-witness\/"},"modified":"2024-05-10T06:00:45","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T06:00:45","slug":"emefiele-i-was-forced-to-give-600000-bribe-for-contract-payment-witness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/emefiele-i-was-forced-to-give-600000-bribe-for-contract-payment-witness\/","title":{"rendered":"Emefiele: I was forced to give $600,000 bribe for contract payment \u2013 Witness"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A prosecution witness in the trial of former Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Governor, Godwin Emefiele has said he was forced to pay a bribe of $600,000 before being paid for a contract he did for the apex bank.<\/p>\n

The witness who is the Managing Director of Resource Computer Limited, Victor Onyejiuwa disclosed this at the Lagos State Special Offences Court in Ikeja yesterday.<\/p>\n

Being led in evidence by the prosecuting counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo, Onyejiuwa said his company deploys hardware and software-tailored security, network, storage and backup solutions.<\/p>\n

Emefiele and his co-defendant, Henry Omoile, are facing trial on a 26-count charge before Justice Rahman Oshodi.<\/p>\n

The former CBN governor and Omoile pleaded not guilty to charges of $4.5 billion and N2.8 billion fraud.<\/p>\n

However, Onyejiuwa told the court that his company provided information and communication technologies assistance to CBN between 2014 and 2019.<\/p>\n

He added that sometime in 2017, Resource Computer was awarded an \u201centerprise storage and servers\u201d contract by the CBN.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThe official said there was pressure on him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told him that our payment was being delayed.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told me that if I didn\u2019t accede to his request, my payment would not be approved.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter several back and forths, for him to see reasons with me as to why I needed to get paid, and my obligations with my partners, I succumbed to his pressure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was able to organise the sum of $400,000 and $200,000 to facilitate payment of the contract funds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin two or three weeks after, payment was made. That is what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

The witness also said the highest contract sum was $1.2 billion between 2017 and late 2018 when the naira traded at N360\/$1.<\/p>\n

He also told the court that there were other small payments of N24 million and N17 million.<\/p>\n

After listening, Justice Oshodi adjourned till May 17 for the continuation of trial.<\/p>\n

Emefiele: I was forced to give $600,000 bribe for contract payment \u2013 Witness<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A prosecution witness in the trial of former Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Governor, Godwin Emefiele has said he was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2179,15],"tags":[149,180],"class_list":["post-31336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emefiele","category-news","tag-emefiele","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}