Aisha Alkali Wakil, often known as Mama Boko Haram, and two others, Tahiru Saidu Daura and Prince Lawal Soyade, were sentenced to ten years in prison for an N40 million fraud.
EFCC spokesperson Dele Oyewale stated on Monday that Justice Umaru Fadawu of the Borno State High Court in Maiduguri convicted Wakil, Daura, and Soyade on two counts of conspiracy and obtaining by false pretense of forty million naira.
The EFCC spokesman stated in the statement that Wakil, Daura, and Shoyade, respectively CEO, Programme Manager, and Country Director of the Complete Care and Aid Foundation, a non-governmental organization, and Saidu Mukhtar, who is still at large, obtained N40 million from Bashir Abubakar, CEO of Duty-Free Shop Ltd, under the false pretense of executing a purported contract for the supply of five x-ray machines powered by solar energy.
According to Oyewale, the offence violated Section 1(b) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act, 2006, and was punishable under Section 1(3) of the same Act.
When the charges were read to the defendants, they pleaded “not guilty”.
A.I. Arogha, counsel for the prosecution, presented four witnesses and 17 exhibits in court.
Justice Fadawu convicted them and sentenced them to ten years in jail for conspiracy. The defendants were also sentenced to ten years in jail for gaining by false pretense, and they were forced to pay Bashir Muhammad N40 million in total.
The judge ruled that the prison terms run consecutively.
Oyewale wrote in the statement:
“The convicts’ journey to the correctional centre began when a petitioner alleged that they swindled him through a purported contract for the supply of five x-ray machines 1900 with solar energy to a non-governmental organisation, Complete Care and Aid Foundation, worth N40m. They neither supplied the machines nor returned the contract sum to the petitioner.”