Click Here for Part 1
First, he began receiving numerous calls from his ex-boss, which he had refused to pick, guessing it had everything to do with the anonymous whistleblowing he had done. The EFCC had commenced their investigations full swing and started asking questions at the bank, and they must suspect he had something to do with it since he had managed the account of the politician under scrutiny. Then he received a heavily worded email from the bank’s legal department on how he had breached the bank’s policy which detailed that any information gathered while working with the bank remained the bank’s property and should not be used in ways unauthorized by the bank, and this was binding on him even after exiting the bank’s employment. The bank will therefore be taking legal actions against him.
First, he began receiving numerous calls from his ex-boss, which he had refused to pick, guessing it had everything to do with the anonymous whistleblowing he had done. The EFCC had commenced their investigations full swing and started asking questions at the bank, and they must suspect he had something to do with it since he had managed the account of the politician under scrutiny. Then he received a heavily worded email from the bank’s legal department on how he had breached the bank’s policy which detailed that any information gathered while working with the bank remained the bank’s property and should not be used in ways unauthorized by the bank, and this was binding on him even after exiting the bank’s employment. The bank will therefore be taking legal actions against him.
Shocked, he had started to search
for a very good lawyer to help counter their threat and also defend him if it
ended up becoming a court case.
But that soon became less of a
worry point for him, as an even bigger problem reared up its ugly head. Four
days after he had visited the headquarters of the EFCC, they reached out to
him, asking him to come to their office again. When he got there, they informed
him that his claim had been investigated. They had been to the bank and asked
for the owners of the ‘ghost’ accounts, and till that moment, 75% of those
people had been produced by the bank already. They, the EFCC, had been able to
speak with these people on the phone via the numbers attached to their accounts
and had also physically met some of them at the different branches of the bank.
In addition, the account owners had watertight reasons for numerously receiving
huge sums of money from the politician. They had also interviewed the
politician himself and his reasons for sending the people money matched their
claim. So, as far as they could see, there was nothing fake about those
accounts. The only fake thing seemed to be Musa’s report and once they had
interrogated the remainder of the account owners, they would be hundred percent
certain he was a false whistleblower and would have no choice but to prosecute him
for giving them fake information.
Musa had been shocked to the
depths of his being. How was it possible for the bank to produce owners of 75% of those accounts?
Those accounts were fake,
he was very certain of that, he had investigated himself before coming to that
conclusion. The phone numbers
had been non-existent, the addresses vague, and
what was more, the thumbprints used had been one and the same all through, and
should not have even passed the BVN process in the first place.
He knew this new development was
the handiwork of either the bank or the politician, or even more likely, both of them. He really
found it quite ingenious,
though, how they had been able to pull
up over seventy false people to claim ownership of those accounts in such a short period
of time. Or was someone in the EFCC in on it with them too…?
“Daddy, let us go. The plane have landed, let us go.” Once again, Musa was pulled out of his
deep reminisce, this
time by his son who was
impatiently tugging at his hand.
Lost in thoughts as he was, he had not
noticed the plane landing and
now people were disembarking. His wife and daughter, who had been seated at the other side
of the aisle were also on their way out.
He picked up his son and their
hand luggage in the overhead carriage
and moved towards the plane's
exit. Once in
the airport terminal, he put a call across to his friend, Dare.
“Ore, we have landed. Are you in the airport?” he enquired. Ore was
the nickname Dare used for him right from the inception of their friendship,
and Musa had learnt to use the same for him as well, knowing Ore meant ‘friend’.
“Yes, I am in the waiting area.
You should spot me easily. I am
wearing an Arsenal jersey.”
Dare had always been a true friend. They had hitched up when Musa, a young
Hausa lad, had come to the Southwest of the country for the first time, for his
National Youth Service, many years back. He remembered how lost and out of
place he had felt at the camp worlds away from his beloved home in Zaria, lost
till this jovial, small-statured Yoruba boy had approached him and struck up a
conversation with him. The two had immediately gotten close, despite being
complete opposites; physically and in every way possible. Musa with his tall,
lank frame and Dare with his smallish stature; Musa with his quiet and
introverted ways, Dare very jovial and talkative.
Musa had always found Dare to be
dependable and saw him as his go-to person whenever he had problems, needed
advice or just plain needed someone to talk some sense or courage into him.
That was why Dare had been the first person he had thought to call earlier in
the day when it became clear his life and that of his family was in grave
danger.
As Dare had promised, it was very
easy locating him despite the fact that the airport terminal was very crowded.
“Ore, this is some really deep shit you have gotten yourself into o,” Dare admonished after exchanging
initial pleasantries with Musa and his family. They were walking ahead of Safiyah
and the kids towards the airport carpark, so they could not hear them talk.
“How will you do this sort of thing? Don’t you know how dangerous it is? You
should have at least consulted me first and we analyze the pros and cons in-to-to before delving into it.”
Musa had to admit to himself that
his friend was right. He should have consulted someone, and who better than
Dare? It was just that his need to be extremely careful had made him decide to
keep it a complete secret, a lot of help that ended up being.
They got to the vehicle Dare had
brought, which turned out to be an Uber taxi. They all got in and it ferried
them away to Dare’s home with his directions. There was silence in the car as
neither men could talk about the issue on ground in the presence of Musa’s
family and the Uber driver. The silence again lulled Musa into recalling the
events of the past couple of days.
After his meeting with the EFCC
that had ended in them informing him that they would prosecute him if their investigations
proved that his information was completely false, he had returned to his hotel
room in Abuja with deep grief. It was at that point he started regretting his
decision to venture into this whistleblowing mission. The whole thing had
turned around on him now and he needed to exonerate himself. It was clear now that
he was not going to get any money out of the whistleblowing, but he needed to at
least to clear his name and not end up in jail. What a terrible mess!
He had picked up his hard drive,
slotted it into his laptop and scoured through its contents again. He clicked
on the folder into which he had copied the fingerprints. How could they have
gotten all those people? He was sure they did not exist since they all had the
same fingerprints on the system and also had never withdrawn a dime from all
the money the politician had been paying into the accounts. How was it possible
for over a hundred different people, who happened to have the common trait of
receiving heavy payments from the same politician, to all not withdraw a dime
out of the money he had sent them; how was it possible that no one else was
paying money into their accounts? How was it possible that all the accounts
happened to be opened at the same time? How was it possible if they were not fake
accounts? But how could he prove this to the EFCC? It was clear that the
politician had just spirited some people from heavens know where to pretend
they were the owners of the accounts.
Then a thought occurred to him.
There was no way the fingerprints of the people that had been contacted could
match the fake ones on the system. All the EFCC need do was invite all those
people or at least 50% of them over to the office and see if their fingerprints
would match what was on the system, that would be proof that they were not the
owners of the fake accounts like was being claimed.
Immediately, he picked up his
phone and put a call through to the EFCC office and explained to them the idea
he had come up with that would prove he had supplied genuine information. He
was asked to come over to the office again the next day.
But he never got there. That same night he got a threatening text message from an international number that said “Back off or tomorrow you shall sing your last.”
The story continues>>>Click Here for Part 3
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