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Christiana Ohiri, second prosecution witness in the trial of former Abia State governor, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu and two others before the Federal High Court, Lagos, over alleged fraud, yesterday, said neither Kalu nor second defendant had link to the fund withdrawn from the account of Abia State Government House.
Ohiri, who is a branch manager at the United Bank for Africa (UBA), in Abia State, was led in evidence by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s (EFCC) counsel, Rotimi Jacobs (SAN). She admitted, under cross examination, that neither Kalu nor Udeh Jones Udeogu, who is the second defendant in the trial, had any involvement in the 36 bank drafts raised through the account of Abia State Government House and issued by her bank.
Recall that the first prosecution witness, Oghenevoh had, also, made same submission before the trial judge, Justice Muhammed Idris on last adjourned date while being cross examined.
Ohiri, speaking under cross examination by defence counsel led by Goddy Uche (SAN) and Solo Akuma (SAN), said as the fund transfer officer of the bank then, the duo of Kalu and Udeogu never appeared before her to purchase bank draft and did not benefit from any transactions carried out in the name of Abia State Government House.
The witness, in her evidence in chief, told the court how the Umuahia branch of UBA was contacted by the bank’s head office towards the end of October 2006, and requested some documents for some transactions which were done earlier in the year.
“Some of the transactions were listed and we retrieved others from our archives and sent to Lagos. I did not know what the head office wanted to do with the documents.
“By 2007, I was invited by EFCC and certain questions were asked about the documents the bank sent to the commission,” she said.
Under crossed examination, Ohiri disclosed that she was detained by commission, but later granted bail.
She told the court that she went to the commission’s office in Ikoyi about four times, but could not remember the date of her first visit.
Ohiri also admitted that in her earlier statements at the EFCC, she was coerced to implicate some people.
“It was when I visited the commission to write my last statement, the officers showed me the statement of account of the Government House and suggested that monies withdraw from the account tallied with bank drafts purchased. In my observation, it tallied and I mentioned all the people who purchased drafts,” she said.
She also informed the court that she did not see any of the persons mentioned in her statement while doing the transaction and added that most of the transactions were handled by the branch manager of the bank who was her supervisor then.
“My involvement is just to write the draft and not to approve it; my daily approval limit then, as a junior officer, was N100, 000.00 and it was the duty of the operation manager or branch manager to approve anything beyond my financial approval limit,” Ohiri said.
She also testified that Kalu was not signatory to the Abia State Government House’s account and did not benefit from any of the transaction.
Besides, she admitted that all the bank drafts raised did not reflect in the statement of account of the Abia State Government House. She said she was not the accounts officer and also knew nothing about the whole transactions and maintained that her superior officer knew better.
