Shehu Sani: EFCC Subjected Me to Lie Detector Test

• Says he was forced to declare assets 
• Condemns blockage of his bank accounts

Gboyega Akinsanmi

A former lawmaker representing Kaduna Central Senatorial District, Senator Shehu Sani yesterday said his incarceration for 30 days was a clear breach of his fundamental rights, lamenting that he was subjected to lie detector tests.

Sani, President of the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, disclosed that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) forced him to declare assets; subjected him to traumatising interrogations; his banks accounts were blocked and phones seized while being incarcerated.

He faulted the anti-graft fight of President Muhammadu Buhari in a statement he issued yesterday, saying he was incarcerated for 30 days in an underground cell in breach of his fundamental human rights.

After his release from the underground, Sani likened Buhari’s anti-graft war to the manual of a former German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, a brutal dictator that allegedly oversaw the killing of millions of Jews.
Sani spent 30 days in the custody of the EFCC following his arrest on December 31, 2019.

EFCC accused the former senator of extorting $15,000 from one Sani Dauda in November 20, 2019, promising to give it to Ibrahim Muhammad, Chief Justice of Nigeria, to influence some pending cases in court.

He was also alleged to have collected another $10,000 from Dauda to bribe the acting Chairman of EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu.

Sani, who was released on Thursday after a court granted him bail, has vehemently denied the allegations.
He said: “My incarceration for 30 days in the jail of EFCC was unfair, unjust and a clear breach of my fundamental rights and hence stands condemned.

“During my unjust stay in the EFCC cell, I was subjected to traumatising interrogations – my houses and offices were searched.
“They compelled me to declare my assets, they tried to subject me to lie detector tests, my accounts were blocked, and my phone was seized, all in the name of fictional $24,000 or $25, 000 extortion.

“Any Information planted in the media by the EFCC spokesperson while I was in their custody about me is outrightly false and nothing but a bacterial and fungal infested concoctions, typical of their style.

“Our country will continue to be at the bottom strata of the Transparency International index as long as our anti-graft agencies only use their might and arsenal to crush ants while lacking the courage, the heart, and the liver to confront the snakes, the vultures and the hyenas of the ruling establishment.

“They can frame me, detain me but can’t silence me. In an ideal democratic state, all agencies of the government are obliged to operate within the dictates and the ambit of the rule of law or the nation leaps into tyranny.

“The rule book of Stalin, The manual of Hitler or road map of Mussolini should not be the guidance and the compass of the nation’s security and anti-corruption agencies in their quest to sanitize our country.”