 has dismissed as malicious falsehood){kind=link}
Leading Civil Rights Advocacy Group- HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has dismissed as malicious falsehood and a case of mistaken identity the allegations circulating on social and online media that the Director-General/Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency Dr. Bashir Jamoh is caught in the Web of huge scale money laundering scheme totalling over #1.5 trillion. HURIWA said nothing can be further from the truth and wondered why a totally innocent man is being bullied in the cyberspace over a cash haul he knows nothing about.
HURIWA said it has investigated this range of persistent accusations against the Kaduna born Maritime expert and leading technocrat Dr BASHIR JAMOH and found out that the person heading NIMASA at the moment has no bank accounts anywhere near Fidelity Bank whereby the accusers said he warehoused these humongous haul of cash just as the Rights group said there are probabilities that there is a mistaken identity because one of our sources during the course of our painstaking investigation, informed us of some other person bearing virtually same name with minor differences who is said to have reached the pinnacles of his career and ventured into politics from the upstream sector of the crude oil industry.
HURIWA in a statement vindicating Dr.Bashir Jamoh of the said unsubstantiated and substantially false and maliciously damaging allegations stated that it is not known in Nigeria that someone who has skeleton in his cupboard would be the one to self-report himself before the dreaded Abdulrasheed Bawa- led Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) urging the law enforcement authority to subject him to forensic financial investigation.
HURIWA rationalised that the NIMASA BOSS did self surrendered to EFCC because of the inevitable fact that he felt absolutely embarrassed by the growing politically motivated plots to undermine and muddy his high reputation and rising profile in the Maritime sector.
HURIWA said too: “We know it as a fact that the young man in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission would have swooped on the NIMASA boss if those allegations had anything near enough to do with reality. We think the author of the said investigative report may not have done a meticulous search and authentication of the documents in his possession with the aim of reaching an impeccable and unimpeachable determination of the real person who they intended to direct their findings.”
HURIWA URGES young persons on social and organised media to stop spreading this falsehood so as not to discourage good people from offering their services to the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the good people of NIGERIA.
“We suspect that certain political forces at the Hassan Katsina House in Kaduna plotting to hijack the government that could emerge next year may have sponsored this entirely thoughtless and vexatious falsehood which dovetailed into libel”.
HURIWA said also that: “WE URGE YOU DEAR YOUNG PEOPLE TO STOP SPREADING FALSEHOOD BECAUSE THE NIMASA MAN HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SAID HUGE CASH HAUL WHICH IS MORE THAN THE BUDGETS OF NIMASA IN THE LAST DECADE AND HALF. To journalists, we appeal for show of professionalism and adherence strictly to the ethics of the profession to avoid causing undue damage to the credibility of certain persons whose only offence is that they happened to have been appointed into high offices by President Muhammadu Buhari or because they are from the North West sane as President Muhammadu Buhari”.
HURIWA observed that Dr. BASHIR JAMOH self surrendered himself to EFCC for probe but was told to go back to doing the good job that he has been doing in NIMASA even as in his letter dated 24th May 2021 he sent to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, he stated as follows: “I write to bring to your attention the attached online publications and tweets that have gone viral since Friday 21th of May. 2021. The publications emanated from
series of tweets of one Jackson Ude alleging the sums of N1.5 trillion and another
US$9,557,312.50 were traced to my personal account. The allegation of money laundering which impugn my integrity, character and family name have been circulating on the social media also suggested that the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria be invited by Security Agencies to give reasons why such huge sums of money was transferred to my personal account instead of the Treasury Single Account.”
DR.BASHIR JAMOH then said to EFCC: “In view of this weighty allegation and the insidious and perniciously damaging effect on the government and the country, I hereby request that a thorough and painstaking investigation be carried by your commission with a view to unravelling the truth or accuracy of the allegation. This is to put the record straight in the public domain, please.”
HURIWA is therefore challenging the media to investigate whether indeed someone with similar names with little variations did actually warehoused such a massive scale of cash in both foreign and local denominations in Nigeria and the National Financial Intelligence Unit did not deem it appropriate to ask relevant questions regarding the source or sources of such funds just as HURIWA repeats that the NIMASA BOSS has absolutely no link to these allegations.