How I Was Tormented By EFCC To Implicate Jonathan – Dudafa

He said that while in the EFCC coffers, he developed a spinal cord ailment, and was denied adequate medical treatment.

According to him, all statements he wrote were dictated to him as he was induced to sign in exchange for his freedom.

Dudafa, who was arraigned before Justice Mohammed Idris on 23-counts of conspiracy and concealment of crime proceeds, was testifying in a trial-within-trial, which began at the Federal High Court in Lagos after he claimed statements he made at EFCC were not voluntary.

“April 27 till May 12 was so tormenting for me. Sometimes, I was taken out from the detention centre and kept in EFCC office from 8am to 8pm, sometimes till 11pm.

“The ailment I have today is a spinal cord dislocation. It was within that period of torture and agony that my spinal cord got dislocated due to sitting down from morning till night,” he said.

The defendant claimed EFCC denied him access to his lawyers, saying: “I made a request, in fact my lawyers were driven away.”

Dudafa said he was invited to a meeting in which all parties in the case were involved. Everyone else had a lawyer, except him, he claimed.

He said EFCC nominated a lawyer he did not know to represent him. “That was the only statement that was endorsed by a lawyer – a lawyer that was not known to me,” he said.

On the spinal cord injury, he said, “I was not taken to any specialist. My family even offered to bring an orthopedic physician to attend to me, but they refused. While in the cell, I was isolated. They wanted me to say a lot of things.

“They asked me questions about Goodluck Jonathan. In my statements at the time, I stated that every function I discharged was official because I acted based on instruction.

“I was dehumanised to the extent that I got scared of people walking past me,” he said.

“They told me they only wanted to recover money and that they needed my cooperation. My response was ‘no’ though my freedom was paramount to me. Iliasu said I should return money for my freedom.

“The Director of Operation threatened me, saying I would remain in detention forever unless I cooperated. He told me that my freedom was dependent upon the release of the money. My wife and children could not feed. Everything became a yardstick for my freedom. I had no objection to what he was saying.

“Until May 20, my statements were largely dictated to me. My health condition was deteriorating. On May 30, my family raised an alarm telling the world that EFCC refused to treat me,” Dudafa said.

According to him, EFCC eventually seized an unspecified amount of money from him, yet did not release him as promised.

“On June 1, they went to the bank and the money was released to them, still they refused to let me go. They asked me to bring sureties, and they arrested up to 40 members of my family and friends. For fear of being arrested, all my friends and family deserted me,” Dudafa said.

He said the EFCC deliberately blurred or made blank, points he disagreed with; “I was saying: Let it be clear that the statement was largely dictated. These statements were teleguided by EFCC and dictated. I was less than a human being while at EFCC. I couldn’t even spell my name at some point. I was not physically threatened, but I was mentally threatened,” Dudafa said.