Former Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu has been declared by a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos as guilty of N7.2 billion fraud.
Kalu was therefore sentenced to 12 years imprisonment by the presiding Judge, Justice Mohammed Idris.
His company, Slok Nigeria Limited, said have been used to defraud Abia State was forfeited to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Also, his aide, Jones Ude, who was the Director of Finance in the Abia State House was sentenced to five year jail term.
The presiding Judge, Idris, described money laundering offence as crime against humanity.
The former governor is a current senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria who was elected into the Senate during the February 28, 2019 national assembly election in Abia State on the platform of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC).
He was first a governor on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and later PPA during which periods the crime was committed by him. He however defected to the APC and declared that his decamping was not to evade trial for his then alleged corruption trials in court.
It will be recalled that another former governor on the platform of PDP in Plateau State who also defected to the governing APC, Chief Joshua Dariye, was on June 13, 2018 also sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for similar crime. With these and more, insinuations that Muhammadu Buhari-led administration is witchhunt against opposition may have been erased.
