How revenue official defrauded JAMB with fake e-facility cards, by witness

A prosecuting witness has told Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court sitting in Abuja how a former Revenue Officer with the Kano State zonal office of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Aliyu Yakubu, siphoned the board’s N20m.

The witness, who is JAMB’s Kano State Zonal Coordinator, Karimatu Aminu Abubakar, told the Presiding Judge, Justice Peter Affen, that the defendant replaced sold e-facility cards with cardboard cut to size.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is prosecuting Yakubu on an eight-count charge, bordering on criminal breach of trust, misappropriation of funds and money laundering amounting to N20m.

At the resumed trial, he told the court that Yakubu replaced the sealed e-facility cards with blank cardboard, claiming that he was shortchanged by a bank official, who collected the cards but neither returned them nor remitted the money sold on behalf of JAMB.

He said the defendant failed to report the incident to anybody because he thought he could handle the situation.

Abubakar said in 2016 she received a text message from the headquarters of JAMB asking her to report to Abuja with all the sold and unsold cards for reconciliation and because she wasn’t in possession of the cards, she called the former Revenue Officer who was on leave to release the materials, because they were needed in Abuja for reconciliation.

She stated that the defendant handed over sealed 40 packs of the supposed e-facility cards and another opened loosed e-facility cards to her on a Friday.

According to her, she left Kano the following day with the materials in a ‘Ghana-Must-Go’ sack and headed for Abuja, adding that during the reconciliation, it was discovered that there were no JAMB cards but only blank cardboards in the cartons.

The prosecuting counsel, Ekele Iheanacho, however, tendered in evidence the alleged ‘Ghana- Must-Go’ sack containing the alleged blank cardboard before the court.

After cross-examining the witness, Defense counsel, M.L Garba, asked for a short adjournment to enable him to put his documents in order.

Justice Affen, however, granted his prayer and adjourned the case till February 6, 2020, for a continuation of trial.