Date: 2012-04-18

Mr. Bukola Saraki, a serving senator, and former governor of Kwara State, will on Friday be a guest of crack detectives of the Special Fraud Unit of the Nigeria Police in Lagos, who wants him to answer questions relating to an N11 Billion financial scandal at the defunct Intercontinental Bank Plc.

SFU officials refused to make comments on their would-be guest when Premium Times telephoned their information desk some minutes ago, but usually reliable sources with deep knowledge on the investigation said Mr. Lekan Alabi, former chief executive at Intercontinental Bank is already in detention over the same case.

Detectives are trying to understand how jumbo loans running over N11 Billion found its way into the subsidiaries of an oil marketing company, Joy Petroleum, owned by one of Saraki's former aides, now deceased.

The detectives, according to our sources, also want Mr. Saraki to help them understand how choice properties in the up-scale markets of Ikoyi and Victoria Island in Lagos connected to him were used as collaterals in the multiple loan schemes that were not repaid but had been substantially written off and the properties relieved of their collateral status.

"I can tell you that Mr. Alabi is being interrogated for this same reason," said our source who stated that he also believed the current governor of Kwara State, Mr. Abdulfatai Ahmed, will eventually be invited too since a lot of the money transfer was done under his watch as finance commissioner in the administration of Mr. Saraki.