A staff member of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Tarila Ebizimor, was on Friday sentenced by a Federal High Court to seven years imprisonment for fraud.
The presiding judge, Justice A.T. Mohammed, found him guilty of obtaining money under false pretences to the tune of N4 million.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had sued, Ebizimor, a supervisor in the NDDC’s security department, on a four-count charge. The anti-corruption agency took action after finding out from a petitioner that the now-convicted Ebizimor had in August 2013 obtained the sum of N4m.
According to the petitioner, the NDDC official had presented himself as the personal assistant to the MD, NNDC. Under this guise, he promised to facilitate the award of road construction contracts for the petitioner.
One of the charges reads: “That you Tarila Ebizimor on the 13th day of August, 2013 in Port Harcourt, Rivers State within the jurisdiction of this honorable court did fraudulently obtain the sum of N2,000,000 (Two Million Naira), which said sum was paid into your Fidelity Bank account No. 5330259983, by a means of transfer from God’s Grace Haulage Limited on the pretext that you were to facilitate the award of road construction contract from Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), a pretext you know to be false and thereby committed an offence, contrary to Section 1(i)(a) of Advance Fee Fraud and Other Related Offences Act, 2006 and punishable under Section 1(3) of the same Act”.
