Betta Edu to report at EFCC office Tuesday

Suspended Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation Betta Edu will report at the headquarters of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Abuja on Tuesday.

Edu is expected to honour an invitation by the anti-graft agency following her suspension by President Bola Tinubu on Monday.

A top source in the anti-graft commission, according to a report published on a website of a television station, revealed that the minister has been invited in line with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s directive that a thorough probe be conducted covering her time in the ministry.

Meanwhile, the EFCC quizzed Edu’s predecessor, Sadiya Farouq, on Monday, over an alleged laundering of N37.1 billion during her tenure as a minister under the administration of ex-President Muhammadu Buhari.

Farouq was still at the office of the EFCC as of 6pm on same day.

Edu was caught in a N585m disbursement scandal involving her ministry, attracting widespread criticisms from rights groups and activists.

The predicament of the 37-year-old was worsened when the Accountant General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein, confirmed that although her office received a request from the humanitarian ministry to make certain payments, her office did not act on it.

In a statement on Monday afternoon, presidential spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale, said his principal suspended Edu with immediate effect and ordered EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, “to conduct a thorough investigation into all aspects of the financial transactions” involving the ministry and “one or more agencies thereunder”.

Edu, 37, the youngest in the President’s cabinet before her suspension, was a fast-rising Amazon in the political space having occupied state and national offices at a young age.

Before her ministerial appointment last August, she was Cross River State Commissioner for Health and the National Women Leader of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC). Edu was a prominent figure in the campaign train of Tinubu, the then APC presidential candidate, during the electioneering process that brought the ex-Lagos governor into office as President.

Edu clinched her ministerial appointment about three months after Tinubu was sworn in as President. Her tenure as minister was, however, shortlived barely six months after, perhaps the shortest tenure by a minister in a long while.