Connect with us

Politics

Card Fraud, Forgery: Dapo Abiodun’s Second Term Bid Suffers Massive Setback

Published

on

Dapo Abiodun

 

Evil deeds of the past have a way of catching up even years after.

This is the tale of the current Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun, whose unpleasant and obnoxious past appear to have caught up with him.

In 1986, Abiodun was arrested in the United States for credit card fraud and forgery. Ahead of the 2023 general election, the ghost of his past deed has come to hunt him.

Details of Abiodun’s arrest for card fraud came to the fore following a petition submitted by an All Progressive Congress (APC) member, Ayodele Oludiran on behalf of Oluwatobi Sofela of Ogun Bibire Unity Forum to the National Chairman of the party, Abdulahi Adamu.

With serious lobbying for the heart of the state going onpresently, Sofela had warned that the party might lose the governorship seat in Ogun due to Abiodun’s criminal history and its concealment from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) despite swearing an oath.

Also, he cautioned that the discrepancies in the governor’s educational qualifications might also cause opposition parties to question his eligibility for re-election bid, swaying the electorate to their side.

“If action is not taken, the chances of our great party, the APC, retaining the governorship seat in Ogun State shall be in jeopardy as previously seen in Bayelsa and Zamfara states,” Sofela said.

Recall that in March, SaharaReporters had published the criminal record of how Abiodun was jailed in 1986 for credit card fraud in Miami Dade Florida, USA.

The governor was said to have used a pseudo name (Shawn Michael Davids) with the aim of concealing his criminal identity.

The record revealed that Abiodun was jailed for committing criminal offences which bordered on credit card fraud, petty theft, and check forgery.

He was arrested on November 7, 1986, for fighting and injuring a police officer in an attempt to resist arrest.

While being processed at the station, his fingerprint was run through the crime database and it was discovered that the Adedapo Oluseun Abiodun being processed for detention was the same as Shawn Michael Davids.

His criminal record and history were thus cemented and he was jailed.

According to some documents obtained by SaharaReporters, Abiodun’s jail number was 8600B9436.

In 2015, while contesting for the Ogun East Senatorial seat against the late Buruji Kasamu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he applied forand got the redaction of his criminal records in Miami Dade, Florida.

This act of concealment meant he could lie on his Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) forms that he had no prior criminal records; a perjury offence that could have disqualified him from ever holding an appointive or elective office in Nigeria.

However, the governor has stated that his crime of 1986 is not sufficient grounds for his disqualification by the APC, adding that his probable arrest was not a conviction and hence was not answerable to the laws that applied to criminals.

He added that even if he was convicted in 1986, the Nigerian constitution only disqualifies ex-felons from contesting political offices if their sentence was less than 10 years before the election date.

Meanwhile, Abiodun has been heavily criticized by residents and indigenes of Ogun State over his docile leadership style and a lack of development in the state since he assumed office. With poverty also on the rise in the state, the tendency of his second term in office is looking more like a fallacy than a reality

 

Share
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Polaris Bank AD

Ad

Facebook

Trending

Copyright © 2024, February13 Media