Stella Oduah responds to allegation she stole N2.5billion using her housemaid’s account

Stella Oduah, a former Minister of Aviation and senator (PDP-Anambra North), on Monday denied reports that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was on her trail for allegedly stashing nearly N2.5 billion in a bank account she set up using the identity of her domestic aide.

Ms. Oduah, who said she received the reports while relaxing in her country home in Anambra State, challenged those who published the allegations to publish proofs that substantiate her guilt.

News website, SaharaReporters, had on Sunday reported EFCC sources as revealing to it how Ms. Oduah used the name and pictures of the unnamed maid to set up the account.

“Senator Oduah apparently opened the account with her housemaid’s name, image, and details without the housemaid knowing about it,” Sahara Reporters quoted one of the EFCC sources as saying.

The account, the report said, was still active as at last week.

But in a rebuttal her office sent to PREMIUM TIMES around 9 a.m. Monday, Ms. Oduah said the reports were “totally false, baseless and at best the imagination of the platform.”

In the statement, signed by Francisca Onyeisi, head of communications, Ms. Oduah said that if the reports were true, she would have been arrested long before now, especially at a time when the EFCC is “freezing accounts and going after opposition governors who enjoy same level of immunity as the president.”

The former minister, therefore, urged her supporters and the general public to ignore the reports, saying she had “made a mark in oil and gas and Agricultural businesses before joining politics.”

Ms. Oduah was removed from office in February 2014 after she was found to have received armoured BMW cars, worth N255million, from an agency she supervised.