Tobias Sylvester
Governor of Taraba State, Darius Ishaku has denied giving any money to Hamisu Wadume, a suspected kidnap kingpin who was recently arrested by the Nigerian Police Force.
Wadume, who claimed to be a member of the All Progressive Congress (APC), had said that Governor Ishaku gave him N6million for 2019 elections, alongside the N13 million given to him by his party (APC) ahead of the elections.
However, in a statement issued on Sunday, Ishaku’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Bala Dan Abu refuted such claims, stressing that the Governor did not know and has never met Wadume.
“The attention of His Excellency, Governor Darius Dickson Ishaku has been drawn to the claims by Hamisu Bala Wadume, a kidnap suspect current under arrest, to the effect that he dumped him(the Governor) of Six Million Naira during his inglorious reign as kidnapper.
“We wish to state categorically that Gov Ishaku was never a victim of Wadume’s duplicity and never lost money to his antics.
“We urge the general public to discard and disregard Wadume’s confessions on the alleged defrauding of Gov Ishaku as the rantings of a drowning criminal.
“Gov Ishaku has never met the kidnap suspect and would not even recognise him if they were to meet today.
“Governor Ishaku would like to use this opportunity to commend security agencies for promptly arresting Wadume who is the reason behind the dastardly murder of three police officers and one other person in Ibi earlier this month.
“He urged the security agencies to expand their dragnet to all the nooks and corners of Taraba State where the accomplices of Wadume and other criminal gangs may still be hiding to arrest them and bring them to book,” Abu said.
