Police declares Fani-Kayode's mistress, Chioma, wanted over $65,000 fraud

The Police have disclosed why they declared the estranged mistress of a former minister of Aviation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, Miss Chioma Anaso, wanted, saying she failed to respond to a petition by a certain businessman, Mr. Ifeanyi Okorie, whom she allegedly duped of the sum of $65,000 under the pretext of executing a phantom contract.

In a petition dated March 10, 2009, exclusively obtained by Pointblanknews.com, Okorie narrated to the Abuja Police Command how Chioma, whom he described as a business associate, had cajoled him into lending her $65,000 “with a promise to repay the same within three months with an additional 30 per cent interest.”

According to Okorie, Chioma, who served as a Special Assistant to Fani-Kayode, had sought the loan to enable her obtain “some contracts for herself in the Ministry of Aviation using proxy companies unknown to her boss (Fani-Kayode)” since she had “run out of personal funds to finance certain aspects of these contracts.” Besides, Chioma had promised to secure plum contracts from the Aviation Ministry for Okorie, the petition alleged.

Okorie, who claimed to have handed Chioma the loan at Agura Hotel, Abuja, continued: “I waited patiently for three months for her to repay my money as agreed. However, to my chagrin, she became elusive…until the then Hon. Minister’s appointment expired,” adding, “and from June 2008 she has provocatively avoided even my calls.”

The embattled businessman, who claimed to have been in business since 1994, further told the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), that he was compelled to report the matter to the police since he was at his wits’ end and didn’t want to resort to self-help.

“Sir, all my efforts to meet Miss Anaso (at her No. 15 Frederick Chiluba Street, Asokoro home) have failed,” lamented Okorie, declaring that his fears that Chioma may have relocated to an unknown destination were fuelled by the “suspicious” glances occupants of the said house cast on him each time he visited in search of Fani-Kayode’s former mistress.

“I cannot proceed on self-help to bring Miss Anaso to account for her criminal atrocity against my finances,” penned Okorie, regretting that “I was even later to discover from informed sources that Miss Anaso did not have any contract to execute at the said time, and that even if she had, such contract was already executed and paid for before she used false pretence to defraud me.”

Okorie, who admitted that he trusted Chioma well enough not to document the transaction, appealed to the Police authorities to “promptly intervene” and save him from the ruin and psychological trauma Chioma allegedly unleashed on him.

On the receipt of the petition, a Police source told Pointblanknews.com, “we made several attempts to reach the said woman,” adding that, “when it became clear she was cleverly avoiding everybody, we were left with no option that to approach the Chief Magistrate Court, Wuse 2, for a Warrant of Arrest on Miss Chioma Anaso.”

By the Warrant, a copy which was exclusively obtained by Pointblanknews.com, “all Police officers” are empowered to arrest Chioma for “Criminal Breach of Trust and Cheating.” The Warrant was signed by Chief Magistrate David Ochimana and dated March 20, 2009.

A source close to the petitioner told Pointblanknews.com that their fear is that the $65,000 may have been part of the $250,000 on Chioma in June 2007, when she was reportedly arrested by officials of the Nigerian Customs at the Abuja International airport as she boarded a London-bound British Airways aircraft.

It took the intervention of an obviously embarrassed Fani-Kayode, who was out of the country at the time, as well as other very top government officials at the time, particularly the then EFCC chairman, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, to disentangle Chioma from what would have been the web of prosecution by the Customs officials for failure to declare such amount of foreign currency.