An Akwa Ibom State High Court has convicted and sentenced a former commissioner, representing Akwa Ibom State on the board of the Niger Delta Development Commission, Pastor Godwin Eyo, to three years imprisonment.
Eyo was accused of stealing 56 transformers meant for oil producing communities in the state.
The accused was prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on 56 counts bordering on stealing and conversion of 56 electricity transformers released to him by NDDC for distribution to communities in Akwa Ibom State.
On Monday in Uyo, he was found guilty on 37 of those counts by Justice Idongesit Ntem-Isua and sentenced to three years imprisonment on each of the counts.
He was however discharged and acquitted on 19 counts. The sentences are to run concurrently.
The convict was said to have applied for 90 electricity transformers and four generators from NDDC for Akwa Ibom State sometime in February, 2006.
Approval was given for 70 transformers but he allegedly diverted same to his house in Eket on the pretext that there was no space to accommodate the newly issued 70 units of transformers at the NDDC office in Uyo.
He was thereafter said to have sent only 14 Units to NDDC office in Uyo while he withheld 56 units which he could not account for till date.
The price of the 56 transformers are put at N220, 176,320.
One of the counts reads, “That you Pastor Godwin Moffat Eyo being a former Akwa Ibom State representative on the Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) on or about 14th April, 2006 at Uyo in the Uyo Judicial Division did fraudulently steal a 300 KVA/33/0.415 Transformer Serial No. 1712496 valued at Four Million, Eighteen Thousand, Five Hundred and Sixty Naira (N4,018,560.00), property of NDDC and thereby committed an offence of stealing contrary to Section 399 and punishable under Section 404 of the Criminal Code Cap. 38, Volume 2, Laws of Akwa Ibom State, 2000.”
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