“How we found bags of cash in Justice Ademola’s wardrobes” – DSS operative
An operative of the Department of State Services (DSS) has told an FCT High Court how millions of naira and other foreign currencies were found in wardrobes of embattled justice of the Federal High Court, Justice Adeniyi Ademola. The team leader of an eight-man DSS team that raided the house of the judge last year, […]
An operative of the Department of State Services (DSS) has told an FCT High Court how millions of naira and other foreign currencies were found in wardrobes of embattled justice of the Federal High Court, Justice Adeniyi Ademola.
The team leader of an eight-man DSS team that raided the house of the judge last year, Ike Onuoha told the court the team was armed with a duly signed search warrant but had to force their ways into the judge’s house when they were refused entry.
He said the judge informed his cook (through a text message) to tell the team he was out of town.
"We arrived at the address by 8pm on 7th October with two Ford Ranger Jeeps. In the first vehicle there were four unarmed operatives and four armed operatives were in the second vehicle", he said.
The DSS operative said after forcing their way through and meeting the judge in night wears in his bedroom and upon his request, they waited for the arrival of his lawyer, Joe Agi (SAN) who after discussing with the judge gave the team the go ahead to search the house.
"As we continued our search on the ground floor, we encountered a locked bedroom. We requested for the keys, but we were not given. We then had no option than to force open the door.
“Inside the bedroom, we saw a locked wardrobe which we also had to force open when the keys were not made available to us.
“Inside the wardrobe, we found a Ghana-must-go bag containing various N1,000 denomination notes to the tune of N39.5 million after counting it on the spot.
"We also found two black pump action rifles and 35 life cartridges of ammunition. We also found a silver-coloured flash drive”, he said.
He added that they found another locked room where they recovered the sum of N8.5 million in N1,000 denomination inside a black and white medium sized locked up in a wardrobe.
He said thereafter they found “in the master’s bedroom, in an open wardrobe, a black bag where we found the sum of 6 million Naira, 121,179 US dollars, 4,400 Euros, 80 pounds, 1,010 Indian Rupees.
“We also recovered six ATM cards, eight cheque books, eight deposit slips for various banks, two firearm licences – one for Honourable Justice A.R. Muhammed, the other for Honourable Justice Adeniyi Ademola. We also recovered two Apple ipads”, he said.