N2b fraud: Maina whereabouts unknown as he cuts off contact with friends, others

A FORMER chairman of the defunct Pension Reformed Task Team, Abdulrasheed Maina, standing trial on 12 counts of N2b fraud and money laundering has reportedly gone underground.

It was gathered that, Maina who has reportedly cut off contact with all associates and friends, has been unable to be located by security agencies.

Maina, it was learnt, had missed over 10 scheduled trial sessions since September and had also been incommunicado to his surety, Senator Ali Ndume, the lawmaker representing Borno South.

The absence of the former director, it was reported, might have caused serious problems for Ndume.

The inability to reach Maina, it was learnt, had put Ndume in a panic and confusion following fears that the trial judge, Justice Okon Abang, might order his detention over the failure of the defendant to show up in court.

The judge, had during the last court session on October 18, handed down a 21-day ultimatum to the lawmaker to produce Maina.

Abang had also threatened that the senator could be detained should he fail to produce the defendant in court on November 18.

A frantic Ndume had solicited the help of the Department of State Services and the police to track down the fugitive, but so far, the security agencies had been unable to locate Maina.

According to Punch Newspaper, a security source said, “Tracking down Maina has been difficult because he has remained incommunicado and attempts to track his calls and locate his whereabouts have been unsuccessful as he keeps changing his phone numbers. Nobody knows if he was still in the country or if he had crossed the borders and fled justice.”

The last time anything was heard from him was October 9 when he claimed in a video that he was hospitalised for a knee injury and it would take him six weeks to recover.