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Abba Kyari, the suspended Deputy Commissioner of Police, denied on Monday that the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency's allegation that he owned 14 assets, including a shopping mall, a residential estate, a polo playground, lands, and farmland, was false.
Kyari, a former Commander of the Intelligence Response Team, claimed in a statement issued by his lawyer, Hamza Dan Tani, that the reports were staged by the NDLEA to further tarnish his image.
According to him, the agency resorted to cheap blackmail because “NDLEA's case in court against Abba Kyari and four others is not going well for them."
If what they are saying is true, he challenged the NDLEA to immediately release all of his account statements to the public.
Tani revealed that there was N2.8 million in his UBA account, which he has only used for the past eight years; 7,000 pounds in GTB kept over eight years ago; and N350,000 in GTB kept many years ago.
Other accounts included N200,000 in Sterling Bank and an Access Bank account that had not been used in over eight years.
"They expected the court case to go smoothly in their favor because their sponsored media trials went viral between February and April 2022. They failed to recognize that, unlike media trials, courts require real evidence and facts, which the NDLEA lacked in this case," Kyari's lawyer said.
"By all means, out of desperation, the NDLEA wanted to tarnish Abba Kyari's name at any cost because they knew that all their initial efforts had failed because the overwhelming majority of good Nigerians who want peace and security for the country are still behind Abba Kyari despite the NDLEA's indictment of Abba Kyari in January 2022, which was followed by a massive sponsored media trial earlier this year," he continued.
"Once again, the NDLEA is sponsoring fabricated lies, untrue stories, flimsy allegations, trumped-up and false charges in court against Abba Kyari," he added.
On August 29, 2022, Justice Inyang Ekwo of a Federal High Court in Abuja dismissed a suit filed by the Attorney-General of the Federation to extradite DCP Abba Kyari to the United States.
"On August 30, the NDLEA filed another 24 count charge against DCP Abba Kyari just to mislead the general public and tarnish his image," Tani said. "This is despite the fact that the same matter is before the Federal High Court in Maiduguri and there is no evidence linking Abba Kyari to any of those properties or any link to any drug money, stealing government money, or any proceeds of any crime," he added.
"The businessmen who own those properties and provided their documents have already filed cases against NDLEA in Federal High Court Maiduguri," according to the statement.
In April 2022, the NDLEA marked innocent people's properties in Maiduguri and Abuja without any evidence and released the news to the media, which went viral.
"This is merely a malicious media trial with no evidence to present in court." If the NDLEA has any evidence linking Abba Kyari to any of those properties other than his farmland and one house, it should make it public as soon as possible.
"This entire property matter is before the Federal High Court in Maiduguri, but NDLEA is still desperate by attempting to link Abba Kyari to financial crimes and properties that do not belong to him without any evidence, and there is not a single kobo of drug money or any crime money that is linked to Abba Kyari in any way," Tani said.
"We challenge the NDLEA to immediately release any evidence to the public." Because they have no evidence to present to the court, the entire scheme is aimed solely at media trials. Allow them to release the evidence to the media if they have it. Because their goal is only a media trial, all of their cases will crumble in court.