Alleged N10bn Fraud: My Brother Forged CAC Documents, Power Of Attorney, Witness Tells Court

An Abuja based public servant, Mrs Stella Oga nee Ozigbu, on Monday, testified before Justice Donatus Okorowo of the Federal High Court Abuja, that her brother, Mr Paul Ozigbu, forged landed property documents of their late father, Nze Ike Hilary Ozigbu, to take over ownership of family properties and company.

Paul is being prosecuted by the Police over allegations of forgery, criminal conspiracy and illegal conversion of family properties into personal use amongst others.

He was re-arraigned before Justice Okorowo on July 7.

At a resumed trial, Mrs Stella, first prosecution witness, while being led in evidence by J. Nwadike, told the court that after the death and burial of their father in 2010, the children met and decided that after the mourning period, they would share the assets of their parents.

“Before our father died, he had handed all landed property documents, certificate of occupancy, etc to our last brother, Uche Ozigbu.

“We all agreed to give our elder brother, Paul all the documents and that when everything is shared, we will now give individuals their own title papers.

“Uche and I went and gave him the landed property documents, but all efforts to get him to hand over the said documents became an issue” the witness testified.

She stated that in the cause of trying to know the status of the properties and their father’s company, “we found out that Paul (the defendant) has sold out a huge number out of 67 acres of our mother’s palm plantation.

“We tried to find out about our father’s company, Ozigbu Engineering Company, established in 1972, only to notice at the CAC, that the company now belongs to Paul, his wife and son.

“The defendant had changed the Directors including the Secretary. Paul made his wife secretary in 2014 and his son, a director, whereas our father died in 2010.

“Paul came with a power of attorney which he said was given to him by our father, wherein he claimed that their father gave him all the property.

“As at the date of our family meeting, he never mentioned the power of attorney” the witness stated.

“As of today, you cannot find a pin in OEC. Paul sold everything. He sold a warehouse, whole steel structure, whole aluminium roofing sheets and sidings etc.

“When we discovered all these things, we found out that he had forged signatures of directors of OEC.

“We reached out to the Nigerian Police to verify the documents he was parading, which we suspected. “The police wrote to CAC and they sent them the documents they had. They used their experts to verify them and all the documents failed and the power of attorney he was parading was not genuine” Mrs Stella told the court.

The Police had last year in a suit marked FHC/ABJ/CR/239/2020, alleged that Paul Ozigbu forged Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) documents, and Power of Attorney of his late father, Nze Hilary Ozigbu and obtained family property by falsehood.

He was also accused alongside Ngozi Ozigbo and David Ozigbo, now at large to have at different times fraudulently obtained various sums of money amounting to N10.40bn.

The defendant was accused of conniving with others at large to forge a Corporate Affairs Document by forging the signature of late Engineer Hillary Ozigbo and used same to effect the change of directors of the company, known as Ozigbo Engineering Company Limited.

The charge stated that the defendant committed an offence contrary to section 1(2)(c) of Miscellaneous Offences Cap M17, Law of Federation of Nigeria, 2004.