The fraud being perpetrated by a syndicate which flooded Kogi State with fake currency finally came to the open on Tuesday, December 31, 2013, when the Kogi State directorate of the State Security Service (SSS) arrested general overseer of The Mountain of Breakthrough Deliverance Ministry, Lagos, Rev Godson Akubuiro, over printing and circulating fake naira notes.
Arresting the kingpin proved to be long and tortuous, but the bubble finally burst when an almost overlooked lead led to the hide-out of the syndicate who had turned the state into the centre of their bustling business. Mike Fubara, the SSS director in the state, disclosed, while parading the pastor and 15 other members of his unholy gang – including his children – in Lokoja, said in its effort to trace the source of the worrisome fake naira notes in circulation in the state, the SSS undertook a covert operation to uncover those behind the act. ‘’This operation took the service about four months before a breakthrough resulting in the arrest of the 16-man syndicate led by Reverend Godson O. Akubuiro,” Fubara said.
The incident, checks revealed, is proof that the banking system in the country is in deep crisis. According to those who spoke to LEADERSHIP in Lokoja, if the minted notes were successfully circulated unchecked, it simply means that some of those who were supposed to be in the know about such things were either to laid-back to smell the rat or were working hand-in-glove with the gang.
A security officer who spoke with our correspondent in Lokoja stated that banks were in a good position to know how fake naira notes get into the market. Another school of thought maintained that those who collect money from the Central Bank of Nigeria and go ahead to sell them in open markets to customers should be held responsible, as the matter could be, pointing out that in some motor parks and even along the roads, fresh notes from banks can be purchased, on demand. “Lagos and Abuja are the worst. I can tell you that security agents need to raid all those places for more discoveries. It will blow their minds.”
Security operatives told LEADERSHIP that it took a lot of man-hour, money and energy before the culprits were arrested. According to Fubara, the operation which lasted about four months took his agents to the Breakthrough Church a.k.a Land of Solution, Plot 7, Koya Estate, Igbo Olomu, Ikorodu, Lagos. He also disclosed that the suspects were being investigated preparatory to their prosecution.
Items recovered from the suspects included equipment and materials used in printing the fake currencies, as well as bales of the fake naira notes cut to size, blank notes and fake naira notes amounting to N1.3m. The fear, evident among members of the public, is how much of the fake currency is currently in the market and who will be held responsible. Fubara urged the general public to be wary of the fake naira notes in circulation and report suspects who proffer such notes for transaction to security authorities.
In an interview with journalists, Akubuiro sought made a lame attempt at justification. He claimed not to have been using the money for himself, but as a “means to alleviate the poverty of members of his congregation and support the less privileged”. He, however, pled for leniency, saying “men of God, like David, were always tempted”. He made an analogy with David, who he claimed was hailed as a man after God’s heart, but fell many times and was still pardoned by God.
But what many onlookers, even the men of the service, wondered about was what could have made a man of ‘man of God’ who preached salvation and preached to his members about the dangers of deception fall into the treacherous act of printing fake currencies, give them to his members as an act of charity and even use them to buy provisions to be donated to the society’s less-privileged.
But just as the Bible asked in I Peter 4:18, “if the righteous (in this case, the supposedly righteous) scarcely be saved, what shall the unrighteous do?”
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