Anti-graft investigators on Tuesday have started grilling suspended minister Betta Edu over alleged N585m disbursement fraud, Channels Television has learnt.
Betta arrived at the headquarters of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Jabi, Abuja at 11am, a top source told Channels Television on Tuesday.
The embattled minister came alongside her aides and lawyer and is currently facing EFCC investigators.
Edu was caught in a N585m disbursement scandal involving her ministry, attracting widespread criticisms from rights groups and activists.
The predicament of the 37-year-old was worsened when the Accountant General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein, confirmed that although her office received a request from the humanitarian ministry to make certain payments, her office did not act on it.
On Monday, President Bola Tinubu suspended the 37-year-old with immediate effect and ordered EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, “to conduct a thorough investigation into all aspects of the financial transactions” involving the ministry and “one or more agencies thereunder”.
Edu, 37, the youngest in the President’s cabinet before her suspension, was a fast-rising Amazon in the political space having occupied state and national offices at a young age.
Before her ministerial appointment last August, she was Cross River State Commissioner for Health and the National Women Leader of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC). Edu was a prominent figure in the campaign train of Tinubu, the then APC presidential candidate, during the electioneering process that brought the ex-Lagos governor into office as President.
Edu clinched her ministerial appointment about three months after Tinubu was sworn in as President. Her tenure as minister was, however, shortlived barely six months after, perhaps the shortest tenure by a minister in a long while
