Segun Odewale, a superintendent officer of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Osun Command will spend the next seven years behind bars for allegedly defrauding a job-seeking woman to the tune of N100,000.
In a tweet by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Odewale was arraigned before Justice M. O. Agboola of Osun State High Court 6B in Osogbo where a three-count charge contravening section 10(a) of the ICPC Act 2000.
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According to the anti-corruption agency, Odewale duped the woman after promising to secure her a job in NSCDC.
However, the defendant, through his lawyer, Muftau Abiodun Adediran, urged the court to temper justice with mercy on the grounds that he was a first-time offender and a family man with dependents.
Likewise, Elijah Akaakohol, counsel to the prosecution, also affirmed that the defendant had no criminal record with ICPC. Nonetheless, the money he swindled from the woman was recovered and forfeited to the federal government.
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As part of its mandate to checkmate job racketeering, ICPC, through the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria, had earlier this year organised a symposium on ‘Policy Dialogue on Entrenching Transparency in the Public Service Recruitment Process in Nigeria’ during which its chairman, Professor Bolaji Owasanoye, disclosed that the commission had received about 100 petitions on recruitment scam from victims, institutions and complicit individuals.
