BY OUR CORRESPONDENT
Though he has started serving his fourteen-year-prison term, there are chances that Joshua Dariye, former governor of Plateau State may still be on the payroll of the National Assembly. This is because his name was not in the letter sent to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC informing the Commission of seats declared vacant.
According to Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, INEC national chairman, those whose seats were declared vacant in the notification were Mustapha Bukar of Katsina North senatorial district who died on April 4, 2018, and Ali Wakili of Bauchi South senatorial district who died on March 17, 2018.
Dariye was sentenced to 14 years in prison for fraud, having been found guilty by a federal high court over misappropriation of state funds during his tenure as governor. The amount involved is over N2 billion, being money taken from ecological fund.
Though the ecological fund was the reason Dariye was impeached under the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, he did not only returned to his seat as governor he also won elections to the Senate, because the case dragged on for too long.
Perhaps his colleagues are hopeful that he might be lucky at the appellate courts. But what is clear now is that though under the law former governor Dariye is a convict found guilty of a criminal offence, he is still a serving senator. At least by the record of the National Assembly.