Badeh's associate says he reviewed the crime scene and the attack was carried out by expert marksmen

CLOSE friends of former chief of defence staff Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh have revealed that he was shot by highly trained and expert marksmen so could not have been the victim of an armed robbery attack.

On December 18, Marshal Badeh, 61, was returning from his farm along the Abuja-Keffi highway, when he and his driver were shot by armed gunmen. Following the attack, Marshal Badeh was rushed to a hospital at the military cantonment popularly called Abacha Barracks in Abuja, where he was pronounced dead.

Police have since swung into action and have made several arrests, with one of the suspects, Shuaibu Rabo, 25,  saying during interrogation, that Marshal Badeh was killed in an attack to rob him of money meant for the purchase of a new farmland. Five suspects have been paraded by the police so far but Marshal Badeh's family have rejected the explanation offered by the suspects, saying they believe he was murdered.

According to Marshal Badeh's family, contrary to the claim by the arrested suspects, he did not discuss any issue about the acquisition of land with anyone and neither was he carrying more than N500 on the day he was killed. Refuting the cause of death, the family  said the claim was a cook-up story to deceive the public and hide the killers and their intentions.

One of Marshal Badeh's  associates has backed this claim by the family, saying that looking at the crime scene analysis and reviewing the bullet’s trajectory and pictures, indicated that his killers were not hoodlums. He added that the incident was a targeted attack, dismissing the confessional video as a charade, stressing that the ex-chief of defence staff  was broke, so had no money on him.

He said: “As an intimate friend of the late chief of defence staff, I can tell you categorically that Badeh had no such money. He was very broke and could not pay his domestic staff and power bills.

"At a time, I volunteered to raise N50,000 to enable him to settle part of the bills but he declined, saying he would harvest some crops on his farm and sell them to raise money. That was why he went to the farm to harvest the crops but he was ambushed and killed.

“He was very broke because all his accounts had been frozen by the court and his pension stopped. So, how could a man who could not pay his bills pay N2m  for a farmland as claimed by the police investigation? That is stretching the lies too far.”

Another friend of claimed that Marshal Badeh was planning to join the campaign team of the Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar,  before he was killed. He added that Marshal Badeh delayed the announcement because his lawyer asked him to suspend the move and prepare for the opening of the defence of his corruption case which was slated for January 16, 17 and 18, 2019.

According to the friend, Marshal Badeh might have been murdered to prevent him from revealing in court those who shared the money for arms for which he was being prosecuted. Meanwhile, Justice Ekwo of a Federal High Court, Abuja, has ordered the interim forfeiture of the sum of N263m recovered by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission from one of the prosecution witnesses in the N3.9bn  fraud trial of Marshal Badeh.