Following allegation of corrupt practices in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFFC), by Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara State, no fewer than 150 anti-corruption crusaders in Nigeria, have said the Chairman of the anti-graft agency, Abdulrasheed Bawa, can longer continue in office.
Leaders of the Civil Society Organisation (CSOs) said inasmuch as elected officials must account for their actions in office, they shared Matawalle’s view that the investigations of EFCC must not be selective, but all-embracing.
They described the EFCC as an important agency, established to rid the society of corruption, and not one conceived for settling scores for political godfathers.
Led by the Chairman of the Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL), Debo Adeniran, the activists at a press conference in Lagos, said it was standard practice all over the world for officials who have been accused of gross misconduct to step aside while investigations are conducted to ascertain the veracity of the allegations.
Adeniran, therefore, called for a full probe into the activities of the EFCC under Bawa, lamenting how his predecessor, Ibrahim Magu, was asked to step aside, but till date, no one knows the exact outcome of the probe against him.
“There have been several allegations to the effect that about 80 per cent of cases under EFCC investigation are not taken to court. EFCC offices now literally serve as court rooms. There are damning allegations that some of the Commission’s officials simply negotiate with suspects, get assets and cash retrieved and do plea bargains. This opens limitless opportunities for corrupt bargaining and self-enrichment by the operatives of EFCC under Mr. Bawa’s watch.
“This needs to be thoroughly investigated by a technical commission of inquiry to dig into the modus operandi of EFCC investigations in the last three years by thoroughly analysing records of arrests, investigations, outcomes and final closure of each incident and individual suspects and how the matters were eventually dispensed with.”
Spokesperson of the coalition, Olufemi Lawson,said allegations of sharp practices with confiscated assets by the commission have refused to go away.
“To this end, all seized assets need to be forensically audited with a view to recovering all assets re-looted or auctioned in suspicious circumstances.”
He said claims by Bawa that the EFCC had secured 98.93 per cent convictions in 2022, losing only 1.07 per cent, were spurious, noting that a large chunk of the convictions were online fraudsters, while favoured political office holders were left untouched.
“We are also aware that in December 2022, the Bawa-led EFCC had announced its plan to sell forfeited properties. It also announced later in January that about 12 bids were made for those properties and, later, that six of those bids were successful. No details of this were made public, either to know successful bids or rejected ones. This was a ploy, in our opinion, to make the processes less transparent and, therefore, facilitate corrupt mismanagement of the proceeds or ensure that only their corrupt allies got the opportunity to purchase the assets at giveaway prices. The processes were rendered opaque and that’s very suspicious.
“The EFCC has done a selective invitation to outgoing governors in Nigeria, reportedly exempting other government officials who have loads of petitions against them, even by governors. If a government agency expected to fight crime is found going about its business in a manner that mimics witch-hunt and selective justice while also being unable to deal with corruption going on within its own workforce, the Coalition of Anti-Corruption Organizations (COACOs) is afraid that the nation may slide into some real crisis of confidence in our systems, which is bound to provoke a defunding of the EFCC by local and international donor organizations,” the group said.