By Charles Okoh
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) may have with recent events, proven to those who never believed in its abilities to properly prosecute financial fraud offenders without bias, that it has outlived its usefulness. An anti-graft agency that seems only out to diligently hunt and prosecute small fries while bungling high-profile cases involving men and women of means certainly cannot provide the much desired check on economic and financial crimes that hold this nation hostage.
*Tinubu and Bello
At the outset of the agency, incidentally under Nuhu Ribadu, who is the current National Security Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, there were at least some attempts to prosecute high-profile cases. Even though it was argued that ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo and succeeding presidents after him, have been using the agency to persecute political enemies but it was still not hopeless as it currently is.
Last week, the EFCC treated Nigerians with a befuddling spectacle;
a spectacle that has left its operatives sounding incoherent and laughable as
they tried to explain what is clearly shameful conduct and an unforced error.
The EFCC has never disappointed those who insist that the
anti-graft agency is only a lap dog used by the government to hunt those who
have fallen out of favour with the government.
For instance, while the EFCC has held the former governor of the
Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele, for over a year now, does the EFCC want us to
believe that Emefiele could possibly have carried out all of those atrocious
conducts while in office alone without the consent of the approving authority
at the time? Was Emefiele’s actions in office without the approval or knowledge
of the government? Yes, his conduct in office was crazy, to say the least, but
was he alone and the only one person with such scandalous conducts in
Muhammadu Buhari’s eight years of misrule? Or is the EFCC just doing this as
punishment for Emefiele’s transgressions against the government of the day?
The current hide and seek game between the EFCC and a former
Governor of Kogi State, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, got to a crescendo, when the
former who had been declared wanted by the EFCC walked into the premises of
EFCC on September 18 and walked out triumphantly. He was in their premises
and walked away in a manner that simply suggested that the EFCC was only doing
what it knows how to do best – media trial.
Not a few doubted its preparedness to prosecute this case.
Easily the most celebrated story on various media platforms, including social
media in recent months or thereabouts, it has been around the failure of the
EFCC to arrest and bring to trial the immediate past governor of Kogi State,
Alhaji Yahaya Bello.
The initial impression was that the erstwhile Kogi governor may
have sneaked out of the country, but the reality is that the governor all the
while has been in the country and yet the EFCC wants the world to believe that
his whereabouts could not be traced.
The commission had been updating Nigerians on efforts being
made to get the former governor into its net. A notice posted on the
commission’s official Facebook page in April, 2024, had declared him wanted in
connection with the alleged case of Money Laundering to the tune of
N80,246,470,089.88. With the recently filed charges, it has increased to about
N110 billion.
All the commission could offer on the reason it allowed a man it
had declared wanted as a fugitive of the law, was that Bello’s so-called
surrender was an antic to garner public sympathy and evade due process.
The anti-graft agency maintained that Bello’s visit to its headquarters
with a retinue of aides and a sitting governor was why he was rebuffed.
“To date, Bello is yet to take his plea in the alleged N80.2
billion money laundering charges preferred against him before Justice Nwite.
His invasion of the corporate headquarters of the commission with a retinue
of security details, hand-to-hand cahoots and carriage with a sitting governor
having immunity, unwarranted media blitz, scripted sleight of hands unknown to
the public and other backend intelligence available to the commission,
compelled a tactical rebuff of his touted surrender offer.” Chai EFCC!
The same EFCC that allowed a man it declared wanted with the Interpol
walk away because the man came to its garage and did not do proper filing or
documentation process on arrival at their premises, again mobilised its men to
Bello’s home, firing gunshots and causing unnecessary unrest and again after
the show of shame left the premises without their long sought-after suspect.
According to the agency, no Nigerian, no matter how highly
placed, was expected to come for an invitation in a convoy of vehicles and
with Governor Usman Ododo and some dignitaries. To this end, the agency pointed
out that Bello came with grandeur which is contrary to its procedures.
On October 16, 2018, when former Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele
Fayose, reported at the EFCC office in Wuse, Abuja, the current FCT Minister,
Nyesom Wike, and others were with him. Yet, he was taken into custody and
detained. Also, in 2014, when the DSS invited the former FCT Minister, Nasir
El-Rufai, Rotimi Amaechi who was then Governor of Rivers State, and Chris
Ngige, a serving Senator, were among those who accompanied him.
This same EFCC now under Ola Olukoyede is telling Nigerians that
because a governor accompanied Bello they let him leave, only to invade the
Kogi State Govt House in Asokoro, Abuja, in the night, shooting sporadically,
looking for the same Yahaya Bello.
The EFCC’s Director of Public Affairs, Wilson Uwujaren, was to
offer the same reason on a television interview, where he said Bello was not
genuinely prepared to surrender himself, contrary to his public claims.
Uwujaren emphasised that Bello’s actions were inconsistent with
someone genuinely seeking to cooperate with the commission.
What was the motive of EFCC refusal to take in a suspect who
came on his own volition and interrogate him, detain him and to take him to
court? The EFCC also has the power to take his statement in the presence of his
lawyers and grant him administrative bail pending arraignment. Since the case
is coming up the following week, the EFCC should have taken Bello’s statement,
granted him administrative bail and asked him to come back, at the least, for
crying out loud!
Uwujaren had pathetically said, “The appropriate place of surrender
would be before Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court, Abuja, before
whom his legal team had undertaken to produce him to answer to the 18-count
charge of money laundering preferred against him.
This clearly is an all-time low for the EFCC and it’s shameful.
To also think that this same EFCC is again enmeshed in another
scandal over its handling of the allegations made by Martins Vincent Otse,
also known as VeryDarkMan, who claimed that the EFCC dropped money laundering
charges against cross dresser Idris Okuneye, popularly known as Bobrisky,
after receiving ₦15
million.
Perhaps, the EFCC does not realise that as an organisation,
it’s now perceived as a toothless bulldog or at best one that barks at small
fries only.
The agency, if it must continue to exist, must spare us these
shenanigans and public spectacles that often end in an anti-climax. All the
high profile cases of the commission with media hype begin and end where it
all begins, the media.
If the primary assignment of EFCC is to fight economic and financial
crimes, then it has failed thus far. This is not only because it has dissipated
so much energy chasing small crimes while most of its high profile cases have
either gone without closures or have been trailed by allegations against its operatives.
Uwujaren and his EFCC know that they simply flunked it and can
never be convincing to themselves or to Nigerians. It was a rather shameful
outing for which it must be prepared to not repeat if it must earn the respect
of the people as well as justify the taxpayers’ money voted to it annually.
*Okoh is a commentator on public
issues
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