The Anti-corruption Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Nigeria have resumed their call for the sack of the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, over alleged politicisation of the commission and disobedience of court orders
Speaking at a press conference in Lagos, they said the desperation of Bawa to save his face after dishonourable acts in office had taken a laughable turn. They insisted that no amount of purchased CSOs’ vote of confidence” would cover the truth about the abnormalities being condoned in EFCC under the current leadership.
According to them, the EFCC has become so desperate to launder what they called a rapidly diminishing image of Bawa, to the extent that the commission’s spokesman laughably signed a press release, recently, informing Nigerians that a CSOs had passed a vote of confidence in its chairman.
The Chairman of the Centre for Anti-corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL), Debo Adeniran, said his organisation had, from the outset alerted the National Assembly to the fact that Bawa was unfit for the post of EFCC chairman, over alleged corrupt practices and his rumoured relationship with the Attorney-General of the Federation who was believed to have masterminded the travails and eventually removal of Bawa’s predecessor, Ibrahim Magu.
According to him, Bawa’s alleged misconduct in office is a confirmation of CACOL’s fears of his being a misfit for the position. “Up till now, he (Bawa) has not cleared himself of all the allegations against him and he has been made to catch other people who committed offences that are not as grievous as the ones that he has been accused of. And on top of all of these, he has been behaving as if he is an authority over himself.
“And we are now saying that no matter how highly placed you are, no matter how influential you are, you still are duty-bound to operate within the confines of the laws of our own country. That is the Constitution.
“Nobody is above the law. Everybody should be equal before the law. If we don’t allow the rule of law to govern our society, then we are plunging our society into that kingdom where anarchy rules, where there will be chaos and where there will be no control over who does what, and that would be a disorganised society.
“This man has been convicted about two times for flagrant disobedience of court orders. The Inspector-General of Police has been lagging behind in the performance of his duty in this regard, maybe because of what they believe should be esprit de corps. Gradually, other agencies would not want to obey the rule of law.
“This would only drawback the gains we have made over the years when we thought that we had struggled ourselves out of the stranglehold of the Military. This is not expected of a born-again democrat that our President now claims to be. For how long will our President allow impunity to govern our society before he knows that he has to exercise his enormous power to insist that the rule of law that he has relied upon over the years holds sway?”
On his part, the spokesperson for the Transparency and Accountability Group, Ayodeji Ologun, wondered why some people, in the name of CSOs, would allow themselves to be used to reinforce failure, contrary to what genuine CSOs stand for, noting that in spite of pressure from different quarters, patriotic activists refused to be bought over.
“The issue of Bawa did not start today. When he was in the Port Harcourt division of the EFCC, he had allegations of misconduct around seized property hanging around his neck. These are allegations that were not cleared because he was forced upon the agency.
“We are repeating that we are not against the fight against corruption. But if the successes of the EFCC must stay, we cannot continue to have an ignoble personality like Abdulrasheed Bawa heading that agency. So we are not just asking the incoming government not to inherit him, we are saying he should be removed from office even before the expiration of the term of President Muhammadu Buhari.”
