CSOs Meet In Lagos, Renew Campaign For Bawa’s Removal

A day after Zamfara State Governor Bello Matawalle accused the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa of corruption, major anti-corruption organisations yesterday converged in Lagos to renew their agitation for Bawa’s resignation.

The CSOs, which put their membership at 150, maintained that Bawa must go because he was no longer fit for the office.

Matawalle, who issued a statement on Wednesday, had declared that he and other prominent Nigerians have evidence of corrupt practices against the EFCC’s chairman.

The leaders of the organisations who have been championing Bawa’s removal from office in the last six months for failing to obey court orders who converged on Lagos said they have refused to be cowed into shelving their agitation for a genuine fight against corruption in Nigeria.

They said inasmuch as elected officials must account for their actions in office, they shared Matawalle’s view that the investigations into corrupt practices must not be selective but all-embracing.

According to the activists, “the EFCC is an important agency in Nigeria, established to rid the society of corruption with impunity and it is not conceived as an agency meant for settling scores for political godfathers.”

The anti-corruption groups led by the chairman of the Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, CACOL, Debo Adeniran, at a press conference in Lagos, said it was the 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 against them.

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Adeniran, therefore, called for a full probe into the activities of the EFCC under Bawa, saying, “His predecessor, Ibrahim Magu, was not only told to step aside when Bawa’s godfather wanted him out at all costs, he was humiliated out of office and up till tomorrow, no one knows the exact outcome of the probe against him.”

The groups said from the interaction of journalists and CSOs with ordinary Nigerians who have been invited for one reason or the other by the EFCC, “there have been several allegations to the effect that about 80 percent 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 Bawa’s watch,” the anti-corruption activists alleged.

Adeniran added that, “There is  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,” they demanded.

In a speech delivered on behalf of the CSOs, their spokesperson, 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.

“The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, has been convicted for contempt, over his failure to comply with an earlier order of the court.

“As we speak, the Inspector-General of Police has not complied with a court order to commit Bawa to Kuje prison while Bawa has not deemed it fit to purge himself of contempt.”

The activists said claims by Bawa that the EFCC had secured 98.93 per cent convictions in 2022, losing only 1.07 percent, were spurious, noting that a large chunk of the convictions were online fraudsters, while favoured political office holders were left untouched.

Lawson said, “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 anti -graft agencies said.