By Valentine Amanze, Lagos
Nigeria’s Deputy President, Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, has restated that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) honoured him as its Anti-Corruption Ambassador.
This is in response to the denial by the spokesmsn of the anti-graft agency, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, that the outfit never honoured the lawmaker.
Ekweremadu, through his Special Adviser (Media), Uche Anichukwu, stated that it was strange for the officials of the EFFC to deny that they never honoured the deputy president of the Senate.
He pointed out that the EFCC Liaison Officer to the National Assembly, Mr. Suleiman Bakari, and his team, applied for and susbsequently paid a courtesy call on the Deputy President of the Senate in his Office on Tuesday, April 19, 2016.
According to him, Bakari, among other issues he raised, solicited the support of the Senate and National Assembly towards the anti-corruption crusade of the present administration, and even presented a frame with a bold picture of President Muhammadu Buhari, bearing the inscription: “If we dont kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria”.
“Bakari also, on behalf of the Acting Chairman, management, and staff of the EFCC decorated Senator Ekweremadu as an Anti-Corruption Ambassador of the EFCC. Bakari said, ‘It is, therefore my honour, Your Excellency, to on behalf of my Acting Chairman, Mr. Ibrahim Mustafa Magu, and the entire management and staff of the EFCC, decorate you as an Anti-Corruption Ambassador and formally present this frame, as a token of our appreciation to your person and office, and as a symbol of institutional partnership between the EFCC and the National Assembly”’.
He also disclosed that the visit and decoration were captured in both pictures and video.
“As for the purported claim by the EFCC spokesperson that the agency has never and could not have decorated anybody as an Anti-Corruption Ambassador, since, according to him, ‘the Commission is not in the habit of awarding titles to individuals’, we wish to refer him to December 7, 2007, when the Nuhu Ribadu-led EFCC confered the Role Model Award in the Fight Against Corruption, on certain persons, including a former President of the Senate, a taxi driver, and a former Justice of the Federal High Court at the Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja.
“That the said denial by the EFCC is coming in two different statements all within a few hours is, therefore, baffling, inexplicable, and contradicitory,” he said.
He said, “Taking cognisance of the command structure of the agency, we also wonder wether Mr. Bakari could have acted on his own or read from a prepared text without recourse to the Commission, which he represents, especially as the visit and decoration were never solicited for in the first place.
“We leave the rest to discerning members of the public to read in-between the lines and make their own judgments,” he stated.
However, he said, “Ambassador or no Ambassador, the Deputy President of the Senate will not back down from his legislative efforts and advocacy as captured in his several pulbic statements and lectures over the years, pushing for legal and institutional reforms such as Special Anti-Graft Courts; security of tenure and financial autonomy for the EFCC and related agencies. Only such reforms would fast-track justice and insulate the anti-corruption agencies from external interferences and self-reversals”.
