The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has said a former governor and two former ministers were sponsoring a series of protests against it.
The agency spokesman, Dele Oyewale, stated this at Force Headquarters, Abuja, during a press briefing organised by the Strategic Communications Inter-agency Policy Committee (SCIPC) under the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA).
He warned parents and guardians to prevail on their children not to join protests on issues they don’t understand while also calling on all heads of institutions to ensure their students don’t join.
He said the protest was not in the interest of the nation but those who have things to hide from the public.
The EFCC official, while responding to questions on the alarm the agency earlier raised on Wednesday, insisted that they would continue to do their work no matter whose ox is gored.
The anti-graft agency alerted Nigerians on Wednesday to a plan by what it described as a shadowy group to instigate a ‘protest’ against the commission. The agency said it is already working in concert with sister security agencies to deal with possible threats to Nigeria’s peace and security.
Speaking on what prompted the planned protest, Oyewale said the commission’s activities were already affecting some “looters of the commonwealth.”
“Generally and holistically, all of these people that are talking about end the EFCC, don’t end EFCC, kill EFCC, don’t kill EFCC, they are people that are tangentially affected by the activities of the commission.
“If you have a commission like the EFCC, you are not receiving some attack, it either means that we are ineffective, or the public is not concerned about what we are doing.
“So, we know that, yes, our activities are affecting people that have one thing or the other to hide, and we know that it’s natural that they want to fight us.
“And that’s why we came out publicly to say that tomorrow, the planned protests, what they have said is not what they actually mean. And we have a responsibility to tell the public,” he said.
He explained that he received a report that about 259 civil society organisations under the aegis of the Coalition for Transparency and Economic Reform, came out publicly on Wednesday to dissociate themselves from the so-called protests.
He said, “If you have 259 civil society organizations coming out publicly to say that we are not going to support you (protests), then, their moral base is totally weakened.
“Even this same group they are saying that their own intelligence shows that an ex-governor and two former ministers, according to them, are the arrowhead behind the so-called protests. That is their own intelligence.
“We also have our intelligence, but the sum and substance of everything is that the protest is not in the overall interest of the nation and that youths should be wary so that they will not be recruited, they will not be used as cannon fodders in a cause that they don’t understand.
“So, you can see that the Commission is receiving very reliable support across the country, including the media and every stakeholder in the anti-corruption project.”
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