Firms Demand N5bn Over Display Of Names On EFCC’s Website

BY KUNLE OLASANMI, Abuja

Two firms, Eximab Integrated Link Limited and Minanta Enterprises Limited have given the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) seven days to withdraw their names from its website and pay N5 billion damages. They also demanded an apology from the anti-graft agency for the same act.

They threatened to sue the EFCC if after the expiration of the ultimatum their demands were not met.

The firm accused the commission of displaying their names on its website after they were exonerated of wrongdoing by a Kaduna High Court headed by Justice M. T. M. Aliyu.

The new managing director of the companies, Mubarak Tijjani, called on the EFCC to quickly remove the names of the companies and the photograph of its chairman, Alhaji Ahmed Tijjani Umar, from the commission’s website.

The firms said the court had quashed the charges preferred against them in a ruling delivered on 17th January, 2018.

Tijjani wondered why the EFCC is still placing the companies’ names and the chairman’s photograph on its website when the case had long been decided in their favour by a court of competent jurisdiction, saying it was unfair, unjust, repugnant to equity and good conscience.

In a statement in Abuja, the managing director said it was justice juxtaposed for the EFCC to maliciously portray the companies and the chairman in bad light by placing them on its website when the Kaduna High Court had discharged and acquitted them in Suit No. KDH/KAD/15/EFCC/2014.

In its ruling, the court stated, “In the final analysis therefore and for all the reasons supplied in this ruling it is right to and proper to quash the 3 counts charged in this case”, adding that ” where a person is innocent he is free and ought not to be put on trial.”

EFCC had charged Ahmed Tijjani Umar and Eximab Integrated Link Limited and Minanta Enterprises Limited to court following a petition by Fenabros Limited that the company breached its terms of agreement on the contract awarded to it.

Eximab Integrated Link Limited had awarded Fenabros Limited a contract to supply pipes and sanitary wares from the National Assembly building contract it was executing (3000 housing units) which the lawmakers awarded to it on 13th March 2009.

“Unfortunately, the National Assembly breached the terms of the main contract which frustrated the contract and the subcontracts. The position of things having changed, the 2nd defendant has started refunding the money paid by the nominal complainant (Fenabros Limited). I agree with the submission of the learned counsel for the defendants that no false representation has been made alleged in the proof of evidence against the 1st and 2nd defendants,” the court stated in its ruling and quashed the 3 counts charge against Ahmed Tijjani Umar, Eximab Integrated Link Limited and Minanta Enterprises Limited.

The managing director said it was this settled case that the EFCC still placed on its website since January 2018 after the court ruling was delivered which gives the public the impression that the companies and the chairman are under the commission’s investigation.

He demanded an apology from the EFCC, gave a seven-day ultimatum for the companies’ names and photograph of Alhaji Ahmed Tijjani Umar to be removed from the commission’s website, and pay the companies the sum of N5,000,000,000 damages or face legal action.

Mubarak Tijjani said the anti-graft agency has tarnished the image of the companies, its chairman and his integrity as FCT senatorial candidate on the platform of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) for the 2023 general election.

He said it is in the interest of justice, fair play and equity that the companies’ names and chairman’s photograph be removed immediately from the EFCC website as well as other innocent Nigerians the court had discharged and acquitted on charges wrongly preferred against them. He wondered why the EFCC is overzealous in placing names and photographs of Nigerians and their companies under investigation but reluctant to remove them when they are discharged and acquitted in court describing it as negligence of duty.