After a weeklong protest in Lagos last month, major anti-corruption civil society organisations (CSOs) and some constitutional lawyers have renewed their campaign against the continued stay in office of the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Abdulrasheed Bawa.
The CSOs, which put their number at 130, said they resumed their call for the sack of Bawa because nothing has changed since their first protest, insisting that he has a penchant for disobeying court order, politicising the activities of the anti-graft agency and infringing on the human rights of Nigerians, among others.
At a press conference in Lagos yesterday, the activists were joined by over 20 constitutional lawyers, led by Barr. Mogbojuri Kayode of the Citizens Rights Advocacy Group, said the “desperation of Bawa to save his face after dishonourable acts in office had taken a laughable turn.”
The ‘Bawa Must Go’ protests are being led by CACOL chairman, Debo Adeniran; executive director, Zero Graft Centre, Kolawole Sanchez-Jude; chairman, Coalition Against Corruption and Bad Governance, Toyin Raheem; executive director, Centre for Public Accountability, Olufemi Lawson; spokesperson for the Transparency and Accountability Group, Ayodeji Ologun; director, Activists for Good Governance, Declan Ihehaire and Ahmed Balogun of the Media Rights Concern, among over 120 notable leaders of anti-corruption CSOs.
They vowed that no amount of “purchased CSOs’ vote of confidence” would cover the truth about the abnormalities being condoned in EFCC under its current leadership.
The chairman, Centre for Anti-corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL), Debo Adeniran, said his organisation had from the onset, alerted the National Assembly (NASS) 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 removal of Bawa’s predecessor, Ibrahim Magu.
According to the CSOs, the EFCC had “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 civil society organization had passed a vote of confidence in its chairman.
“Isn’t it the job of the media to see that and independently report?” they asked.
The leaders of the struggle said it was a thing of honour that, despite the immense pressure mounted on leaders of the “Bawa Must Go” protests to abandon their objective cause, over 120 of the main actors had remained resolute while more had joined in the interest of the rule of law.
The anti-corruption activists, however, commended President Muhammadu Buhari for bailing the country out of what they described as a Judicial quagmire “by dissociating the Presidency from any act of disobedience to court orders and making the Central Bank of Nigeria comply with a Supreme Court order that extended the validity of old naira notes till December 31, 2023.”
“As this is expected to ease the pain of the masses, we hereby call on the president to also wade into the seeming fixation of the EFCC on certain individuals and the desperation of the chairman of the commission to score cheap political goals through unwarranted media trials of non-convicted individuals in the country. He should direct Mr. Bawa to step aside until he purges himself of contempt as ruled by a High Court,” the spokesperson for the coalition, Olufemi Lawson, said in a speech delivered on behalf of the activists.
According to him, Bawa’s alleged misconduct in office is a confirmation of CACOL’s fears of his being not qualified for the position.
Also, Adeniran, who made copies of CACOL’s initial objection to Bawa’s appointment available to the press, said, “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 to 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,” he said.
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