Former gov, ministers, other looters sponsoring protests against us – EFCC

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has said that intelligence has shown that a former governor and two former ministers are the sponsors of a series of protests being organised against the agency.

The anti-graft agency also warned parents and guardians to prevail on their children not to join protests on the issues they had no clear understanding of, while also calling on all heads of institutions to ensure their students didn’t join.

Dele Oyewale, the spokesman of the agency, stated this at the Force Headquarters, Abuja, during a press briefing organised by the Strategic Communications Inter-agency Policy Committee (SCIPC) from the Office of the National Security Adviser.

The EFCC official, while responding to Daily Trust’s enquiry on the alarm the agency raised on Wednesday, insisted that they would continue to do their work no matter whose ox was gored.

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Recall that EFCC, on Wednesday, alerted Nigerians on the plan by what it described as “a shadowy group to instigate a “protest” against the commission, saying they were already working in concert with sister security agencies to deal with possible threats to the peace and security of Nigeria.

Responding to a question from our correspondent, Oyewale said it was because the activities of the commission were already affecting some “looters of the common wealth.”

He further said, “Generally and holistically, all of these people that are talking about the ‘end 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 kind of an attack, it either means that we are not effective 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.”