EFCC and its many unfinished businesses

It would be recalled that last year, the chairperson of the EFCC, Mrs. Farida Waziri, while trying to impress the public, revealed that she was highly disturbed seeing how some state governors are brazenly looting their state treasuries. She substantiated it by asking to know from where a first-term governor, few months into his tenure, got fund with which he bought a property worth N1 billion in Abuja. The public clapped for her and started believing that she may be the ‘messiah’ for the EFCC; but up till today, she has refused to name the governor involved. This is unfair because she has left a negative label on a probably innocent first-term governor as people would continue guessing, wrongly or rightly.

Again, while she was interacting with the House of Representatives Committee that oversees the EFCC, she revealed that some seating governors use drugs; the chairman of that committee added that they do not only use but also push drugs. Both the EFCC chairperson and the chairman of the committee did not do well by failing to report such governors to the NDLEA till date.    

In short, one cannot point at one serious case summarily handled by the present EFCC that has seen the convict adequately punished; we have only seen ‘plea-bargaining’.

 With this recurring decimal of ineptitude in the face of growing corruption, I believe we need a form of counter-check mechanism to be placed on the EFCC.

Okafor Nnamdi, 88 Omoba Road, Aba, Abia State