EFCC attempts to fault claims it’s in face-off with AGF Malami

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Thursday denied any face-off between the commission and the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami. It said the rumour came from “corrupt elements, angling to knock heads together.”

A report in the media had alleged that “crisis of confidence’’ exists between Malami, who is also the Minister of Justice and the EFCC. The report further claimed that the crisis was capable of undermining President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration anti-corruption war.

The report had alleged that EFCC and other anti-graft agencies refused to comply with the demand of the AGF on the case files of ex-governors and senators under investigation.

Speaking on the face-off, the Special Assistant to the President on Prosecutions, Okoi Obono-Obla, had said, “Although the Attorney General of the Federation has the power under both the constitution and the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 to make a request of any case file that is pending either with the police, the ICPC, the EFCC or any of the prosecuting agencies, we met a brick wall when we requested the files of the high-profile cases of former governors from the EFCC and the ICPC.

“They don’t cooperate with us. We cannot use a whip to start beating them, but I expect that the rules of public service require that if letters are written by the office of the AGF, those letters should be honoured.

“They don’t want to work with the office of the AGF.”

But responding to the report in a statement on Thursday in Abuja, released by Wilson Uwujaren, EFCC spokesman refuted the report and said there was no face-off of any kind between the ant-graft agency and Malami.

According to him, the report was nothing but a handiwork of “some unscrupulous persons’’ and must have been put together by “corrupt elements, angling to knock heads together in furtherance of their own pro-corruption agenda.’’
Uwujaren said, “For the avoidance of any doubt, the EFCC wishes to categorically state that it is compliant with all provisions of law, and has no intention to stoke misunderstanding over requests from the office of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice.

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“Furthermore, the commission’s mandate, operational philosophy, the conduct and pronouncements of its officials, do not countenance any activity on the fringes of the law. It is therefore, untenable for there to be any suggestion that the commission or its principal officials are either in conflict with or readying for “showdown” with the AGF or other officials of government.

“Any such conflicts being paraded in the media exist only in the apparently fertile imaginations of corrupt elements, angling to knock heads together in furtherance of their own pro-corruption agenda.

“All the brouhaha raised in recent days over a non-existent conflict between the EFCC and the office of the AGF, only go to underline the fact that corruption can, and is fighting back, in a variety of ways.’’

By Ebere Ndukwu …

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