Nigerian Lawyer, Kayode Ajulo (SAN), has said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should create a task force that will conduct integrity tests in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)to weed out the corruption in the agency.Ajulo said this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Monday, where he spoke in response to the earlier statement of the EFCC chairman, Ola Olukoyede, who said that the quest for bribes by the agency’s officers had become embarrassing.Ajulo said that the essence of bringing the EFCC into power seems to have been lost, especially through the actions of those who are meant to be operating in the agency.He said, “As at today, there are many instances that when you look, you investigate and you interrogate what plays out, you will find out that it is mostly political, and that’s why it came out about a week ago to say that now, EFCC has apparently turned itself to political tools, and this has to stop.“If EFCC cannot cleanse itself, the right thing to do is, because we have to agree, EFCC is a critical institution in this country, we can’t allow it to falter, and maybe the president should set up a presidential task force to make sure that the right thing is done. Though there had been some task forces before, it seemed to be targeted on the head.”He said that in as much as Nigeria had a lot of corrupt officials, there are still people in the country who will always stand for what is right and stick to the rules.Ajulo then emphasized that he was not asking for the EFCC to be scrapped as he said, “I’m not asking that there should be a new platform, a new institution that will replicate the EFCC. What I’m saying is that there is a need to clean the urging stable of EFCC. There is need to weed out the corrupt tendencies and powers and principalities that has made the EFCC not to fly. The essence of the task force is not something that will be permanent. Its essence is more like an auditing, an integrity test to check who are those people.”The lawyer then proposed that the government should create a merger of several crime and corruption fighting agencies to bring about more efficiency in the industry as he said, “What I’m proposing is even to have, the merger will be like we have a central body and have different agencies… I would propose that we have merger with six different agencies. Here, we are talking of the investigation, we are talking about seclusion, forgetting that most of the proceeds of crime and most of this property has to be managed. The question that there must be an agency to manage such property is such proceeds.”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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