EFCC: Resist attempts to become Buhari’s opposition witch-hunter – HURIWA to Bawa

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has called on the nominated Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa to resist attempts by President Muhammadu Buhari to turn him into an attack dog.

HURIWA, a human rights advocacy group, asked Bawa to resist attempts by President Muhammadu Buhari to witch-hunt the opposition.

National Coordinator of HURIWA, Emmanuel Onwubiko in a statement also urged the senate not to behave like Presidential puppets but to conduct extensive investigations on the background of nominees. “So we do not have to be subjected to the public odium associated with the monumental fall from grace to grass that engineered the removal of Ibrahim Magu by the government.”

According to Onwubiko: “It is our wish that whenever confirmed, the new Chairman of the EFCC Abdulrasheed Bawa will play the game by the rules and refuse to be used as the attack dog of the President to embark on a witch hunt against political opponents of the President. The EFCC Chairman should desist from the primitive practice of media trials of accused persons and must respect the principle of Rule of Law and Human Rights”.

The right group also expressed shock that Buhari has not told Nigerians the current status of the dismissed acting EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu for many months.

The Rights group said that under the extant freedom of information Act which came into force in 2015, the central government is obliged statutorily to give Nigerians full disclosure of issues of public importance such as the circumstances that necessitated the disgraceful dismissal of Ibrahim Magu the erstwhile Acting Chairman of the EFCC.

“It is itself an act of corruption that the government concealed vital information from citizens such as the circumstances that made the President dismiss one of his most noisy loyalists in the person of Ibrahim Magu, who was alleged to have been involved in a series of corrupt activities. The Nigerian citizens are obliged to know because by doing so, the people who donated the constitutional legitimacy for the government to exercise authority will be in the know of how they too can key in actively in the fight against corruption”.

Recall that President Buhari recently sent Bawa’s name to the Senate for confirmation as the new Chairman of EFCC.

HURIWA also commended Buhari for entrusting such a high office to a very young man adding that the president must not teleguide the new Chief Executive of the EFCC but allow him to operate within the bounds of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.