A group, Community Development Committees of Niger Delta Oil and Gas Producing Areas (CDC), has urged Nigerians to rally around the leadership of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to enable it actualize its full potentials in recording overwhelming victory against corrupt practices in every facet of the society.
Making the appeal in a statement by its Chairman, Board of Trustees (BOT), Mr. Joseph Ambakederimo, the body emphasized the need for a collaborative efforts between the people and the Anti-graft agency to tackle the menace.
While noting that since we have all come to realisation that corruption had been bane of our nation building, it’s time to start working with appropriate agency to fight our common enemies, mostly political class, civil servants, law enforcement agencies and even judiciary, who are neck deep in corrupt practices for the collective good.
The statement reads in part: “In the efforts of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to wean the land of corruption there has to be unanimity of purpose on the fight against corruption, the need for citizens support for the EFCC to achieve success is essential”.
“The Commission will only achieve success when the people have a buy-in and participate fully in the affairs of the Commission. We have to emphasise that corruption does not have any particular colour, there is no way we want to paint it, corruption is corruption, the citizens must imbibe this reality”.
“The citizenry should exercise their civic responsibility by providing credible leads that can prevent a financial or economic crime from happening or provide information that will aid investigation of financial crimes and prosecution of offenders in accordance to the law of the land”.
“We all know the debilitating effects of corruption to society, corruption dimishes the human stature, it deprives people of good life, quality infrastructure, good medical facilities, today the country is in perpetual darkness due to massive corruption, therefore we must all give support to the current leadership of the Commission”.
“Recall that the Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ola Olukoyede during his screening by the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, made a resounding support in favour of pursuing preventive measures in fighting crime and criminality, Mr. Ola Olukoyede attested to the fact that it is less expensive to prevent a crime from happening than prosecution”.
“The latter is what we have to embrace and urge all people of goodwill to support the present leadership on this trajectory. We are eventually seeing a new phase of fighting financial crimes in the country since the establishment of the EFCC”.
Continuing, it said: “We have been carrying on without any modicum of remorse for too long, the present leadership is poised to do things differently for the good of the country therefore all hands must be on the deck for us to exit this ignoble path that we have found ourselves”.
“Going forward the success of the Commission is in the hands of the citizenry, citizens policing on politically Exposed Persons will go along way to help shape the output of elected or appointed or even in the private sector”.
“Holding our leaders to account by whistle – blowing is part of preventive measures on the part of the citizenry which dovetails into the Chairman’s approach of employing preventive measures”.
“We have to look at the system and further probe the system how was it easy for one man to take out One hundred and nine Billion Naira without any alarm or red flag signalling that something is going wrong somewhere within the system. we have to put measures in place to prevent such reoccurrence in future.
“Sponsored attacks on the EFCC by those who are on the radar of the Commission only confirms that the Commission is unequivocally on the right path therefore no amount of name calling or intimidation of officials of the Commission will deter them”.
It added: “The judgement of the Supreme Court in throwing out the suite filed by the Governors of Sixteen States is a welcome development, the Court should be applauded by well meaning Nigerians.
“The question that comes to mind in viewing the rationale behind the reasons for filling the suite in the first instance is unfathomable. As they say a clear conscience fears no accusations, so what are they trying to hide is the question that is begging for answers”.
“The states that went to challenge the Act establishing the EFCC should be held to account by their people, the EFCC is hereby urged to place the Governors of these states under routine surveillance.
“It will be argued that the Governors are protected by the immunity clause in the constitution, but also they are not immune to investigation while in office as enshrined in the same constitution.
“Furthermore we urging the EFCC to appeal court judgements handed perpetual injunction to former Governors Peter Odili, Henry Dickson and any other, this is will bring greater confidence to the EFCC by the citizens. Therefore we call on the Chairman to do the needful and bring these cases back to life.
“We offer our unalloyed support to the Commission and its programmes going forward. The Commission should count on the support of the leadership of the CDC henceforth in the fight against corruption”.
Credit: thenationonlineng.net
