The Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL) has advised the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to ensure water-tight evidence before charging any of its cases to court to avoid losing out.
It said the call was necessitated by the judgment of a Federal High Court which discharged and acquitted the Lagos State House of Assembly Speaker, Hon Ikuforiji and his aide; Oyebode Atoyebi of the money laundering charges preferred against them by the Commission.
Both men were charged to court in December 2011.
The EFCC had alleged that the defendants had sometimes, between April, 2010 and July, 2011 conspired and accepted various cash payments amounting to N503 million from the House without going through a financial institution.
Justice Ibrahim Buba of the Federal High Court, Lagos, however discharged and acquitted Mr. Adeyemi Ikuforiji and his aide, describing the case of the EFCC against both men as full of mere speculation which could not take the place of facts.
A statement by CACOL Executive Director, Debo Adeniran, recalled that the group sent a petition to the Lagos State House of Assembly in 2010 that it should probe itself and the Executive Arm for several allegations levelled against it by a group known as ‘True Face of Lagos’.
It said in a rare demonstration of courage, the House attempted to investigate the petition before it was stopped by a Lagos State High Court, only for Lagosians to wake up to find the hunter becoming the hunted the next day.
“This does not mean that we have concluded that Mr. Ikuforiji could not have had questions to answer,” CACOL said.
“But that it came shortly after the court stopped his parliament from delving into the veracity of the allegations against the government of Lagos State, left sour taste in our mouth and on close examination of the charges levelled against the Speaker, we discovered that what he was accused of, were more of administrative lapses than corruption.
“We congratulate the Speaker for not running away from the battle and that he seized the opportunity of the charges against him to clear himself.
“It is our conviction that his case was fraught with a lot of politicking which might have been the fall out of his readiness to investigate the barrage of allegations against some officials of his parliament in particular, and the Lagos State Government at large. We still believe that the Federal High Court that discharged him must have left no stone unturned to prove us right. We want all other public officers, who rather than answer to their charges in court look for means of circumventing the course of justice, to pick a cue from this.
Continuing, CACOL noted that the decision by the EFCC to appeal the judgment was a right step in the right direction.
“However, if the EFCC is not so sure of its evidence and witnesses, it should rather expend whatever resources and manpower, which they always say is inadequate, on other cases pending on their table such as the need to investigate the budgetary implementations in Lagos State, the Halliburton Scandal, the need to investigate the $26million allegedly taken by the Attorney-General and the Minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Adoke on the Halliburton scandal and other cases, rather than continuing to chase shadows like arresting people that were alleged to have engaged in illegal fishing.”
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