Anti-corruption group to Buhari: Order Bawa’s arrest now

A coalition of anti-corruption organisations has called on the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to prevail on the Inspector-General of Police to immediately arrest of the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Abdulrasheed Bawa.

The group, in a petition jointly signed by its leaders, also urged the President to set up an enquiry into the workings of the EFCC, its present engagements and happenings within the commission.

It further demanded the immediate suspension of Bawa as head of the EFCC, adding that the move would restore confidence in the capacity of the commission to truly fight financial crimes.

The petition reads in part, “We want the President to order an immediate overhaul of the commission and where necessary lobby the National Assembly to amend the EFCC Act to make the structure less prone to high-handedness and make the chairmen answerable to the laws of the land.

“We worry that if an action is not taken immediately and the EFCC’s slide into lawlessness is allowed to continue unabated, we will soon have a situation on our hands where agencies that are supposed to fight crime will become repositories of crime.

“We are also aware of clandestine political moves by persons who have benefited from Bawa’s mismanagement of the EFCC to get his tenure as chairman of the commission retained when the President-elect is sworn-in. The persons behind a move like this one are enemies of the nation and must be pushed back.”

The group fumed at Bawa’s perchant for disobeying court orders, saying “the EFCC under Bawa is also quickly becoming a cesspool of internal corruption with several reports of corrupt practices going on within the commission.”Punch