The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has denied involvement in the alleged report that the anti-graft agency has decorated the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, as “Anti-Corruption Ambassador”.
The EFCC said in a statement by its head of media and publicity, Wilson Uwujaren, said that the report that the purported decoration, was carried out by the EFCC National Assembly Liaison Officer, Suleiman Bakari, was based on a statement by Ekweremadu’s special adviser, Uche Anichukwu.
Anichukwu’s statement had quoted Bakari to have said that “On behalf of my acting chairman, Mr. Ibrahim Mustafa Magu and the entire management and staff of the EFCC, decorate you as an Anti- Corruption Ambassador and formally present this frame, as a token of our appreciation to your person and office, and as a symbol of the institutional partnership between the EFCC and the National Assembly”.
However, in a rebuttal, the EFCC said it “totally dissociates itself from the purported action of Sulaiman Bakari as he acted entirely on his own.
“He clearly acted outside his brief as a liaison officer as the management of the Commission at no time mandated him to decorate Ekweremadu or any officer of the National Assembly as Anti- Corruption Ambassador.”
The statement said that the statutory mandate of the EFCC is the investigation and prosecution of all economic and financial crimes cases, which does not include the decoration of individuals as anti- corruption ambassadors.
“The Commission is not in the habit of awarding titles to individuals. And those enamoured of titles, knows the quarters to approach for such honours, not the EFCC
Members of the public and stakeholders in the fight against corruption are enjoined to disregard the so-called decoration,” Uwujaren said in the statement.
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