A pro-democracy group, Open Democracy Network, has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ibrahim Lamorde, and other officials of the commission “to pave way for the reorganisation of the anti-graft body.”
The group was reacting to the decision of the EFCC to press new fraud charges against a former Governor of Bayelsa State, Timipre Sylva.
The group, in a statement by its spokesperson, Mahmood Mahmood, on Sunday accused the EFCC of reactivating a “frivolous litigation that merely embarrassed the country and the legal system.”
The EFCC had, in a fresh 50-count suit filed on Friday, accused Sylva, alongside Francis Okukoro, Gbenga Balogun and Samuel Ogbuku, of using three companies – Marlin Maritime Limited, Eat Catering Services Limited, and Haloween-Blue Construction and Logistics Limited – to move about N19.2 billion from Bayelsa State coffers between 2009-2012, on the pretext of using the money to supplement the salaries of the state government’s workers.
The Open Democracy Network, however, said the new suit bordered on a 42-count criminal charge that Justice Ahmed Ramat Mohammed of the Federal High Court, Abuja, had, on June 10, dismissed and accused the EFCC of abuse of court process.
The statement read, “Having lost its case, the EFCC has approached the Federal High Court once again; even though, it knows it can never win this matter in a properly constituted court of law. This strange 50-count suit against Sylva constitutes an even greater abuse of court processes and, from every indication, it will suffer same fate as the other frivolous ones. Why?
“Even a young lawyer knows that once a case has been dismissed, the only option open to the loser is to go on appeal. It cannot return to the same court or a court of coordinate jurisdiction. Secondly, under the rules of the court, a prosecuting authority has to conclude its investigation before proceeding to court, satisfied that it has a case it can substantiate.
“Investigations and trials cannot be open-ended. Sylva left office since January 2012, why is it difficult for EFCC to prove anything against him in court? Their style has been to conduct a media trial in order to ridicule Sylva and try to ‘finish’ his political career. Unfortunately for them, Sylva is still rising!
“We are of the view that this ‘new’ suit against Sylva, a victim of President Jonathan’s impunity, constitutes a national embarrassment. It is an embarrassment to this government. It is an embarrassment even to the EFCC itself.”
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