A member of the seventh House of Representatives, Bamidele Faparusi, has advised the Ekiti State House of Assembly and its speaker, Kola Oluwawole, to “stop misusing legislative powers by threatening the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, a legally constituted body, from performing its statutory duty.”
The Ekiti State House of Assembly had sent a letter of protest to the Acting Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, over the arrest and detention of the state Commissioner for Finance, Chief Toyin Ojo, and the Accountant General, Mrs. Yemi Owolabi, on Tuesday.
In the letter, the Assembly described the arrests of Ojo and Owolabi as premeditated, malicious, politically-motivated, contemptuous and unconstitutional in all ramifications.
The House said the arrests smacked of gangsterism by an agency that derived its powers from the constitution but acting in clear contempt of the rule of law.
But Faparusi in Ado Ekiti on Wednesday advised the lawmakers to allow the EFCC do its job of fighting corruption.
He said, “The EFCC was established under an Act of Parliament in 2002 to tackle advanced fee fraud(419), money laundering and other financial misdemeanours. So, we found it so disturbing that the Ekiti State House of Assembly could abdicate its statutory duties and started threatening the commission with lawsuit for doing its job.”
Reacting to agitations by some southern leaders that President Muhammadu Buhari must implement the report of the 2014 national confab, Faparusi alleged that the conference was more of a political jamboree than a potent weapon to resolving the country’s problems.
He lamented that the country ended up wasting over N20bn on the project, he branded as a parochial mission for a particular section of the country.
“You can see what is happening about the issue of restructuring now, virtually all the ethnic configurations of the country are in support and that was why the APC National Working Committee promptly set up a committee headed by the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, to move round the country and collate opinions.
“The Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba, Ijaw and everybody wanted the country restructured, if not wholesomely but at least partially, even the Peoples Democratic Party has expressed support for restructuring. That is the main reason why the APC as a political party keyed into the agenda.”
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