The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is set to appeal the October 28 conviction of its chairman, Mr. Abdulrasheed Bawa, for contempt of court.
Recall that an Abuja High Court sitting in Maitama, yesterday, convicted Bawa and ordered the inspector general of police to ensure that he was sent to prison at Kuje Correctional Centre for disobeying a court’s order.
The conviction was connected to the agency’s failure to comply with an earlier order of the court.
The court had ordered the EFCC to return to a defendant, a former director of operations at the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), Air Vice Marshal Rufus Adeniyi Ojuawo, his Range Rover, and N40 million.
The agency had arraigned Ojuawo on a two-count charge before Justice Muawiyah Baba Idris of the High Court of the FCT in Nyanya in 2016.
He was accused of receiving N40 million and a Range Rover Sport (Supercharged) from one Hima Aboubakar of Societe D’Equipment Internationaux Nigeria Limited.
Ojuawo had, in a suit marked FCT/HC/CR/184/2016 and filed by his lawyer, R.N. Ojabo, complained that the EFCC declined to comply with the order for the release of his seized property made by the court in a judgment delivered on November 21, 2018.
However, the presiding judge, Justice Chizoba Orji, in a ruling yesterday held that “the chairman Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is in contempt of the orders of this honourable court made on November 21st 2018 directing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Abuja to return to the applicant his Range Rover (Supercharge) and the sum of N40, 000,000.00 (Forty Million Naira).
“Having continued wilfully in disobedience to the order of this court, he should be committed to prison at Kuje Correctional Centre for his disobedience, and continued disobedience of the said order of court made on November 21st, 2018, until he purges himself of the contempt.
“The inspector general of police shall ensure that the order of this honourable court is executed forthwith,” Justice Orji said.
Justice Orji rejected the arguments put forward by the EFCC lawyer, Francis Jirbo, to justify Bawa’s action.
Reacting to the ruling, Bawa told journalists after his interface with house of representatives committee on anti-corruption yesterday that the law would take its natural course.
“Well, we have appealed against it; so we will allow the natural course of law to take its effect.”
He also said the EFCC requested more funding for its academy and the agency’s operations which he said requires money.
“We are building a brand new EFCC Academy and we need funding for that. Last year N3 billion was allocated and this year nothing was allocated for it, and that is why we are pleading to members that we need to have this new EFCC Academy because of course we have to learn, as fighters of crime we have to be ahead of these criminals and the only way you can do that is by training and re-training and re-training and re-training again. It can never end.
On the agency’s operations and recoveries made so far, Bawa said the EFCC recorded a lot of recoveries and was working in line with the laws guiding forfeiture, disposal and remittances of proceeds of crimes.
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