"It is important for me to pause and say here that the
powers conferred on the Appellant, i.e. the EFCC to receive
complaints and prevent and/or fight the commission of
financial crimes in Nigeria pursuant to Section 6(b) of the
EFCC Act (Supra) does not extend to the investigation
and/or resolution of disputes arising or resulting from
simple contracts or civil transactions as in this case.
The EFCC has an inherent duty to scrutinize all complaints
that it receives carefully, no matter how carefully crafted
by the complaining party, and be bold enough to counsel
such complainants to seek appropriate/lawful means to
resolve their disputes. *Alas! the EFCC is not a debt recovery agency and should refrain from being used as
such*... The
subsequent actions of reporting the matter to the police
and to the Appellant were nothing but abuse of process of
law. What is even more disturbing in recent times is the
way and manner the Police and some other security
agencies, rather than focus squarely on their statutory
functions of investigation, preventing and prosecuting
crimes, allow themselves to be used by overzealous and/or
unscrupulous characters for the recovery of debts arising
from simple contracts, loans or purely civil transactions.
Our security agencies, particularly the police, must know
that the citizenry's confidence in them ought to first be
ensured by the agencies themselves by jealously guarding
the integrity of the uniform and powers conferred on them.
The beauty of salt is in its taste. Once salt loses its own
taste, its value is irredeemably lost. *I say this now and again, our security agencies, particularly the police, are not
debt recovery agencies.* The agencies themselves need to
first come to this realization, shun all entreaties in this
regard and they will see confidence gradually restored in
them. Where we are now in this country is that place where our
“Men - in black & blue" command almost no respect from
the citizenry because of how low we have sunk. But it is my
belief, which belief I must say I hold very dearly, that all
hope is not lost, many women and men of deep integrity are
in our security agencies, and they only need to rise now to
the occasion."
You might need this for your Fundamental Rights actions.👌
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