Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika, has said the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) should not have the power to freeze state government accounts, regardless of the circumstances.
Speaking during an interview on ARISE News on Friday while discussing the controversy surrounding the freezing of Osun State government accounts ahead of the state’s governorship election, Olumide-Fusika said he did not support granting the anti-graft agency such powers.
He said: “Get me right. As a lawyer, I do not believe that the EFCC should be vested with the power to, you know, be seizing government, state government accounts, whichever government. I don’t believe it. I’m not going to converse for that.”
Although he opposed the freezing of government accounts, the senior lawyer said concerns over the diversion of public funds for election campaigns remained a real issue.
He said: “As to that problem, we can’t deny it. They take money, they spend money recklessly. They are paying people 40,000, 30,000 on polling. They are not using their personal funds. It’s money stolen from government.
“So the EFCC has been trying to solve that problem. Whether they went in the right way or whatever, we shouldn’t lose sight of that and begin to condemn and say no, no, no.
“That problem is there. How we are going to solve it… If you want to be doing that, then any time we are having elections, even federal government accounts should be frozen. Agencies’ accounts should be frozen.”
Olumide-Fusika maintained that while the misuse of public funds for elections should be addressed, empowering the EFCC to freeze government accounts was not the right approach.
He said: “I don’t think that the EFCC should have the power to freeze government accounts. That’s my own personal view.”
He added: “That’s money that is meant to build schools, to build hospitals. They are not doing all that. They will tell you government has no business in all those things. But they have business in taking money to go and spend on elections.”
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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