N’Delta Activist Seeks Support for EFCC in Fight against Corruption

Sylvester Idowu in Warri

The Convener, South-south Reawakening Group and Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT), Community Development Committees of Niger Delta Oil and Gas Producing Areas, Mr. Joseph Ambakederimo, has solicited the support of Nigerians for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in its battle against corruption in the country.

The Niger Delta activist in a statement titled: ‘Citizens Support For Anti-Corruption Fight Essential For Success’, issued yesterday reiterated the need for citizens’ support for the EFCC to achieve success as essential.

He noted that the commission would only achieve success when the people have a buy-in and participate fully in its affairs.

“We have to emphasize that corruption does not have any particular colour, and there is no way we want to paint it, corruption is corruption, the citizens must imbibe this reality.

“The citizenry should exercise their civic responsibility by providing credible leads that can prevent a financial or economic crime from happening or provide information that will aid investigation of financial crimes and prosecution of offenders without let,” he said.

Ambakederimo noted the debilitating effects of corruption to society, stressing that “corruption diminishes the human stature, it deprives people of good life, quality infrastructure, and good medical facilities. Today the country is in perpetual darkness due to massive corruption, therefore, we must all give support to the current leadership of the commission.”

He recalled that the Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ola Olukoyede, during his screening by the Senate, made a resounding support in favour of pursuing preventive measures in fighting crime, adding that he attested to the fact that it is less expensive to prevent a crime from happening than prosecution.

He said: “The latter is what we have to embrace and urge all people of goodwill to support the present leadership on this trajectory. We are eventually seeing a new phase of fighting financial crimes in the country since the establishment of the EFCC. We have been carrying on without any modicum of remorse for too long, the present leadership is poised to do things differently for the good of the country therefore all hands must be on the deck for us to exit this ignoble path that we have found ourselves.

“Going forward, the success of the commission is in the hands of the citizenry. Citizens policing on politically exposed persons will go a long way to help shape the output of elected or appointed or even in the private sector.”

The activist maintained that holding leaders to account by whistle -blowing was part of preventive measures on the part of the citizenry which dovetails into the chairman’s approach of employing preventive measures adding: “We have to look at the system and further probe the system how was it easy for one man to take out one hundred and nine billion naira without any alarm or red flag signalling that something was going wrong somewhere within the system. We have to put measures in place to prevent such reoccurrence in future.”

The activist urged the EFCC to appeal court judgement handed perpetual injunction to former Governors Peter Odili, Henry Dickson and many others, stressing that this will bring greater confidence on the EFCC by the citizens, so “we call on the chairman to do the needful and bring these cases back to life.”