The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission says Deputy Senate
President, Ike Ekweremadu, is not an anti-corruption ambassador of the
agency.The EFCC, therefore, urged members of the public
to
disregard the report stating otherwise.The spokesperson for the EFCC,
Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, said in a statement that the EFCC National Assembly
Liaison Officer, Suleiman Bakari, went beyond his assignment by
decorating Ekweremadu.He said as an anti-corruption agency that could
arrest any
individual found wanting, the EFCC could
never name anyone as its ambassador.The statement read in part, “The
attention of the EFCC has been drawn to some reports in the print and
online media, on April 20, 2016 claiming that the anti-graft agency has
decorated the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, as
“Anti-Corruption Ambassador”.“According to a statement issued to the
Press by the Special Adviser to the Deputy Senate President, Uche
Anichukwu, the purported decoration, was carried out by the EFCC
National Assembly Liaison Officer, Suleiman Bakari who was quoted to
have said: ‘On behalf of my acting chairman, Mr. Ibrahim Mustafa Magu
and the entire management and staff of the EFCC, decorate you as an
Anti-Corruption Ambassador and formally present this frame, as a token
of our appreciation to your person and office, and as a symbol of the
institutional partnership between the EFCC and the National
Assembly’.“The EFCC totally dissociates itself from the purported action
of Sulaiman Bakari as he acted entirely on his own. He clearly acted
outside his brief as a liaison officer as the management of the
Commission at no time mandated him to decorate Ekweremadu or any officer
of the National Assembly as Anti-Corruption Ambassador.“The statutory
mandate of the EFCC is the investigation and prosecution of all economic
and financial crimes cases, which does not include the decoration of
individuals as anti- corruption ambassadors. The Commission is not in
the habit of awarding titles to individuals. And those enamoured of
titles, knows the quarters to approach for such honours, not the
EFCC.“Members of the public and stakeholders in the fight against
corruption are enjoined to disregard the so-called decoration.”
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