A constitutional lawyer and human rights activist, Chief Mike Ozekhome, on Monday, admonished the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to stop media trial of suspects.
He gave the admonition in his goodwill message at the first National Anti-Corruption Stakeholders’ Summit, with the theme, “Building national anti-corruption consensus in a multi-agency Environment”, organised by the anti-corruption commission held at the EFCC Academy, Karu, Abuja.
The senior advocate, who recently had his account frozen by the anti-graft agency, stated that a situation whereby a suspect was interrogated by EFCC operatives, only for for the interrogation to be found in a particular newspaper was not good.
According to him, what this had done was to have destroyed the image and reputation of such suspect, advising that the commission should run away from such act.
“I am a lawyer, not just a lawyer, I am a human rights activist. All my life that is what I have done. I take very serious when we talk about issue of rule of law.
“I do not believe in media trial. For example, a case is being investigated in EFCC, the suspect is being interrogated, tomorrow it is in a particular newspaper as to the statement made by that suspect. That suspect may never be tried.
“Even if he is arraigned and tried, he may never be found guilty but you have destroyed his image, his reputation. We should run away from that, it is not good,” Ozekhome stated.
He urged the anti-graft agency to go after corrupt persons in the present government to wash itself clean of accusation of selectivity in the war against corruption, adding that everybody would believe that no one was truly above the law in the country when such was done.
According to Ozekhome, “There is the need in this anti-corruption war to make an example; just one example with one person in government. I am aware of many, many petitions against people in this government.
“Magu just pick up one of them and arraign him for trial. It will speak volumes; it will speak mileages. Then issue of selectivity in the war against corruption will no longer be there. Everybody will now believe, according to your motto, no one is above the law,” he asserted.
The senior silk, however, called for accountability even in EFCC itself, urging the acting chairman of the anti-corruption commission, Ibrahim Magu, to go back to the drawing board and tackle the issue of accountability inwardly.
“There is the issue of accountability of EFCC itself. Who will catch or who will police the police? For example sir, Mr Chairman, how much has been recovered by the EFCC? Where is the money? What is it being used for? Where is it being kept?
“The properties that have been confiscated, where are they? Those people who you agreed during Senate proceeding, you did agree ‘yes, there are some corruption within EFCC’, what are you doing about it? If there is whitlow on one of your fingers, you will not be able to sleep.”
“Even within the EFCC there is corruption. When some money is found not all the money is declared for example, but it is only part of it that is declared. So you need to go back to the drawing board to tackle some of these issues and look inwardly. It is very good to do self-introspection. If there is no self-introspection, there will be self-implosion,” he said.
Ozekhome further advised the commission to always obey court orders, saying that when it was not pleased with any order, the best it could do was to file an appeal.
“Obey court orders. If you do not obey court orders, the international community will never respect us. They will be afraid to do business with us. When the judiciary has decided, if you do not agree appeal. Apart from that, it does not lie in you to say ‘we will not obey the order of this court’.”