Ekweremadu not our anti-corruption ambassador – EFCC

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.”