Some 237 petitions against the governorship aspirants of various parties are waiting for the attention of the operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) at the various zonal offices of the anti-graft body.
A competent source disclosed this to our Correspondent, adding that the bulk of the petition were locked away in the anti-craft commission headquarters in Abuja.
“We would not go after any politician, based on just a petition. Although a good number of them are with facts and figures and emanate from very credible individuals in the society, but we won’t be in a haste to begin investigation on them yet,” the source said.
EFCC source confirmed that the petitions were mostly against aspirants who were successful in their primaries. “So, we are looking at it from the angle that, some of the petitioners are angry and as such are seeking for a way to revenge, but EFCC has concluded that it won’t be dragged into politics.”
The source said the commission has suffered several image problems, “and I must tell you a good number of those image problems are from politicians. They would complain against their fellow politicians, asking us to investigate, the moment we begin that investigation, they would run to the rooftop to announce to the whole world that EFCC is truncating democracy.”
The source added that, as a matter of fact, the commission was more mature, more focused than ever. “During past elections, the commission was still in its infancy and still cutting its teeth. So the politicians more or less misled us sometimes. But today, the story is different, they can’t use us again.”
It was gathered that some 150 of the petitions were against governorship flag-bearers of the opposition party. For instance, cleared aspirants in the two states of the southwest, have 10 petitions each against them. Two cleared governorship aspirants of the ruling party in two south-south states, have three and four petitions respectively hanging on their neck.
The anti-graft Commission added that it would still investigate the petitions in due course, “but I would not tell you when, it is going to be at our pace. Right now what we are doing is a background check on all those petitions and the petitioners, after that, anyone of them that merits investigation would be pursued with vigour.”
When contacted, the Chairman of EFCC, Ibrahim Lamorde, confirmed that the various offices of the commission has witnessed a swam of petitions and petition writers since the trumpet for the 2015 elections was sounded by INEC.
“I can tell you that we can no longer count the number of petitions. This is because, some of them would write the first one and take it to our zonal offices, when may be after a month when they did not hear anything, they would write another one and head straight to Abuja headquarters of the Commission.”
Lamorde, confirmed that all the petitions would be attended to at the right time and at the pace of the agency.
