From Yinka Salaam, Osogbo
A media watch group, Muslim Media Watch Group (MMWG), has called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) not to shield any individual or group involved in financial crimes in the country.
MMWG, a non-governmental organisation, made the call in a statement made available to TheNewsZenith on Friday, in Osogbo, Osun State.
It stated that exposing such individuals would help Nigeria to get rid of corruption and economic problems bedevilling it.
The call came following recent revelations by the EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, that some religious organisations were aiding money laundering.
TheNewsZenith recalls that at a one-day dialogue with stakeholders in Abuja, the nation’s capital, Olukoyede had said a particular religious body kept in its account, N7 billion looted funds.
He added that the particular religious organisation later approached the court to prevent the EFCC from verifying its account.
However, the National Coordinator of MMWG, Alhaji Ibrahim Abdullahi in the statement, called on the anti-graft agency to publicly disclose the religious body involved in the criminal act.
Abdullahi also advised the commission to intensify efforts to retrieve the looted funds.
While commending the EFCC boss for his courage in making the revelation, the MMWG coordinator implored him to go the extra mile to disclose the identity of the religious body.
“It is high time the EFCC initiated amendments into some parts of the nation’s Administration of Criminal Justice (ACJ) whereby, not all economic crimes would be available.
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This is because of the dangers inherent in it. It is time for Nigeria to bench-mark bailable economic crimes in Nigeria,” MMWG stated.
The group called for the abolition of ‘Plea Bargain’ in the legal system. It stated that the presence of plea bargains in the Nigerian legal system has encouraged economic crimes.
This is because offenders are only made to refund a certain percentage of the looted funds to get cases against them terminated.
High Costs of Food
In a related development, MMWG has implored President Bola Tinubu to quickly consult with governors, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and other stakeholders to crash the food prices via an effective distribution process.
It stated that the gains of subsidy removal could be ploughed into food and transportation subsidies to reduce the hardship facing the populace.
This, Abdullahi stated, is more effective than sharing the gains of subsidy removal to states at the monthly Federal Account Allocation Committee meetings.
The group lamented that money shared monthly with state governors is not impactful at the grassroots. “The suffering of the masses continued unabated”.
It maintained that the government could subsidise food items and sell regularly and directly to public servants and pensioners through ministries, departments, agencies and other establishments.
The group noted that hunger is biting hard on Nigerians and called on the federal government to set up a task force on commodities distribution with the involvement of military personnel to control the prices of food items to ease the hardship.
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