Recovered funds: Baptist Convention flays EFCC

  The Nigerian Baptist Convention has faulted the inability of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to apprehend the persons behind N49m found at the Kaduna Airport and $43m (N13bn) found in a building in Ikoyi, Lagos State, describing the failure as laughable.

The NBC argued that the controversy followed the Ikoyi recovery was because the EFCC rushed to make public pronouncement before concluding its investigation.

The President, FCT Baptist Conference of the NBC, Israel Akanji, made the observations during a press briefing in Abuja on Monday ahead of its 104th annual convention.


Akanji said, “In the modern world, for money to just be dropped in the airport and for it not to be traceable is laughable. What are we making of our place in technology?

“Nigeria has some of the most brilliant people, even in the western world technologically. So, why will we not use CCTV apparatus to trace the people who dropped such things?

“It is quite laughable when we could not trace these things. It appears to be intentional and we are making a caricature of ourselves to the world if we say such a thing has happened in an open place like an airport and it cannot be discovered. That means other ills can happen at the airport undiscovered; the airport is a place of high security and for such to happen unnoticed, it is very regrettable.”

He advised the EFCC to “work with a very high work ethics that should guide their pronouncements. Be quick to listen, be slow to speak; there is that warning in the bible.”

“Before they start making pronouncements, they ought to verify their claims so that they will not damage the image of innocent people; they should make sure they have digested, ingested and verified the facts of what they are trying to say out,” he added.

While commending the Federal Government’s resolve to reduce corruption to the barest minimum, he warned government against hiding under the platform of war against corruption to persecute citizens.

“The rate at which homogenous sums of money are being discovered hidden in bank accounts, private homes and ships is alarming. We encourage government to be relentless in this drive.

“However, war against corruption must be devoid of witch-hunt and beyond mere populism. We advise anti-corruption agencies to be thorough in their work so that our country will profit from their diligent work,” he said.