…says President’s interference with anti-graft agency threatens rule of law
The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has said President Bola Tinubu, and not the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Olukoyede, should resign over the controversy surrounding the freezing and unfreezing of Osun State Government’s accounts.
Adebayo, who spoke at a press conference at the SDP National Secretariat in Abuja on Thursday, said he did not support calls for the removal of the EFCC chairman, insisting that the anti-graft agency must be allowed to perform its statutory duties without political interference.
According to him, the EFCC chairman was only carrying out responsibilities assigned to him by law, while the President’s reported directive to the commission to withdraw from the matter amounted to interference in a legal process.
“The person who should resign is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. I don’t have enough evidence to suggest that the EFCC chairman should resign. The only person who is at fault here is the President himself,” he said.
Adebayo said law enforcement agencies such as the EFCC, police, DSS and military operate under difficult circumstances and should not be made scapegoats whenever controversies arise.
“I have always supported law enforcement. I am not a politician that will criticise the Inspector-General of Police, EFCC chairman, DG DSS or army chiefs because those are difficult jobs to do under a bad government,” he said.
The SDP candidate argued that if Osun State believed its accounts were wrongly frozen, the state had legal options to challenge the action rather than relying on political intervention.
“If EFCC wrongly froze the account of Osun State Government, there are legal remedies that could be taken, including getting damages against EFCC,” he said.
He maintained that the constitutional issue was not the freezing of the accounts but the alleged involvement of the President in directing an agency subject to legal procedures.
“What is a constitutional crisis is that the President, a politician, is now the one directing a lawful body on how to investigate and not investigate,” Adebayo stated.
He added that under an SDP government, anti-corruption agencies would be given independence to act within the law.
“EFCC should be empowered, and when we come to government, the EFCC chairman will not be disturbed. He will be a person who can freeze anything he wants to freeze within the law,” he said.
