The Senate on Wednesday, October 18 screened and confirmed Ola Olukoyede and Muhammad Hammajoda\u00a0 for appointment as Chairman and Secretary of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The confirmation followed their nomination by President Bola Tinubu on\u00a0 October 12. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some analysts have argued that Mr. Olukoyede does not possess the\nstatutory qualifications for the office. This is in reference to section\n2(1)(a) of the EFCC Act which provides as follows: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A<\/em>\nchairman, who shall \u2013 <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (i) be\nthe Chief Executive and Accounting Officer of the Commission. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (ii) be a\nserving or retired member of any government security or law enforcement agency\nnot below the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police or equivalent; and <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (iii)\nPossess not less than 15 years cognate experience <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n According to them, Olukoyede\u2019s experience in regulatory compliance, fraud management and corporate intelligence and his previous appointments as Chief of Staff to the EFCC Chairman\nbetween 2016 and 2018, and Secretary to the Commission between 2018 and 2023\nare not sufficient fulfillment of the requirement for a minimum of 15 years\u2019\nexperience in a government security or law enforcement agency. Even the\nduration of his appointment as Secretary to the Commission has come under\nquestion, with the Presidency stating that he served in that capacity until\n2023 and media reports showing that he was suspended alongside former Acting\nEFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu in 2020 and replaced by George Ekpungu. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Olukoyede however has an equal number of supporters who insist on his\nbeing qualified and who argue that there has been no gain for the\nanti-corruption efforts of government with the constant appointment of\nex-police personnel as Chairmen of the Commission. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the Presidency, the nomination of a new Chairman was\nnecessitated by the resignation of the immediate past Chairman of the\nCommission, Abdulrasheed Bawa. It will be recalled that President Tinubu\nsuspended Bawa from office by in June 2023, shortly after assuming office for\nallegations of abuse of office and called for an investigation into his conduct\nwhile in office. However, not much has been heard of Bawa since his suspension\nfrom office and subsequent report of his arrest by law enforcement agents. It\nis unclear if he is still being held in the custody of the Department of State\nServices or if there are plans to charge him to court based on the outcome of investigation\nof the said allegations. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Senate on Wednesday, October 18 screened and confirmed Ola Olukoyede and Muhammad Hammajoda\u00a0 for appointment as Chairman and Secretary of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The confirmation followed their nomination by President Bola Tinubu on\u00a0 October 12. Some analysts have argued that Mr. Olukoyede does not possess the statutory qualifications for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3430,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3423\/revisions\/3430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}