Expose religious societies involved in financial crimes, group tasks EFCC

A non-governmental organisation, NGO, the Muslim Media Watch Group of Nigeria, has charged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, not to shield religious associations as well as other groups and individuals found to be committing financial crimes in the country.

The EFCC had recently disclosed in Abuja during its one-day dialogue with some stakeholders that some religious organisations were aiding and abetting corrupt practices including money laundering, one of which it said kept N7billion looted funds in account and went to court to prevent the commission from verifying its account.

But the MMWG, in a statement signed by its national coordinator, Alhaji Ibrahim Abdullahi and made available to our correspondent in Abuja, maintained that exposing them would help the government in getting rid of economic problems, adding that the anti-graft agency to intensify its efforts to retrieve the looted funds.

The group commended Mr. Olukoyede, the EFCC chairman, Mr. Ola Olukoyede for being courageous in making the disclosure, but implored him to go further by disclosing the identity of the religious body.

It stated that the time has come for the commission to initiate amendments into some parts of the Administration of Criminal Justice, ACJ “whereby not all economic crimes would be bailable because of dangers inherent in it,” adding that it was time for Nigeria to benchmark bailable economic crimes in the country.

The MMWG also called for abolition of plea bargaining in the nation’s legal system, pointing out that “its provision in our laws have been encouraging economic crimes since offenders are made to refund only certain percentage of looted funds to get cases against them terminated.”

On the high cost of food prices, the group implored President Bola Tinubu to meet with all the state governors and the Minister of Federal Capital Territory, FCT for a successful food distribution process that would crash the prices, stating that the gains of subsidy removal could be ploughed into food and transportation subsidy to reduce hardship facing the Nigerians instead of sharing the money to states at Federal Accounts Allocation Committee, FAAC meetings.

It lamented that “the money being shared monthly to governors are not being felt at the grassroot as suffering of the masses have continued unabated.”

The MMWG added that food items could be subsidised by the government if they are sold to public servants and pensioners monthly through various public establishments.

It further regretted 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 prices of food items to ease the current hardship.