Maina: Court Gives EFCC Strong Directive

The Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has ordered the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) not to declare a former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms Abdulrasheed Maina wanted.

Abdulrasheed Maina was suspected of complicity in the diversion of pension funds.

The EFCC had declared him wanted after news broke in 2017 that Maina, who had been dismissed from the federal civil service in 2013 on the basis of the corruption charges leveled against him, had been reinstated.

However, in a judgment delivered on January 31, 2019, Justice Folasade Giwa-Ogunbanjo, held that the EFCC could not declare Maina wanted without first obtaining a court order.

Delivering judgment in the suit filed by Maina on September 5, 2018, Giwa-Ogunbajo ruled that the commission could not exercise its powers under sections 1(2)(c), 6, 7, 13 of the EFCC Act without recourse to a court.

A certified true copy of her judgment reads in part, “The plaintiff’s second prayer is a declaration that without recourse to any safeguard in sections 35, 37, 41 and 42 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), including a judicial intervention, order of court pursuant to sections 1(1), 8(1) and 42(2) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015, the 1st defendant cannot lawfully exercise its discretion, powers and or functions under sections 1(2)(C), 6, 7, 13 of the Economic and Financial Crimes Act, 2004, ditto section 4 of the Police Act, 2004 within the confines of the law.”