The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday urged the new Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Abdulrasheed Bawa, to re-engineer the commission and restore professionalism in the anti-graft agency.
The party also called on him to avoid the pitfalls of his immediate predecessor in office, Mr Ibrahim Magu, by resisting pressures to use the agency as a tool for political persecution, harassment of dissenting voices, settling of personal scores as well as for personal enrichment.
The party, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, said such tendencies eroded professionalism in the EFCC compromised its activities and diminished the public confidence in its fairness, impartiality and even-handedness in the handling of cases.
PDP said the anti-graft agency was articulated and established by a PDP administration to fight corruption and not as a tool for oppression and intimidation of innocent Nigerians for political and other unjustified reasons.
The PDP stated that for the first time, the chairman of the EFCC had been drawn from the pool of trained investigators of the commission, adding that Nigerians expect Bawa to sanitise the system and restore professionalism in line with international best practices.
The PDP said: “Our party urges the new EFCC Chairman to bear in mind that, given his young age and training, he should exhibit the ideals of the generation-next Nigeria in reciprocation of the confidence Nigerians repose in him.”
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had earlier urged Bawa to spare no one in his fight against corruption.
The National Secretary of the Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), Senator John Akpanudoedehe, in a statement last week in Abuja, had urged Bawa to be guided by the stance of President Muhammadu Buhari that the fight against corruption must be total and unsparing.