A researcher, Damilola Adeogun, with Avalon Daily, has implored the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to modify its operations and retrain its personnel for better and incorruptible services for the nation.
He said this in a media release issued on Wednesday. “EFCC must accept that Nigerians now have a say in how its role and activities are perceived,” he added.
According to Adeogun, the end of 2021 is a good time to extensively adjust its operations, retrain its staff ahead of 2022, and take a long, hard look into why the majority of Nigerians regard it as a corrupt agency – the very embodiment and antithesis of what it was set up to tackle.
The researcher recalled that when the EFCC was established in 2003, it was done in an attempt to extend the frontiers of law enforcement in Nigeria and, more importantly, to save face in the international community.
He highlighted that many Nigerians have termed the agency as undisciplined with unprofessional officers that disregard the rule of law”.
This he said is following a recent End-of-Year Perception Poll, The Avalon Daily posed to its online audience: What is your current perception of the EFCC?
With a total of 5,100 persons sampled for this perception poll, Adeogun hinted that the results were staggering but predictable.
“45 per cent perceived the EFCC as corrupt, 34 per cent tagged them as abusive, 17 per cent as being politically influenced, and four per cent considered them as professional,” he cited.
He further lamented that 18 years after its establishment, the EFCC’s fight against advance fee fraud (419), money laundering among others, has recorded many casualties with the sustained degradation of the organisation’s reputation and professionalism.
While acknowledging the importance of EFCC’s fight against cybercrimes, Adeogun admitted that many of the respondents believed that their operations should be intelligence-driven rather than reactionary where young people are profiled and harassed.
He continued: “While the EFCC derives its legitimacy from the powers of the federal government, it must also understand that it is a public-facing organisation whose long-term acceptability and recognition is built on transparency, due process, and public accountability.”
He therefore advised the EFCC to take the result of the perception poll as constructive criticism and valuable feedback. “It presents new insights that are beneficial to the agency and its operations.”