A lawyer Daniel Bwala has accused governors of attempting to destroy the country’s democracy.
Sixteen state governments had filed a suit at the Supreme Court to challenge the legality of the establishment of the country’s anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Bwala, a former member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), believes the move signals the governor’s plot to frustrate democracy in the country.
“The governors in Nigeria, they are making concerted efforts to destroy this democracy,” he said on Tuesday’s edition of Channels Television’s The Morning Brief.
He said governors have not done much in developing their states and have pushed the responsibilities of governance to the Federal Government.
“I have said when President Tinubu started, when these allocations started moving; when nobody was looking at the responsibility of the federating unit in administering governors, when all pressures were pushed and directed at President Tinubu. I said that we have taken our minds and attention from the fact that this allocation we are talking about – the majority of this allocation – goes to the state. The development is at the state level and local level and nobody cares to look at governors and probe them on their affairs.”
He accused governors of masterminding some corruption in Nigeria and thus the recent push for the scrapping of the EFCC.
The calls for the scrapping of the EFCC have reached a new high in recent months. The Supreme Court has scheduled today – October 22nd – to hear the governors’ suit challenging the legality of the establishment of the agency.
But the Director of Public Affairs in the EFCC Wilson Uwujaren says the push for the scrapping of the agency is because governors are “feeling the heat” of the anti-graft body’s work.
According to him, if the agency is scrapped, Nigeria cannot survive.
“We are really shocked by what is happening,” Uwujaren said on Monday’s edition of Channels Television’s breakfast show The Morning Brief.
“Nigerians should see through this shenanigan and oppose it because I don’t see how this country can survive without the EFCC with the kind of corruption problem that we have. Nigeria cannot do without the EFCC.”