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The Kogi Youth
Council, a coalition of youth associations in Kogi State, yesterday
called for the immediate sack of Farida Waziri, the chairman of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), over the publication
of a list of corrupt politicians.

Isaac Omale, the
group’s national publicity secretary, said in Abuja on Thursday that
Mrs Waziri’s tenure had ruined the progress made by federal
government’s anti-corruption campaign. It accused her of witch-hunting
and persecution of innocent citizens. The group said the case of
Gabriel Aduku, the former minister of state for health, highlights such
persecution.

On Monday, the EFCC
published a list of politicians and other prominent personalities who
were under investigation for corruption and called on the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) to ban those listed from contesting in the 2011
general election.

Witch-hunting

The list included
Mr. Aduku who was indicted by the EFCC in the wake of allegations of
N300 million fraud in 2008. He was discharged and acquitted of
corruption charges last November by the Supreme Court.

“The EFCC
voluntarily told the Federal High Court, presided over by Justice Saleh
Garba, that after a thorough investigation it had come to the
conclusion that Chief Aduku had no case to answer and applied that his
name should be deleted from the list of accused persons,” said Mr.
Omale. “

Mr. Aduku [was] an
innocent man [who] lost his job as minister, suffered bouts of illegal
detention and had his reputation ruined as result of indiscriminate
allegation of corruption against all ranking officials of the Federal
Ministry of Health.”

The group challenged Mrs Waziri to subject herself to an independent investigation to “see if she can emerge unscathed.”

“The EFCC under
Mrs. Waziri has been battling with credibility and integrity crises
owing largely to allegations against her person, which have remained
unaddressed said Mr. Omale.

“The persecution of
an innocent person who has been passed through the entire process of
the rule of law and still stands vindicated can only exacerbate her
image problem.”

A stern warning

The agency has come
under fire from the political elite over the list which it published on
its website. On Tuesday, the PDP said it would not act on the list,
which includes former state governors, legislators, businessmen and
bankers, saying that it did not want to undermine the country’s
judicial process.

On Wednesday, the
Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke, warned Mrs. Waziri
to stop making political statements capable of embarrassing the
government and unduly “heating up the polity.”

“While it is
important for anti-corruption agencies to continue to pursue their
statutory mandate with vigour, care must be taken to ensure that no
negative feeling or perception is unwittingly created that government
is complicit in any grand design or scheme to ‘witch-hunt’ people,” Mr.
Adoke wrote in a letter to the EFCC.

Mr. Adoke, however, lauded Mrs. Waziri for her ongoing
investigations and prosecutions of bank executives. He urged her and
the commission “to sustain this momentum by ensuring that all actions
and pronouncements of the EFCC come within the confines of due
process.”