The National Assembly has been called upon to expeditiously order a thorough, open and dispassionate probe of the recent recruitment exercise conducted by the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Magu in which Northerners dominated by over 75 percent.

The call was made by a pro-democracy Non-Governmental Organization- Human Right Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) at a briefing in Abuja, where it also carpeted the Federal Character Commission (FCC) for its gross incompetence and criminal collusion which has allowed for such flagrant breaches of the constitutional stipulation by a federal agency such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in its employment function.

It lamented that the Federal Character Commission had similarly remained dormant and compromised whilst President Muhammadu Buhari failed to carry the South East of Nigeria along in the appointment of top level Defence and Security positions

Besides, HURIWA said other agencies such as the Nigerian Customs Service headed by a retired Army Colonel had recently made lopsided promotions of the top cadres which unconstitutionally excluded the South East.

Speaking on the emerging recruitment scandal in EFCC, the rights body charged the National Assembly to jettison the confirmation process of the Acting Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu because of the illegalities inherent in the recruitment exercise and other abuses of the human rights of suspects being detained in the facilities run by the anti-graft body.

HURIWA said “We call on the relevant committees of the National Assembly and indeed the hierarchies of the two chambers of the National Assembly to investigate the allegations published by an Abuja based national daily which discovered that apart from the fact that 75 percent of the shortlisted candidates are from the North, several of such candidates bore the same family names. This is an unmitigated scandal of monumental proportion which mustn’t be swept under the carpets. This unpardonable impunity must be investigated and the top management of this agency sanctioned appropriately because what has been done is extensively damaging and indeed goes to uproot the foundational integrity of that agency of law enforcement.

“It is important that this vital agency of government charged with the statutory responsibility of waging a fight against economic crimes is not allowed to get away with such monumental economic scam of dominating the workforce with persons from a section of Nigeria to the total negation of the Federal Character Principles enshrined in Section 14 (3).”

HURIWA stated that the above mentioned constitutional provision states that: “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that government or in any of its agencies.”

The Rights group said if the relevant supervisory bodies such as the National Assembly and the Federal Character Commission should let this recruitment scam go without redress then the organized civil society community will head to the Court of law to use the instrumentality of the Nigerian Court system in line with Section 6 of the Constitution to overturn this illegality in EFCC.

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