Atiku Abubakar, presidential
candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), says he came to the financial
rescue of the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission (EFCC) when it was launched in 2004.
Atiku spoke on The Candidate, a
presidential town hall conversation hosted by Kadaria Ahmed, a journalist.
He was responding to a question
on how he would make the anti-graft agency independent and able to discharge
its duties on time without preferential treatment.
He said the EFCC had no budgetary
allocation to begin operation when it was launched.
“My quarrel with the judicial
system is that there is too much delay. If we can shorten the delay, so that
justice is seen to be meted out immediately, better for us.
“The problem is the legislation
and the procedure being adopted by the judiciary. The cases we initiated in our
administration are still in court. Now, where is the justice?
“When we set up the EFCC, I
personally brought the first draft of the regulation from Brazil and it was
based on that draft that the EFCC legislation was drafted.
“When it was finally passed by
the national assembly, EFCC did not even have the money in the budget to start
operation. I borrowed them N300m from the privatisation proceeds and said ‘you
better get to work’.
“The following year when there
was budgetary allocations, they repaid the money. Most of the convictions that
we are hearing today were cases that we started in our administration.”
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