Sylva’s Probe: Sack EFCC Chairman, Lamorde, Others – Group Urges Buhari

efcc-chairman-ibrahim-lamorde1-360222345A pro-democracy group, Open Democracy Network, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to relieve the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Lamorde, and other officials of the commission of their appointments “to pave the way for the reorganisation of the anti-graft body”.

The group made the call in response to the decision of the anti-graft commission to press new fraud charges against a former Bayelsa Governor and chieftain of APC, Timipre Sylva.

The group in a statement by its spokesperson, Mahmood Mahmood, on Sunday, accused the EFCC of reactivating a “frivolous litigation that merely embarrassed the country and the legal system”.

The EFCC had in a fresh 50-count suit filed on Friday accused Sylva, alongside Francis Okukoro, Gbenga Balogun and Samuel Ogbuku, of using three companies – Marlin Maritime Limited, Eat Catering Services Limited, and Haloween-Blue Construction and Logistics Limited to move about N19.2bn from the Bayelsa State coffers between 2009 and 2012, on the pretext of using the money to augment the salaries of the state government’s workers.

The ODN, however, said the new suit bordered on a 42-count criminal charge that Justice Ahmed Ramat Mohammed of the Federal High Court, Abuja, had, on June 10, dismissed and accused the EFCC of abuse of court process.