The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has disagreed with a claim by a former Vice President of the ECOWAS Court of Justice, Prof. Nwoke Chijioke, that the agency’s chairman, Ola Olukoyede, subjected ex-governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, to media trial.
The allegation followed revelations made by Olukoyede on Tuesday about the outcomes of the EFCC probe of Bello.
Speaking on Politics Today, a programme on Channels Television, Prof. Chijioke criticised the EFCC chairman’s approach, denouncing it as an unfair trial and labelling it as a form of media trial.
Chijioke said, ‘’The EFCC chairman’s press conference of yesterday was really uncalled for. That is unfair trial. All these challenges are because of what I would call a media trial.
“An institution of justice should be in a position, especially when you are the investigator, carry out a discrete investigation. You do not need to involve the media.”
But the EFCC the spokesperson, Dele Oyewale, disagreed with Chijioke, saying the revelations by the chairman of the anti-graft agency did not violate any rule.
Oyewale said, “There is nothing the chairman said on Tuesday that was not already in public domain. Also, we have filed our processes, and everything is before the court, so the chairman did not say anything that is not already in public domain.
The chairman himself is a lawyer, and he knows his onions. Everything he said were within his rights as the Chief Executive Officer of the EFCC.”
