Hon. Kayode Oladele, the former chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crimes, has praised the recent Supreme Court ruling that dismissed a lawsuit brought by 19 states in the federation contesting the creation and prosecutorial authority of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Commission (ICPC), and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), three important federal anti-corruption agencies.
The 19 states, led by Kogi State, had petitioned the Nigerian Apex Court for judicial interpretation and a ruling regarding the existence and prosecutorial power of the state’s anti-corruption agencies. They claimed that the EFCC Establishment Act was the result of a UN Convention against corruption and that Section 12 of the Nigerian Constitution had not been followed when the law was passed in 2004.
However, a seven-member tribunal headed by Uwani Abba-Aji gave a momentous ruling on Friday, November 15, 2024, holding that the National Assembly had legitimately adopted the laws creating the EFCC and other anti-graft agencies within its legislative purview. The Court declared the state governments’ motivations for contesting the creation of anti-graft organizations to be “selfish” while dismissing the petition for lack of substance.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling is a vindication of our position that Nigeria operates a co-operative federalism as opposed to dual federalism and under the co-operative federalism as practiced in Nigeria, some agencies like the EFCC, ICPC, and NFIU are common agencies for both the Federal and State Government and as such, the EFCC is qualified as any other authority to institute criminal proceedings under section 174(1)(b) and section 211(1)(b) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended)” Oladele said in a statement.
Oladele also said the decision was a daring move to improve the ability of Nigeria’s anti-graft organizations to operate. The desperation of some powerful forces to stop the federal government’s efforts to combat and tame the nation’s corruption monster has finally been put to rest, and I have no doubt that the ruling will further improve and fortify our anti-graft agencies’ ability to operate.
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“With this ruling, the Supreme Court has upheld our arguments and confirmed the EFCC and ICPC’s investigative and prosecutorial authority over state and federal crimes,” Oladele continued.
The constitutionality of the EFCC was a recent point of contention between Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, and Hon. Kayode Oladele and Mr. Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, the former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). Although in a letter to the National Assembly, Mr. Agbakoba had contended that
Falana and Oladele had both argued that Agbakoba’s viewpoint “did not have any legal backing and therefore unsupportable in law and practice, but mere sophistry,” and that the EFCC should be abolished because it was unconstitutional because “the powers under which it was established go beyond the powers of the National Assembly.”
