The attention of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC has been drawn to a report
captioned,” Judge Blasts EFCC, FREES Justice Ademola, Wife, Others”, which was promoted on the front page of Daily Sun of Thursday April 6, 2017. The banner created the false impression that the EFCC handled the prosecution of the Judge and his wife which case was dismissed on Wednesday,
April 5, 2017 as lacking in merit. Curiously going through the body of the story on page 6 of the newspaper, there was nowhere the EFCC was mentioned as the prosecuting agency. Instead, the writer made copious references to the Department of State Security (DSS) and the office of the
Attorney General of the Federation as the prosecution authorities. The report in fact is emphatic that:” The charges were filed by the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, following the raid by the Department of State Services’ operatives on the Judge’s house on October 7, 2016”.
How and why the name of the EFCC crept into the banner headline remains a puzzle except that The
Sun group appears to have made EFCC bashing a pastime in recent times. A few days ago, the Saturday edition of the newspaper went to town with a scandalous report linking ownership of two mansions in Ministers Hill, Maitama, Abuja, to the wife of Mr. Ibrahim Magu, the Acting Chairman of the EFCC. Mr. Magu was therefore forced to write the publication through his lawyers, asking for retraction, public apology and compensation for libel. Even rookie journalists and non media
practitioners in Nigeria know that the EFCC had no role in Justice Ademola’s arrest and trial but it serves The Sun’s agenda to consistently malign the Commission by linking the agency to the case because the ruling was not favourable. Were the judgment to have been otherwise, would
The Sun attribute the case to the EFCC? The Commission therefore demands retraction of the offensive report and an apology that must be given the same prominence as the story in question.
