Whenever I hear of EFCC on the news again for the wrong reasons I always quickly rush to the ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL CRIMES COMMISSION (ESTABLISHMENT) ACT 2004 which is their establishment act to check especially section 6 of the act that provides for their functions but as expected, all you need to know is that law enforcement agencies and their agents in Nigeria have a thing for acting beyond their power; ie acting ultra vires.
We woke up yesterday to a famous Nigerian musician, Skales ranting and complaining bitterly about how the agents of the EFCC pulled up with sophisticated weapons to his home, forcefully broke into his apartment at 3 am-midnight, ransacked his home while pointing guns at him and his family members and that got his wife and six months old baby to traumatized.
Be it as it may, by the provisions of section 148 of the Administration of the Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015, a search warrant may be issued and executed at any time on any day, including a Sunday or public holiday. This is to say that a search or an arrest warrant can be executed at midnight by a law enforcement agent, so the EFCC agents knocking on people’s doors at midnight and using force to gain entry if the owner of the house fails to open up is still within the bounds of the law so far as they have been issued with a search and arrest warrant on that particular person or on that particular house by a court of competent jurisdiction. This is the condition precedent; they must have obtained a search or arrest warrant for the particular assignment but the bitter pill to swallow is that they always do not approach people’s houses and break into peoples’ apartments with any valid search warrant against that house.
Knocking on people’s doors or breaking into people’s houses while brandishing sophisticated weapons at midnight without any valid search warrant as a law enforcement agent especially on a mufti makes you an armed robber or a kidnapper and the house owner is legally allowed to use any force necessary to defend himself and to resist you to ensure you do not break into his apartment. This implies that if the house owner has a licensed firearm he can shoot you on the grounds of self-defense and he will be permitted by our laws.
Interestingly, the men of the EFCC (just to let you know that they know what they are doing) only execute this kind of Gestapo style of midnight arrests in the houses of alleged young boys and petty internet fraudsters. They dare not try it in a house of politicians or someone who knows his rights and is ready to stand for it because they know that the person’s first point of action is to raise a preliminary objection against his mode of arrest and seek proper damages against the agency and the agents that executed it.
In fact, a friend who is a senior officer at the EFCC told me that the only reason the EFCC agents prefer to go after the petty Yahoo boys and petty financial criminals instead of going after big-time corrupt politicians is because the Yahoo boys are so easy to prosecute. A politician is always ready to fight in court but an alleged Yahoo boy will always chicken out and beg for a plea deal and people do not know that just as bankers or salesmen have sales targets, EFCC agents or EFCC sessions are also given targets of number of prosecutions they must meet at a particular time hence they opt for the easier way of meeting the target by going after petty yahoo boys whom they know are easier to prosecute.
There is no justification for crime, so this is not me justifying internet fraud or making a case for the internet fraudsters but this is me as a lawyer standing against breaking into people’s homes at midnight without search warrants or court order to that effect. I am talking from experience as a lawyer that 99% of those homes men of the EFCC break into at midnight they do so without a proper search and arrest warrant. Some agents are always quick to tell you when you ask them to show you their warrant that their Identity card is a valid search and arrest warrant but that is not what our law says; there is no law in Nigeria that says that an ID card of an operative of an EFCC is a search or an arrest warrant.
The EFCC totally needs overhauling. Touts are now joining the forces and making a mess of why the force was established in 2004. You don’t have to break the law to execute another law; when you break a law to execute another law you have also become a criminal. You can carry out an arrest and execute a search by going through the proper channels of the law.
What happened in Skale’s apartment last night is totally uncalled for. Seeing the CCTV footage of operatives of the EFCC heavily armed breaking into his apartment will send chills to the shiver of everyone. You will be forced to think that the residents of the apartment are boko haram bandits hence why the agents are heavily armed like that to flush them out.
