Hunter Becomes the Hunted as Court orders the arrest of EFCC Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa

The chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mr. Abdulrasheed Bawa, has been ordered to be remanded in custody by an Abuja High Court sitting in Maitama due to alleged disobedience to a legal court order.

After it was revealed that the EFCC chief had refused to hand over a Range Rover Sport (Super Charge) car worth N40 million that the anti-graft organization had taken from Rufus Adeniyi Ojuawo, a former Director of Operations at the Nigerian Air Force, NAF, AVM, the court found him guilty of contempt of court in a decision delivered by Justice Chizoba Oji.

On November 21, 2018, Justice Orji issued an order directing the commission to give the exotic car back to AVM Ojuawo, who was in court.

In 2016, Justice Muawiyah Baba Idris of the High Court of the FCT in Nyanya docked the former NAF Director of Operations for a trial regarding allegations that he received N40 million and a Range Rover Sport from a person named Hima Aboubakar. He was charged criminally with two counts.

The top court ordered in 2018 that the defendant receive his seized vehicle as a result of a separate lawsuit he filed against the commission.

However, Mr. R.N. Ojabo, the defendant’s attorney, brought the court’s attention to the fact that the EFCC had not complied with the order four years after it was issued.

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Concerned by the development, Justice Orji issued a warrant for the EFCC chairman’s arrest and detention for willful violation of a court order.

“The chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is in contempt of the orders of this honourable court made on November 21, 2018, directing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Abuja, to return to the applicant his Range Rover (Super charge) and the sum of N40, 000,000.00 (Forty Million Naira).”

“Having continued wilfully in disobedience to the order of this court, he should be committed to Kuje Prisons for his disobedience, and continued disobedience of the said order of court made on November 21, 2018, until he purges himself of the contempt,” Justice Orji held.

Reacting yesterday, the Chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFFC, Abdurasheed Bawa, said he had appealed the contempt rulings on him, adding that the judgement should be allowed to take its natural cause.

“Well, we have appealed against it, so we allow the natural course of law to take its effect,” he said.