EFCC debunks media reports of subjecting Sun newspaper staff to torture

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, yesterday debunked newspaper reports that it’s operatives invaded the Sun Newspaper in Apapa, Lagos, subjected it’s staff to “crude intimidation, psychological and emotional trauma.

In a statement issued yesterday night by the Head, Media & Publicity, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, The EFCC explained that it’s operatives only visited the office as part of its routine efforts to ascertain the state of the assets of the publishing company which is subject of subsisting interim forfeiture order.

The operatives of the anti-graft agency had yesterday stormed the head office of The Sun Newspaper in Apapa, Lagos, disrupting its operations.

The “heavily armed ” operatives were said to have subjected the staff to “crude intimidation, psychological and emotional trauma”.

But Sun in a statement after the raid, accused Ibrahim Magu, wife of the acting chairman of the commission, of vendetta.

The Sun said Magu was miffed over a previous investigative story it ran about a property traced to Magu’s wife.
The company vowed not to succumb to intimidation, the newspaper and asked Nigerians to “call Magu to order”.

But the EFCC while defending it’s action said that prior to the visit, the Commission had written to the management of the company to account for its management of the assets for the period of the subsisting court order.

The statement explained that the Commission’s action was without prejudice to any appeal and only meant to verify the integrity of the assets.

According to the statement, “Contrary to claims in a statement released to the media by the management of the Sun, no staff of the media outfit was molested or intimidated for the few minutes that operatives of the Commission spent in the premises of the company.

“The claim that “EFCC operatives subjected our staff to crude intimidation, psychological and emotional trauma, even as some of the men accused our organization of publishing pro-Biafra, Boko Haram , and Niger Delta Militant stories ,” is strange and clearly the figment of the imagination of the Sun.

“There was no reason to molest anybody as the commission has always related professionally with the publishing outfit. The attempt also to link the visit to the acting Chairman, Ibrahim Magu’s threat to sue the organization over a libelous publication is also diversionary. Magu is pursuing that option in his private capacity and his lawyer, Wahab Shittu, did write the Sun and his letter was widely published in the media on March 31, 2017.