N400m theft: Hand over GOC to EFCC, HURIWA tells Army

A prominent civil rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has charged the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Yusuf Buratai, to hand over the commanding officer involved in the theft of N400 million to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for prosecution.

The group in a statement on Monday, urged the army chief to reorganise the finance department of the army to ensure that no general officer commanding any of the division or indeed, any officer of the military can have access to huge funds at any given time without effective checks and balances.

Also, the rights group tasked the army high command to hand over the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 8 Division, Sokoto, Maj. Gen. Hakeem Otiki , to the EFCC to enable a thorough, independent and transparent investigation to be carried out on the reported theft of N400 million by escorts delegated by him.

“As a human rights group with tremendous respect for the many lofty ideals of anti-corruption strategies introduced by the current army chief, we expect that the reported disappearance of such a humongous cash belonging to the country purportedly meant for the counter insurgency war, is handled independently in line with established precedence set by the current chief of army staff who had handed over several generals to the EFCC in the past in connection with the alleged diversion of resources budgeted for the prosecution of the counter terrorism war,” the group said.

HURIWA also charged the Lt. Gen. Buratai to use his good offices to introduce stringent measures which will further tighten the ways cash transactions are done so it would be easier to prevent this kind of scandal that reportedly occurred in Sokoto state which has brought enormous opprobrium on the global image of the country.

The rights group stressed that it believes that the current army chief has the zeal and capacity to ensure that these dynamic changes are effectively implemented even as it counselled Buratai not to perceive well conceived opinions of hitherto friendly civil society organizations such as HURIWA as targeted at rubbishing his acclaimed milestones.

“HURIWA notes with displeasure that some amorphous groups with no traceable offices and which are not registered by the Nigerian state are in the habits of misconstruing and misinterpreting the good intentions of HURIWA embodied in our public statements suggesting how best to successfully wage the counter -terror war.

“These profiteers who are simply empty headed sycophants think the only way to show friendship and partner with the army is to always issue praise songs and pour encomiums no matter how bizarre and unreal on the person of the chief of army staff even as these groups keep publishing diatribes and unsubstantiated accusations against HURIWA and the person of the national coordinator.

“As quality partners, we think it is the best mode of relationship to exchange our views publicly and mildly since private exchanges of letters with the office of chief of army staff may not be always ideal for some public interest advocacy campaigns which aren’t meant to diminish the achievements of the current chief of army staff or the institution of the army,” the statement added.

Specifically, on the reported scandal of the missing millions, HURIWA stated that “it is certainly not enough to detain the said military general in a military facility and certainly it is insufficient to rely only on internal mechanisms to unravel the circumstances surrounding the reported disappearance of such a huge amount of cash.

“The most logical thing to do is to also invite the EFCC and ICPC to provide forensic investigative skills to uncover the truth behind the extensively damaging scam and to enforce the relevant anti-economic crimes’ law where necessary even as the indicted persons must be afforded the opportunity for fair hearing in line with section 36(5) of the constitution.”