19 States Lose As Supreme Court Dismisses Case Challenging Constitutionality of EFCC, Others
19 state governments’ case against the federal government, challenging the constitutionality of the laws establishing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and two others have been dismissed by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court on Friday threw out the suit for lacking in merit and substance.
Justice Uwani Abba-Aji who read the lead judgment insisted that the states were completely wrong in holding that EFCC established by an act of the National Assembly was an illegal and unlawful body.
In the unanimous judgment, the 7-man panel of Justices of the court affirmed the power of the EFCC, ICPC and NFIU to arrest and prosecute offenders.
Didactic Information Hut recalls that the plaintiffs, in the suit, marked: SC/CV/178/2023 had argued that the Supreme Court, in Dr Joseph Nwobike vs Federal Republic of Nigeria, had held that it was a United Nations Convention against corruption that was reduced into the EFCC Establishment Act and that in enacting this law in 2004, the provision of Section 12 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, was not followed.
They argued that the provision of Section 12 must be complied with in bringing a Convention into the Nigerian law.
According to them, the provision of the Constitution necessitated the majority of the states’ Houses of Assembly agreeing to bring the convention in before passing the EFCC Act and others, which was allegedly never done.
They had further insisted that the law, as enacted, could not be applied to states that never approved of it, in accordance with the provisions of the Nigerian constitution.
But the Supreme Court disagreed and dismissed the suit accordingly.
