The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says the freezing of high-profile accounts is a routine practice by the agency and not targeted at any state government.
Wilson Uwujaren, director of public affairs of the EFCC, spoke on Thursday during an interview on Arise Television’s Morning Show, dismissing claims that the recent freezing of the Osun state government’s accounts had a political undertone.
He said although the anti-graft agency had no reason to freeze the Ekiti state government’s accounts during the recent governorship election, it took similar action during the last Edo governorship poll.
According to him, the move preserved N12 billion for the administration of Monday Okpebholo after it took over from Godwin Obaseki, former governor of Edo.
“If you talk about what happened in Ekiti, we didn’t have any reason to intervene the way we are intervening now,” he said.
“But I can tell you that Osun State is not the first state that we’re taking this kind of action.
“During the Edo State election, before the coming of the governor of Okpebholo, EFCC also took actions to restrict the account of that state government when we saw that funds were being moved to suspicious accounts and we were able to preserve N12 billion for them.
“That is why the current government was able to come on board and have resources to work. So this is not targeted at any particular government. We are simply doing our work under the law.”
