Stop EFCC from “harassing” Dangote, BUA, Oando, others – Lawmaker tells Tinubu
Sada Soli, the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Water Resources, has condemned the raid of the headquarters of the Dangote Group by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Mr Soli, who represents Jibia/Kaita Federal Constituency of Katsina State, said such a move against Dangote Group poses a “threat to foreign and domestic investments”.
He described the recent probe of Dangote Group and 51 other private entities as “harassment”, and, therefore, called for the intervention of President Bola Tinubu.
The legislator, who is also the chairman of the North-west caucus of the House, made the call in a statement he issued on Friday.
PREMIUM TIMES reported that the EFCC had written to 52 companies directing them to supply documents supporting the allocation and utilisation of foreign currencies to them in the last 10 years.
On 4 January, the operatives of the anti-graft agency visited Dangote Group headquarters, demanded relevant documents relating to the investigation, then scrutinised the documents provided by officials of the group for hours, and carted some of them away.
Mr Soli said the approach adopted for the investigation of Dangote Group and the others could disincentivise investments which the current administration needs.
“I write to express concern over the recent invasion of the premises of the Dangote Industries Limited in Ikoyi, Lagos, by operatives of the anti-graft agency, ostensibly to collect documents relating to alleged abuse of foreign exchange allocations during the nine-year tenure of the immediate past governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele.
“There is the added concern that some fifty other companies, some of them the biggest private businesses in the country, including BUA Group and Flour Mills, TGI and Wale Tinubu’s Oando PLC, among sundry others, all of whom have denied wrongdoing, are being probed for details of the forex allocations to them between 2014 and June 2023 following the report of the Special Investigator on the CBN and Related Entities, Jim Obazee,” he said.
The lawmaker stated that the public display put up by the EFCC is the wrong way of handling such a sensitive investigation.
“While there is no denying the fact that the anti-graft agency is within its rights to undertake such a probe, or that it has done a very good job of ridding the nation of economic saboteurs in the past, it is nonetheless necessary to point out that the way the agency had gone about this probe, by storming offices and making a spectacle of itself in the public space, is both counter-productive and capable of sending the wrong signals. It must resist the temptation of acting on the impulse of some influential people in government with dubious agendas.
“It is certainly not the proper way to handle matters at a time when Nigeria is going through one of its worst economic crises in history with inflation going through the roof, rising foreign investment outflows from Nigerian stocks, and the lowest foreign direct investment in our economy since the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) started collating the data in 2013,” he said.
AbdulSamad Rabiu Chairman BUA Cement
Mr Soli, who is a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), said the president must intervene and stop the “harassment of the key contributors to the GDP and biggest taxpayers whose businesses help deepen the growth of our economy, promote self-reliance in the production of local products and provide employment and income for millions of Nigerians, is worrisome”.
He described the activities of the EFCC as “brazen” and contradictory to the agenda of Mr Tinubu, who campaigned on being pro-business.
He said: “Such brazen attack on big business is certainly against the pedigree of the man whose election was greeted by a bullish spike in the nation’s stock market, heralding a new era for commerce as befitting a leader whose genius for converting potential into reality helped turn Lagos into a global financial centre contributing 30 per cent of the nation’s GDP.
Mr Soli said the exit of some multinationals in the last year has created huge unemployment in the labour market.
“In the last one year alone, some of the most iconic multinational companies, including Unilever, GSK, Sanofi-Aventi Nigeria, Bolt Food, Jumia Food, Equinor Nigeria Energy Company, ENEC, and Procter and Gamble among others, have left the country and created more jobless Nigerians thus worsening our economic index.
“This is therefore not the time to discourage the investment drive of the Wale Tinubus, BUA Group, Dangote and the rest whose companies are the largest employers of labour outside the Nigerian government. Many of their subsidiaries enjoy pioneer or trailblazer statuses and they are strategically embedded in the Nigerian economy like an octopus and any attempt to strip them will have a debilitating effect on our economy and our quest to lure in foreign investors.
“It does not mean that companies should not be made to obey the laws, but we cannot afford to antagonise unnecessarily, companies which have invested tens of billions of dollars into the economy and remain our best hope in turning the economy around,” he said.
Mr Soli asked the anti-graft agencies to employ the best practices for handling infractions.
The lawmaker said such an intervention by the president would dispel rumours that the recent move against the Dangote Group is political.
“Already, there are rumours that some hawks within the corridors of power are using the excuse of a forex probe as a shakedown in order to get a toehold into Dangote Refinery, to reap where they had not sown.
“While there is yet no conclusive proof of this, the fact is that perception can sometimes triumph over reality and the impression should not be given that the government is trying to attack northern interests by subjecting the richest northerner, Nigerian and African, with the largest conglomerate in the region, to unnecessary harassment,” he said.
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