By Mohammed Bello Doka
There comes a point in the life of a nation when an institution stops pretending. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has reached that point. It is no longer a law enforcement agency. It is a political instrument wearing the costume of neutrality, and the costume is now so tattered that even the President it serves has been forced to look away in embarrassment.
Consider the timeline. On September 17, 2026, an ICC tribunal in Paris delivered its ruling on the Mambilla power project arbitration, rejecting Sunrise Power’s claims and ordering the company to refund Nigeria $11.8 million in legal fees. Within forty-eight hours, Premium Times reported that the EFCC had set up a special team, supervised by Chairman Olanipekun Olukoyede himself, to investigate Atiku Abubakar, Abubakar Malami, and others named in the award. Two days. That is the time it took the EFCC to review a 616-page document, identify the individuals mentioned, assess criminal liability, formulate an investigative strategy, and constitute a team led by its chairman. Under the ICC’s own rules, the award is notified to parties only after full payment of arbitration costs and following the Court’s scrutiny process, which typically takes weeks. Yet the EFCC moved in forty-eight hours. The only logical conclusion is that the agency had advance knowledge of the award’s contents. This was not investigative diligence. This was a prepared ambush.
Now compare that speed to the EFCC’s handling of allegations involving the ruling party. For months, reports have circulated about hundreds of billions of naira contributed by APC governors through the Progressive Governors’ Forum for campaign purposes, allegedly drawn from FAAC allocations meant for governance. The EFCC arrested Mustapha Abdullahi, Director-General of the Energy Commission of Nigeria, over money laundering involving between N500 billion and N701 billion. Investigators leaked to the press that they were tracing public funds. But no formal press release. No public confirmation. No governor invited. No chairman-level team announced. The Energy Commission DG was a convenient scapegoat, a man far enough from the governors to arrest but close enough to the money to question. The principals themselves remain untouched, protected by immunity and silence.
Then there is the National Assembly. On May 6, 2026, Justice Yellim Bogoro of the Federal High Court in Lagos declared the National Assembly’s N110 billion allocation to itself unlawful, citing breach of procurement laws, conflict of interest, and self-dealing. The court was explicit: the doctrine of separation of powers does not shield illegality. The lawmakers who approved the expenditure were the same people who benefited from it. That is not legislative autonomy. That is legalised larceny. Has the EFCC invited a single senator? Has it issued a statement? Has Olukoyede constituted a team? Nothing. The silence is deafening, and it is deliberate.
Now consider Osun. On August 5, 2026, just ten days before the governorship election, the EFCC froze the Osun State Government’s account. President Tinubu himself intervened the next day, saying he was deeply embarrassed by the timing and directing the commission to vacate the freeze. The EFCC had claimed it acted under its statutory preventive mandate. But the President’s statement said the agency had obtained a court order. The agency’s own spokesman never mentioned a court order on television. Someone was lying. And then, after the election, the case mysteriously disappeared. No charges. No follow-up. No explanation. The freeze was a political weapon, deployed against an opposition state, and withdrawn once its electoral purpose was served or once the embarrassment became too great even for the President.
This is the pattern. Against the opposition, the EFCC moves with theatrical urgency. Against the ruling party, it moves with bureaucratic caution. Against Atiku, a team is constituted in forty-eight hours. Against APC governors who allegedly diverted public funds, nothing. Against the National Assembly that illegally appropriated N110 billion to itself, nothing. Against Osun, a pre-election freeze that vanished. The message is unmistakable. The EFCC is not investigating crime. It is managing political outcomes.
And then there is the matter of Tinubu himself. The FBI has sworn under oath in a United States federal court that its records were compiled in furtherance of an investigation of multiple individuals for drug trafficking crimes. The court has already determined that an official acknowledgement had been made of an investigation of Bola Tinubu. He was a subject of a criminal investigation related to drug trafficking. That is not an allegation from a blog. That is a sworn declaration filed on August 28, 2026, in the District of Columbia. Tinubu’s lawyers are in court right now trying to block the release of those documents, arguing privacy. Being investigated is not being convicted. But it is also not nothing. And if the EFCC can constitute a team in forty-eight hours for Atiku based on a civil arbitration award, what is it doing about the sworn confirmation that the President was investigated for drug trafficking? The answer is nothing. Because the EFCC is not in the business of investigating power. It is in the business of protecting it.
Olukayode behaves like a man who believes he will be in power forever. He supervises teams personally. He freezes state accounts days before elections. He moves with the swagger of someone who has confused the temporary authority of office with permanent relevance. He should remember that Nigeria has survived real dictators. Abacha. IBB. Obasanjo. Men who ruled with absolute power, who jailed opponents, who controlled the treasury and the military. Today they are pages in history books, some of them reduced to footnotes, some of them struggling to remain relevant in a country that has moved on. Nigeria survived them. It will survive Olukoyede. And it will survive the pawns who cannot win a House of Representatives seat on their own merit but who strut around Abuja as though they own the country.
The EFCC has a choice. It can pretend to be nonpartisan. It can issue press releases claiming it is non-sectarian, as it did in August. It can maintain the fiction that it is an independent agency enforcing the law without fear or favour. Or it can drop the pretence and officially join the APC. What it cannot do is continue to behave like a department of the ruling party while demanding to be treated as a neutral arbiter. Nigeria is watching. History is watching. And history has a way of dealing with men who mistake power for permanence.
