The Social Democratic Party presidential candidate for the 2027 election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has rejected calls for the removal of the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, over the freezing of Osun State Government accounts.
Naijaonpoint reports that Adebayo argued that President Bola Tinubu, rather than the EFCC chairman, should be held responsible for the controversy following the President’s directive that the anti-graft agency take steps to reverse the restriction.
Speaking with journalists at the SDP National Secretariat in Abuja on Thursday, Adebayo claimed that Tinubu’s intervention undermined the rule of law and the operational independence of the EFCC.
He maintained that the commission acted within its statutory powers by obtaining a court order to restrict accounts linked to an ongoing investigation.
Adebayo said the pressure on Olukoyede to resign was misplaced, arguing that the EFCC chairman should not be punished for carrying out an action authorised by law and supervised by the judiciary.
According to him, the Osun State Government had several legal options if it believed the restriction was unjustified.
“If EFCC wrongly froze the account of Osun State Government, there are legal remedies that could be taken to unfreeze it, including getting damages against EFCC,” he said.
The SDP candidate added that the state government could challenge the order before a competent court rather than seek political intervention.
He said agencies such as the EFCC, the police and other security institutions should be allowed to discharge their responsibilities without interference from political office holders.
Adebayo argued that the major constitutional concern was the alleged attempt by the President to influence the activities of an independent law enforcement agency.
He described Tinubu’s public directive to the EFCC to reverse the account restriction as inappropriate, especially when the commission claimed that its action was supported by a court order.
According to him, political leaders should not direct investigations or determine how security and anti-corruption agencies exercise their statutory powers.
He maintained that any person dissatisfied with the conduct of such agencies should seek redress through the courts.
SDP Candidate Criticises Administration
Adebayo also criticised the Tinubu administration’s handling of the controversy, describing it as another example of poor leadership.
He urged Nigerians to concentrate on holding elected officials accountable rather than attacking the heads of government institutions performing their lawful duties.
The SDP candidate said the focus should remain on protecting institutional independence, strengthening the rule of law and ensuring that government agencies operate without political pressure.
Adebayo said, “Going by the drama over Osun account freezes and President Bola Tinubu ordered to unfreeze it. Do you support the growing call for the EFCC chairman to go for alleged office abuse? And resignation, yes. Well, the person who should resign is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. I don’t have enough evidence to suggest that the EFCC chairman should resign. The only person who is at fault here is the President himself. Because the EFCC is a very difficult place to work.
“From my own personal assessment of Olukayode, the EFCC chairman, I think that he wants to do his job. And I have always supported the EFCC right from the time of Nuhu Ribadu, up to the only lady who has ever been EFCC chairman, down to the present one. I’ve always supported law enforcement.
“I am not a politician that will criticise the IG of police, EFCC chairman, DG DSS, because those are difficult jobs to do, or army staff, or any service personnel, because these are difficult jobs to do under a very bad government. So the buck stops at the table of the President. The confusion in Osun is caused by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and I don’t know why Nigerians are always shy to ask and incompetent and obviously corrupt President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to resign.
“Nigerians are always going for the weak targets. Oh, Chief of Staff should resign. Did the Chief of Staff appoint himself? Did he instruct himself? Next, they’re always looking for a weak person. So the person who should go is Bola Ahmed Tinubu, because the Attorney General is the only political person who has authority to advise or interact with EFCC.
“So for the President to purport to order EFCC is already an impeachable offence, because EFCC is part of the legal process in Nigeria. And as a lawyer, I’ve done cases against EFCC; I’ve defended people before EFCC, and just like police. The law is clear on how to get it right.
“If EFCC wrongly froze the account of Osun State Government, there are legal remedies that could be taken to unfreeze, including getting damages against EFCC. You will see that Dr. Olu Agunloye, the National Secretary of the SDP, got a huge judgment against EFCC, and he’s going to get a bigger one very soon, nothing being equal.
“But we in SDP have never insulted EFCC. We’ve never interfered with them, because if you want to live in a country of rule of law, you must give the professionals who are in charge of maintaining rule of law freedom to act, because there is sufficient safeguard on how to use the law to protect yourself.
“So you cannot politicise all of them. You were here when the police, the State Police, came to these premises to chase everybody out of our own national secretariat. We did not ask that the IGP should resign. We did not ask that IG should resign.
“What we did was we took the police, we took everybody through the legal process. So it is still the same police that came here illegally to eject us from the office, that same police who came legally to put us back. So what I bring out of this is that as far as we are concerned in the SDP, we do not antagonise law enforcement agencies; even when they make errors, we know how to deal with them legally.
“So President Tinubu ought to be impeached if there was a National Assembly. But now he should resign because what he’s saying is that he has power to instruct EFCC, go against this person, don’t go against this person. He’s even instructing them to go to court and withdraw.
“No, if Osun State believes that their account has been wrongly frozen, the Attorney General of Osun State can go to court. Even the Attorney General of Osun State can go straight to Supreme Court to sue the federal government to court. So I don’t want to politicise the issue. All the governments are committing crimes, all of them. And all of them are using public money to do elections.
“So the only thing I advise EFCC is that when they are doing bribery and buying of votes negatively, even though it’s an APC state, you ought to act. If they are doing it in another state, including Osun, you have the right to act. If you see an SDP person giving money to a voter, he’s liable to be arrested.
“We in SDP will not say, oh, EFCC, leave our member alone. We will say, take him to court, go and prove it. So we will not join in any call for EFCC chairman to resign. We would rather strengthen him because the person who is at fault here now is President Tinubu. He’s the one who is at fault because if the EFCC froze their account, they must have filed an affidavit before the court to give the order. If EFCC is wrong, what of the court? The court must have seen that there is something that is there.
“And if the Attorney General of the Federation does not have an opinion on this matter, while the President, the politician, a well-known lawbreaker, is now interfering openly in the legal process and ordering agencies of law up and down, it is wrong. In fact, if a person was arrested for exceeding speed limit or not having a driver’s license, if somebody from the villa called the police to say release that person, that person from the villa has broken the law. So what is wrong here, in my view, is not necessarily that EFCC froze Osun’s account.
“Osun has all the legal remedies they can take if they think that it’s wrongly frozen. What is a constitutional crisis is that the President, a politician, is now the one directing a lawful body on how to investigate, not to investigate. And that’s that.”
