The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami, SAN, on Tuesday said that he did not need an amendment of the current Economic and Financial Crime (Establishment) Act 2004 to enable him regulate the anti-graft agency and could therefore not, in any way, seek to sponsor any bill for “more powers to control the commission”.
The minister stated this in a statement made available to journalists by his media aide, Dr Umar Gwandu.
Malami stated that by virtue of the extant laws of the land as well as rules and legislations governing the conduct of governmental operations, he had indisputable statutory powers to regulate the operations of the commissions without recourse to any additional legislations.
He said, section 43 of the EFCC Act had made it abundantly clear that “the Attorney General of the Federation may make rules or regulations with respect to the exercise of any of the duties, functions or powers of the Commission under this Act”.
“For the avoidance of doubt, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice believes in the doctrines of separation of powers as an epitome character of the democratic administration and could not therefore meddle into the affairs of legislature for megalomaniac sake.
“It is a global practice in democratic societies that the legislature may at their discretion and as deem fit, spearhead the amendment of existing legislations in order to accommodate certain exigencies occasioned by contemporary realities and the need to improve performance to achieve best practices without any prompting from external organs of the government”, the statement read in part.
It added that the priority of the office of the AGF at the moment was to see to the effective execution of its statutory mandates of supervising all the parastatals under the Federal Ministry of Justice in a way that make them function in the best interest of the general public.
