BEVERLY HILLS, February 20, (THEWILL) – President Muhammadu Buhari’s nominee for the vacant post of Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Ahmed Bawa, has been promoted by the agency alongside 88 other officers.
All the affected officers were promoted from Grade Level 13 as Principal Detective Superintendent (PDS) to Grade Level 14 as Deputy Chief Detective Superintendent (DCDS), effective from January 1, 2021.
The promotion gives Bawa the required leverage to mount the saddle as Nigeria’s new anti-graft Czar.
In fact, a lawyer, Osuagwu Ugochukwu, subsequently filed a suit before a Federal High Court in Abuja seeking to stop the Senate from confirming Bawa on the basis of the Buhari nominee falling below the statutory rank for filling the position.
The promotion exercise is happening less than two weeks after Buhari sent Bawa’s name in a letter to the Senate, seeking its confirmation of the 40-year-old officer as replacement for his embattled boss and former Acting EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu
According to an internal memo signed by an EFCC officer, Femi Peter Gbarufu, all elevated personnel will receive promotion letters from the Human Resources Unit as soon as possible.
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The memo titled: “Release of Promotion List,” bore the date of Friday, February 19, 2021, and the development has put Bawa on the same level as an Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), a prerequisite for becoming Chairman of the anti-graft agency.
Bawa was recruited into EFCC in 2005 as one of its pioneer cadets, meaning he has now spent 16 years as an operative.
His new rank equivalent to an Assistant Commissioner of Police qualifies him to be Chairman of EFCC.
The EFCC Establishment Act in Section 2a (ii) stipulates that a candidate for appointment as the Chairman of the agency should be a serving or retired member of any security or law enforcement agency not below the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police.
After he headed the EFCC’s Zonal office in Port Harcourt, Bawa was last August deployed to the Commission’s Lagos Zonal Office as its new head.
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