Human rights lawyers, Tolu Babaleye and Inibehe Effiong have cautioned the Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) against activities similar to the disbanded special anti-robbery squad of the Nigeria Police.
They stated this following the arrest of over 60 students of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, on Wednesday by officials of the commission in a midnight raid on off-campus hostels.
The incident led to a protest by students of the institution while the EFCC ordered its operatives to stop carrying out sting operations at night.
Speaking in an interview, Babaleye warned the commission against activities that could spark outrage among youths which may lead to an anti-EFCC protest like the #EndSARS protest.
He also called on the Federal Government to direct the EFCC to stay away from tertiary institutions.
He said, “It is an aberration and very unfortunate that the EFCC is only going after the soft targets that they can easily tame and arrest while leaving the big fraudsters to go scot-free.
“The EFCC should be an elite force because they are well-trained, so they should not behave like the disbanded SARS because if they continue like this, they should be expecting that anti-EFCC protests may spring up one day. You can’t treat youths this way and not expect such issues someday.
“Yes, we are aware that some of them (youths) are not well-behaved. But you can’t violate the sanity of the campus because of that; there are other ways to do your job and not cause distress to the campus.
“It should be made compulsory that they (the EFCC) inform the management of the institutions before they arrest on campus. There should be a rule of engagement for the commission”.
Similarly, Effiong said the EFCC has no business with students but should write the school’s management when a suspect is detected.
He added, “It is not enough to say you are stopping night operations. Let them stay off the campuses. What they (EFCC) have been doing is an embarrassment and it has to stop.
“It is indefensible that we will see armed operatives invading higher institutions in the name of searching for internet fraudsters. Universities are not such places for displaying abuse of power.
“Those (OAU) students deserve proper apology and compensation from the EFCC because they didn’t just arrest them, they went ahead to publish their names and images on the internet.
“The EFCC is behaving like the disbanded SARS and that has to stop. As we have seen, most of the students they picked up were not even involved in fraud. This is not the first time this has happened; it has happened in other institutions”.
